A new model and method for innovation consulting
SITUATION
In today's sped-up, ever-changing world, companies scramble to show growth and relevance. This scramble is well warranted: 50 years ago, the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 firm was around 75 years; today, it’s less than 15, and continuing to decline. A primary reason for this is that many things that used to be abundant for corporations (audiences, resources, time to sell their products) have become scarce, while things that were once scarce (brands, channels, specialists) are now abundant. This was reflected when Bain & Co. reported that 80 percent of CEOs believe their business is differentiated but only 8 percent of customers agree with them. In short, the world has become increasingly complex, customer attention is at best limited, and channels for distribution have multiplied to the point at which it is almost impossible to be everywhere your potential customer may be. To win in this world and minimize the gap between perceived and actual differentiation, the C-suite have to begin doing their story—not just telling it. They have to create experiences that utilize the medium of people by allowing them to participate in the brand and advocate on behalf of the company.
To build the sort of experiences that consumers are looking for, companies are having to go outside their walls and create teams tailored to the consumers' needs. This is because the required resources for a wide variety of experiences are unlikely to be in-house, and because, in today's economy, the majority of top talent reside in small elite teams outside of major corporations, working across many different companies and acting as hired guns that can draw on vast experiences while maintaining agile execution.
We believed there was a way to help companies live out their stories through actions and, at the same time, create a new consulting model that leverages a network of elite teams to build those actions. After all, to quote Ben Horowitz, "a company without a story is a company without a strategy." We were looking to bring those stories to life.
STRATEGY
Our solution was to create a business that helps companies become Storydoers. Co:collective was founded on the principle of helping companies grow by inventing and reinventing products, business, and services on behalf of our clients. We would do this by creating a process and set of tools that would aid us in understanding the true need and narrative of the company. Pulling from design thinking and business consulting practices, we would spent about 8 weeks researching the situation and getting buy-in around the insights we found and the story we created. With the story agreed upon, we would spend the next 8 weeks developing concepts and prototypes that would carry the story out in the world. We dubbed this new process Storydoing. Through Storydoing we were creating products that had marketing potential and the potential for viral adoption built into the experience, rather than bolting it on in the end. This is critical as, like Jeff Bezos, we believe that "advertising is the price you pay for unremarkable product or services," and that through story-led innovation we would create actions that market themselves.
In order to pull Storydoing off, we would need a series of partners to help us execute the experiences we dreamed up for the client. Our partners would become part of a network called Co:conspirators, that could call upon each other depending on the business needs of their clients. Our Co:conspirators relationships had to be more involved and intimate than normal project partners. We would need to consistently trust these partners with fidelity of the final product. We would need to call upon them to be the experts in their fields inn front of our clients. We would need to share information among us that would be sure wouldn't be disclosed to publicly or to third parties. Finally, we would share new business opportunities that would come our way with Co:conspirators who were better equipped to solve the client problem, and asked that Co:conspirators do the same.
With the people, process and platform established we set about working with clients who were ready to change the way they do business and the way their business acts in and for the world.
ACTIONS
01. Create a collaboration platform for Co:conspirators
A network from which partners could be easily leverage one another for new business activities and project expertise.
02. Pioneer a new way of innovating for clients
Created a new process called Storydoing that takes clients from deep interrogative research and immersive strategy sessions to concept design and prototyping of brand actions.
03. analyze and publish the unique abilities of storydoing
Analyzed Storydoing companies vs. storytelling companies to reflect the difference in performance and value the companies bring to their core constituents. With quantitative findings for the Storydoing research publish a book called True Story with Case Studies that speak to Storydoing in depth.
04. Work with a powerful portfolio of companies to establish Storydoing
We have had the pleasure and opportunity of working with many clients across different industries to create Iconic Innovations that move their business forward.
