Quick Take: Going for seismic innovations

How can we measure the full impact of the boldest distributor innovations if we don’t know what to call them?

Embracing outliers in the pursuit of big change

Last week’s Quick Take edition struck a chord. I offered a full-throated critique of best practices as the enemy of game-changing innovations and went as far as writing, “Best practices are death.” My observations built on a Fast Company article, “The Problem With Best Practices,” by Shane Snow. As I added to Snow’s observations, subscriber Gabe Encarnacion added to mine, by email and then a conversation.

This edition shares our back and forth and ends by beginning a new quest: the search for an intelligent and inspiring word to describe the most powerful innovations, something better than “game-changing.” (Full disclosure: Gabe and I, along with Scott Cuthbert, are the founders of a mastermind group exploring game-changing—ahem!—innovations created by small enterprises, not giants.) Our conversation follows:

Words are important. Words have meaning and give direction. Words have energy and can spark ideas, and words can create progress or hinder it. This is true of words said and those that go unsaid. I have a problem with words that go unsaid, expressed as, “For me, the problem with best practices starts with words that are often left off—best practice for [what exactly]? Gabe chimed in:

I think this correlates with your article on distributors innovating on purpose. Maybe the problem is that distributors don't even know themselves, and therefore chase best practices as a means of having someone else define their identity for them. This will almost guarantee the destruction of innovation by that distributor.

When I started working with distributors, most fit neatly in one of three categories: broad line, specialty, or catalog. Back then, benchmarking data helped me get up to speed on distributors. Looking back, I think it had a stultifying effect: “By thinking of distributor business models as only one of three options, opportunities for creative differentiation were lost.” Gabe adds that leaders who chart their course may fail, but they may also be harbingers of a new era:

Agreed. Sometimes, we can oversimplify and scrub the nuance when trying to make sense of data, calling what is perceived as new different “outliers.” But what if being the outlier makes a distributor special? If the experts say a distributor must be in a particular category, being different can imply setting yourself up for failure. That's not necessarily true. This goes back to the prior point that distributors need to have a clearer idea of what makes them truly unique, their purpose. That will pave the way for innovation.

Quoting Snow’s article, I observed: “If [the very creative movie] industry is a victim of best practices that lead to mediocrity, what chance do distributors have? Snow suggests that one solution is to ‘borrow best practices from industries other than our own.’” Gabe sees a problem:

As you explained, this is a double-edged sword. Looking at best practices in other industries can give fresh ideas, and best practices/common practices in the tech industry could be novel and revolutionary in distribution. However, the fact remains that you're still looking at a best practice, the average of the actions done by others in that sector. I like observing best practices as data points, but not automatically adopting them as the be-all-end-all measures for success for me or my organization.

Finally, Gabe picked up on my idea that “distributors should write their own rules, not copy the rules of others,” but took issue with a jargony word that I use far too often:

One of the corporate-speak phrases I can't stand is “game-changer.” It's often used to make a feature or benefit sound revolutionary when it's just a marginal change or slight iteration. Distributors shouldn't just be game changers. We should be game creators! This is risky and requires proactive thinking, making many distributors cringe. However, the payoff can be huge. Not to mention it's a heck of a lot more fun than playing catch-up.

Prodded by Gabe, I’m looking for a new adjective for the most potent innovations, a phrase better than game-changing or breakthrough. I called Gabe, and he suggested seismic, and I like that. Seismic evokes earthquakes and volcanoes, movement of tectonic plates, and sudden, dramatic, and widespread change. I am looking for B2B innovations that may shape the future of distribution.

Your take?

Best practices have their place, but overuse can lead to injuries of the mind—the inability to think on one’s own or perhaps to suffer a crisis of imagination. Do you agree? Please let me know. Please share your feedback, arguments, ideas, examples, and experiences. Comment below or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.