By Melina Moleskis
In 2013 Google launched Google Glass, an innovative wearable device that resembled a pair of eyeglasses. Built on the latest augmented reality technology, it displayed information directly in the user’s field of vision. Consumers immediately voiced their concerns. The sight of someone wearing the glasses made some people feel uncomfortable, as if their privacy was being violated. Others felt wearing a smart phone on their face made them look funny. Ultimately, the negative perceptions outweighed the positive and the tech giant ceased all work on the Glass project in 2015.
Successful innovation requires far more than a market gap, a visionary, funding, and new technology. Innovation is a behavioral process from the go to the finish. It relies on the decision-making process and behaviors of both the innovators who produce it and the consumers who adopt it, as well as the surrounding support system. Behavioral science, the science of how we make decisions, has invaluable practical insights for innovation on all fronts.
Inside the Consumer’s Brain
Many brilliant innovations stay on the shelf. Like Google Glass, they may be “too disruptive” and require people to change their habits too much too fast, without offering adequate assistance and immediate benefits. They ignore cognitive effort, emotional associations, social and cultural factors, and perceptions of legitimacy. They may be embraced by consumer research, but when it comes to actual adoption, the intention-action gap persists because of too much friction.
To figure out the problem, innovators often throw tons of money at consumer research but to no avail. Why is that? Anthropologist Margaret Mead acutely observed that “What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.” In the case of innovation, this means that asking consumers directly about innovative products (or any products) is not such a good idea. People can post-rationalize their behavior, meaning that they invent explanations after the fact to justify their actions— and these explanations may not be accurate. Moreover, people can rarely imagine the form of the solution they are looking for, unless they are truly experts.
What can innovators do then to increase the chances of adoption? They can observe how people make decisions in a specific context and apply behavioral techniques to analyze and enhance the journey. For instance, behavioral maps can be used to examine the steps a person needs to take to complete a target behavior, like purchasing a Google Glass. What are the different influences that affect their decision to buy or not to buy? What are the barriers to adoption (logistical, cognitive, psychological, social, cultural) and how can they be removed or reduced? What benefits can be amplified or inserted in the journey? How can innovators help people form new habits that are beneficial to them?
And then, having identified some actions to reduce barriers and amplify benefits, it’s time to test the new proposition before going full-scale. Why test? Because when a situation is new, as is the case with innovation, intuition about what will work for customers cannot be relied upon. That is because the decision-maker has not had enough opportunities to practice their judgment while getting reliable feedback – it’s all too new.
Inside the Innovator’s Brain
Besides intuition, there are many other factors that can affect the innovation process at critical junctures, including the decision of whether or not to pivot to a new strategy or methodology to increase chances of success for the set goal.
For instance, survivorship bias can cause innovators to overly focus on a successful subgroup that is more visible than the failed subgroup, such as the startups that became successful as the result of a pivot. Innovators may also develop a personal attachment, duly named ‘psychological ownership’, to their product or strategy because of all the investment they have put in so far, causing them to hang on to sunk costs and be unwilling to adjust their strategy despite the evidence. In addition, confirmation bias can lead decision-makers to selectively focus on information and feedback that supports their own beliefs and completely ignore feedback that suggests otherwise. There is also an overconfidence trap that accompanies innovation and can manifest when making estimates and forecasts. Innovators, may underestimate the high end or overestimate the low end of a crucial variable, leading them to miss opportunities or expose themselves to far greater risk than they realize. Overconfidence can also give rise to the planning fallacy, causing them to underestimate the length of time it will take them to complete a task.
While awareness of such biases is the first step, it alone is not enough. To have a chance of overcoming these cognitive traps, innovators are advised to systematize their decision-making in ways that catch and prevent such pitfalls. For example, checking all evidence with equal rigor, devoting time to building counter-arguments, seeking advice from others without asking leading questions, engaging in meaningful brainstorming, assigning someone the role of playing devil’s advocate and conducting pre-mortems.
The Administrator’s Perspective
While innovators can gain control over some of the cognitive traps in decision-making by systematizing their process, other frictions remain outside their control. In particular, innovators are often faced with administrative processes and requirements when starting, operating, and growing a venture. Real or perceived regulatory complexity may prevent them from undertaking these tasks, despite being initially motivated to complete them. Applications for new business registrations, grants, and training courses that are long, complex, and require information that is not readily at hand also discourage participation. Gender bias and implicit bias based on stereotypes and attitudes pose additional barriers for underrepresented groups when applying for business finance, as well as throughout the process.
As such, administrators and regulators in many countries around the world, such as Bangladesh, the UK and Australia have started to employ a behavioral science lens to reduce friction and simplify their processes in order to increase completion. For example, by designing better government forms, providing clear instructions and removing unnecessary steps. In addition, understanding target groups and their main barriers to innovation can help to develop customized materials and incorporate personalization into communications.
Takeaways: The Behavioral Science of Innovation
The greatest innovation in the world will stay on the shelf unless it’s perceived as easy to adopt, attractive, timely and social. Behavioral science offers a methodology to understand the impact that context and cues have on people’s decision-making and to adjust barriers and benefits accordingly, to achieve completion and adoption. Behavioral science can also enhance the decision-making process of the innovators, by helping them systematize decisions and avoid the most common thinking perils. Last but not least, behavioral science is a tool in the administrators’ arsenal for helping boost innovation efforts across the board, from large multinationals to young, female entrepreneurs.
This article was edited by Lachezar Ivanov.
