Crossbreeding the Winners

Part 3 of 3: Economic Gardening

Parts 1 and 2 of this series addressed the Edge of Chaos and finding your Goldilocks Zone. Now let's talk about method of Crossbreeding the Winners.

As I have discussed previously, we view businesses as more akin to a biological entity than a mechanical entity. Businesses do not exist in a vacuum and their success, or failure, is influenced by the environment around them. In order to thrive as a business, it is important to innovate. The most powerful innovations are ones that live at the edge of chaos. This is where the conditions and circumstances overlap that enable the creation of a new business offering that is difficult for others to replicate.

One method I presented was taking input from your subject matter experts or customers and finding new opportunities. The other proven method is called crossbreeding the winners. (Think livestock or Botany where this happens all the time to improve upon already superior traits.)

This approach is more powerful than the prior, as you are not limited to crossbreeding your own products and services. Rather you can pull for a nearly unlimited list of ideas and combine them in new ways that create offerings your business as the resources and capabilities to deliver. We do this regularly in our business and it has given rise to some of our most successful solutions. Here is how to get after it.

Build the List

Brainstorm a list of winning products and services. I recommend looking both within and outside of your industry for ideas on highly successful solutions to add to your list. Do not slow down your process worrying about organizing or sorting this list. In fact, capturing the ideas in a random order or grouping will support this process. There really is no way to go wrong in this phase, the more ideas the better.

Prepare for genetic modification

Break your list into two or three groups. Random selection is the preferred method, at least for your first attempt. You may find a grouping strategy you prefer after completing the process a few times. Invite a few team members to join you in this part of the process. Provide everyone a copy of the same information. Working independently, each person should select one item from each group and work on one hybrid at a time.

For example, let’s say we want to combine jalapeno poppers, hot sauce of the month club, and virtual reality. All three are successful business offerings, yet they are unrelated as products. The key is not to focus on combining the literal products, but rather bringing together the features and benefits that made them successful and then create a new offering based on those design goals. Following our example, you would create a chart something like this:

 Breeding New Winners

The next step is to combine the features and use them as a guide to create a new idea. It is not mandatory to use all the features and creativity is strongly encouraged. In our example, we will use the following features:

• Complex flavor experience
• Feeling of membership
• Convenient delivery
• Immersive
• New and impressive
• Flexible content

Now each person should brainstorm a list of new products or services that would have these features.

Let’s imagine our company provides door delivery of common grocery store items. Using this list, I might create a recipe of the month club that uses exotic spices. Each month we would send our customers a new recipe card and sample packs of the unique spices and a link to a pre-populated shopping cart containing the rest of the recipe ingredients.

This offering would encourage them to continue to use our grocery delivery service, generate additional revenue from the recipe membership, and introduce them to new unique spice products they might not otherwise purchase. This is just one of many new ideas that could be generated with the same list of features.

Continue this process independently until each person has 3 to 5 new ideas. Then each person should present their ideas to the group, take feedback and update their idea to incorporate others' ideas. Have each person pick one they like the most. Using this one idea each, create a short sales pitch, ad, or product sheet. Present and review the final selections with the team.

Prioritizing and Organizing the Chaos

Not all ideas will be good enough to see the light of day. In some cases, you may decide to take parts or two or more ideas and recombine them into a final solution. The last step is to prioritize and filter the list to get to 1 to 3 attainable products your company could add to their offerings.

I prefer to start by evaluating the Degree of Difficulty for each idea, then take the top 3 on for further consideration. You could also add in a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). If you have the resources available, you may even consider doing focus groups or public surveys to help whittle down the list.

The two most critical factors are to ensure that you have an idea the market will want to buy and that your company has the resources and capabilities to produce this new product or deliver this new service.

I always recommend doing a pilot release of any new offering. Use feedback from pilot customers to refine and improve the offering before a full scale release. The frequency at which you create new offerings depends on your business model and the markets capacity to consume new offerings.

Do Not Be Afraid to be Bold

Gather data and adjust your approach and frequency over time. Your new ideas are based on winning features that have been proven in the market.

If you continue to do the same things, you may not continue to get the same results - you may get left behind. Entrepreneurs venture to build something that others have not or cannot. It is this type of entrepreneur that needs to find the Edge of Chaos and be very comfortable operating there. This is disruption.

Economic Gardening is an entrepreneurial alternative to traditional economic development strategies. Michael Polzin is a Strategic Research Team (SRT) Team Leader through the National Center for Economic Gardening: https://www.nationalcentereg.org/

Read all of my LinkedIn Articles, blog posts, and access other helpful resources at Technology Insights. I post new LinkedIn Articles weekly and blog posts twice a month.

If there is a topic you are interested in learning more about, please let me know on my blog page.