What is “Disruptive Innovation” Supposed to Mean?
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\"RRThe IGD’s recent London conference focused on “disruptive innovation.” The organizers brought together industry heavyweights from both retail and brands; several spoke, and all claimed the new reality of business was a universe of shoppers who expected low prices. Let’s call their view “the problem.”

These speakers were then followed by others, mainly suppliers, who presented various forms of technology ranging from Google Glass to 3D food printers, with much of the application of this so-called disruption really centred on being “new” rather than being beneficial to shoppers. Let’s call their tech toys “the solution.”

The whole thing felt to me like an endorsement of that classic phrase, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Here was a case where the problem was underestimated and the solution overestimated.

Shoppers seek low-price in the absence of additional drivers of value in what they are purchasing. The UK grocery industry isn’t suffering because of a lack of technology; it’s suffering due to a lack of disruptive innovation in the area of “stuff that matters to shoppers that’s different than from what our competitors offer.”

The tradition of much of retail, grocery in particular, is to create stores that are more like warehouses, with very little to inspire shoppers who consistently state their desire to find inspiration when they visit a grocery store. And these are people whose average repertoire includes just four recipes, yet they need to put 21 meals a week on the table. They find even less inspiration online. Grocery retail’s common solution is to streamline operations, strip out value, and claim to pass the savings onto shoppers.

But there’s a greater need that’s being overlooked.

There’s an old saying, “Low prices only rent you customers, not build loyalty.” If I were the CEO of a UK grocery retailer, I’d be asking my team to figure out what it will take beyond price (with its accompanying lousy margins) to earn the hearts and minds of their customers what some refer to as “loyalty beyond reason.”

My plea is to put away the big data, the technology, and the built-in biases that say “But that’s the way we do it” and get back to the basics by asking ourselves if what we offer matters enough to the people we count on to pay our salaries. Knowing what matters to people – truly, deeply matters – isn’t something you find on a spreadsheet and it can’t be spied through a Google Glass. It’s found by thinking like people about real human needs.

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