How to Have Disruptive Ideas For Product Innovation

The British electrical plug was invented in 1946. It's the largest plug in the world. It comes from a time when computers filled rooms and radios were the size of kitchen units. The only time the average person carried an electrical gadget round with them was when they moved house.

Nowadays gadgets don't sit quietly in the corner. They expect three foreign holidays a year and come with us to work, rest and play. In return, they've been on a crash diet and what used to fill a room, now sits comfortably in your pocket.

So it's strange that it's only this year, that a designer won an award for re-inventing the venerable but massive British plug into something altogether more slimline and portable. Why did it take 64 years to invent a better one? More importantly, why didn't any of the rest of us have that idea?

Listen to what nobody says

Henry Ford once said:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

Unvoiced customer needs are everywhere, but they're hard to find. No British customer has ever said to a product designer "I'd like a more portable electric plug please."

Instead the re-inventor of the British plug, designer, Min Kyu-Choi, had an experience. He scratched his MacBook Air laptop on its plug realising in the process that the world's thinnest laptop still uses the world's thickest connector.

Min Kyu-Choi had stumbled upon a disruptive idea by discovering an unmet, unvoiced customer need.

So how do you mass-produce disruptive innovation?

The simple answer is: have experiences, and reflect on them. Creating an innovative new product requires an inductive leap.

The best way to trigger an inductive leap is to have a direct experience. The easy part of that is that we all have experiences continuously. When my alarm goes off, that's a customer experience. When I get on the train, it's a customer experience. Buying my morning coffee - an experience. They all come bundled up with satisfaction and frustration.

The hard part is noticing the response rather than accepting the "how things are-ness" of it. One of the best ways is to keep a record of what happens - mark up every experience on a timeline and plot your emotional response. Not taking problems for granted is the first step towards great product design.

Simon Kirby is a published author on service and product innovation and the founder of Opine Consulting. Opine is a consulting boutique which bridges across innovation, service management and strategic marketing. Our clients are global corporations and the government sector. You'll find a lot of our best thinking at http://www.opineconsulting.com