Dreaming of dish soap and a European vacation

When we do something, we’re also choosing NOT to do something else. There are always trade-offs. The question is at what *level* we make those trade-offs.

But those are trade-offs at the solution level: they’re options to solve the same problem. “To achieve the goal of clean dishes, I have a certain set of options. The pros and cons of each option are: X, Y”

But since that’s down in the solution stage, you’ve already made a chain of decisions or actions to get there.

As innovators, it’s on us to decide the scope of the world we play in. Are we down at the solutions stage, with a clear problem to solve?

Or do we zoom up a level?

Over my career, I’ve moved from Development (tell me the thing to build) to UX & Product (here’s the thing to build) to Innovation Strategy (how can we achieve certain objectives? Should we build a thing?).

Trade-offs can come way before someone ever gets down to the decision between dish soap brands, and if we’re only focusing on those who’re in the aisle choosing between pretty plastic bottles, we’re potentially missing out on insights from a huge number of potential customers.

But how far up the chain do decisions go? Where should we focus our efforts for the biggest impact?

If you reverse far enough, you get up to a big bucket of resources. It may be money, it may be time, it may be marbles (the most important currency of my childhood). At a high enough level, we do come up with natural limits.

At the same womens’ event I mentioned above, I ended up chatting with a financial advisor. She was telling me that she has a dramatically different approach than most planners here in the US.

In the US, Americans save ‘for college’ ‘for a car’ ‘for a home’ — we are goal-oriented and divide up our resources accordingly. In Europe, people save ‘for a future opportunity’. The example given was ‘in case a friend asks me to go on a trip next year’.

In America, we aim for gain. In Europe, it was to prevent future loss or regret.

Provided it’s true, isn’t that an interesting perspective??

We all have limits and we decide how to save or spend our resources. It’s often difficult for people to understand how giving up a latte a day truly translates into a car (freedom) in the future. Yes, ultimately those same resources can fall into one bucket or another, but our brains don’t see those as transferable currencies.

This is a huge struggle right now; how do we surface these trade-offs. Are they measurable? Are they observable? Can we design experiments that test them?

I’m not going to offer any sort of solution, rather just call out the chain of intertwined links: the customer, the problem, the circumstances, cultural norms, experience, resources, biases.

This stuff isn’t easy. Lots of people are trying their best to figure it out.

My last question is: are we focusing on the trade-offs of our own approaches at the right level? Are we fighting at a solution-level and ignoring the greater opportunity outside our own sphere?

Andrea Hill is the principal consultant at Frameplay. Frameplay is an innovation consultancy that helps companies become more customer-focused and thrive in a rapidly changing world. We do this by providing best practices, actionable insights and training without the price tag of those bigger ‘digital transformation’ consulting firms. Learn more at frameplay.co

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