{"id":204,"date":"2010-03-15T09:18:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T16:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/?p=204"},"modified":"2010-04-05T10:40:57","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T17:40:57","slug":"feature-the-flaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/2010\/03\/feature-the-flaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature the Flaw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Anthony recently wrote a post for the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/anthony\/2010\/02\/featuring_the_flaw.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-TOPICEMAIL-_-FEB_2010-_-MARKETING&amp;referral=00212\" target=\"_blank\">Harvard Business Review<\/a> on disruptive innovation.<\/p>\n<p>Turning a flaw into a feature is a time honored tradition in the software industry. <strong>&#8220;It&#8217;s not a bug, it&#8217;s a feature&#8221;<\/strong> dates back at least to the mid-&#8217;80s. Turning bugs into features is also a critical skill of the would-be disruptive innovator.<\/p>\n<p>The heart of disruptive innovation is the<strong> intentional trade-off<\/strong> \u2014 sacrificing raw performance in the name of simplicity, convenience, or affordability. The trick is <strong>finding the customer who embraces this trade-off<\/strong> because they consider existing solutions to be too expensive or too complicated.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, disruption is almost always a strategic choice. Companies with a would-be disruption on their hands have to carefully consider their target customer.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for example, what would have happened if Procter &amp; Gamble had tried to sell its Swiffer line of quick cleaning products to people obsessed with deep cleaning. Those consumers would have looked at a product designed to clean without sweating as inferior. In fact, Swiffer initially struggled in markets like Italy where consumers considered sweating an integral part of the cleaning process!<\/p>\n<p>Instead, P&amp;G sought customers who embraced simplicity, because often their choice wasn&#8217;t a deep clean or a quick clean, it was a quick clean or no clean at all. The &#8220;flaw&#8221; of light cleaning was a &#8220;feature&#8221; to the simplicity seekers.<\/p>\n<p>Featuring the flaw often requires looking at <strong>markets in new ways<\/strong> and finding seemingly invisible customers. Some simple questions to use to guide thinking include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What are the competitive alternatives to your idea?<\/li>\n<li>Where are you better?<\/li>\n<li>Where are you worse?<\/li>\n<li>Are there people who consider existing alternatives out of reach?<\/li>\n<li>Are there circumstances where using existing alternatives problematic?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The next time someone tells you to a fix a potential flaw in your idea, flip the problem on its head by seeking a customer that would consider the flaw a feature. Does this spark any ideas for your marketing? Is there something about your product or service that you can turn into a great feature?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Anthony recently wrote a post for the Harvard Business Review on disruptive innovation. Turning a flaw into a feature is a time honored tradition in the software industry. &#8220;It&#8217;s not a bug, it&#8217;s a feature&#8221; dates back at least to the mid-&#8217;80s. Turning bugs into features is also a critical skill of the would-be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,33],"tags":[60,9,8,62,34],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buying-behavior","category-marketing-strategy","tag-advertising","tag-consumer-buying-behavior","tag-harvard-business-publishing","tag-marketing-strategy","tag-sales-pitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deansmailing.com\/rationalmarketing\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}