Market Rebels and Innovation

"Activists who challenge the status quo play a critical but often overlooked role in both promoting and impeding radical business innovation."

-Hayagreeva Rao

A recent report published in the McKinsey Quarterly discussed how "market rebels" have played a role in the creation of many new and innovative product segments or have prevented potential innovations from taking place.

One example is the PC market. All of the technology needed to have a home personal computer was available long before it was marketed to consumers. But hobbyists still had these computers at home, in their garages, that they made themselves with scavenged parts. They were rebelling against the market, creating products for themselves when commercialism had yet to catch up to their needs.

Sometimes overlooking the importance of market rebels in adopting new products can lead to a floundering product. The Segway personal transporter is an amazing device with many potential uses. The developers, however, overlooked the "cultural and social mobilization needed to excite their targeted consumers." Getting regular people to scoot around on strange, moving, pogo-stick like contraptions is no easy task. You need to find and motivate people to be willing to "rebel", look like a dork, but make it cool. This is no easy task. (Believe me, as an engineer I know how hard it is to be simultaneously a huge dork and permacool)

Also mentioned is the idea of "hot topic" and "cool mobilization".

ahhh mention of being "cool" again. Cool is one of those words I've been using since I was a kid, and is still around. I hope it's around forever and my own children don't make fun of me for using it profusely.

Hot causes are those that inspire feelings of pride or anger. How do you make your cause - whether it be getting people to buy smaller batteries or recycling - inspire those feelings?

Cool mobilization activates emotion and engages audiences in new behaviours and experiences that are improvisational and insurgent. So now you have to engage people to travel to the specialty store to buy your tiny batteries since they aren't at Wal-Mart, and spend time each day carefully separating their plastics, glass, aluminum, and paper.

The study is actual very very interesting and I highly suggest that you have a read if you're interested in innovation. This is the really cool and special kind of innovation, that creates entirely new norms within society. It is available on the McKinsey website, but you do have to sign up for a membership (which is free). I recommend it wholeheartedly!

Click here to get to the McKinsey site.

Hayagreeva Rao. "Market Rebels and Radical Innovation." The McKinsey Quarterly. January 2009.