How do you shift to an interaction field model?

Welcome back to Exponential Growth, where I’ll share my insights and ideas on brand strategy, platform business, new technology, innovation, and staying relevant in a digital world. For more information, check out my website.

My hope is that, by now, you have become intrigued enough by the concept of the interaction field that you are entertaining the thought that it might be a good model for your company. So how exactly do you move in that direction?

Let me start by saying this:

The foundation for an interaction field already exists

In a world where everything connects, the basis for an interaction field is there because nothing operates in isolation. For most businesses, it will only be necessary to discover the interaction field in which the company already functions, and then to expand its presence therein. The interaction field may include the entirety of your organization or discrete operations within it, and the challenge to your business could be deciding which interaction field is most advantageous to pursue.

Let’s look at Mars, Incorporated

Mars is known worldwide for its ubiquitous candies—M&M’s, Snickers, Twix (all billion-dollar brands)—but its largest business is, in fact, Mars Petcare. It owns over fifty businesses and several billion-dollar brands, including Pedigree, Royal Canin, and Whiskas. The company has transitioned from a standard supply-chain manufacturer and distributor of consumer packaged goods (CPG) to a leader in the pet-care industry.?

The CPG business is famously stagnant. It is based on traditional supply-chain economics and asset-heavy business models. Product innovation, customization, and differentiation can only carry a business so far, and the industry ultimately provides little room for growth. It is easy—far too easy—for companies in this model to focus on what they see as their end product.?

But in order to build a successful interaction field business, whatever it is your company creates—candy, pet food, high-performance cameras, toys, and more—

The product cannot be seen as the finished product.

Between 2016 and 2018, Mars Petcare—a company with $17 billion in annual revenue—spent roughly $14 billion on acquisitions and initiatives to develop the petcare interaction field. Its mission: to create “a better world for pets.”

Mars Petcare acquired enough veterinary hospitals to become the world’s largest employer of veterinarians, treating over ten million pets a year, and established a Connected Solutions division, a concentrated effort to create and develop the pet-care interaction field. Connected Solutions was established with two priorities: to connect with its customers (both pets and pet owners) and to solve pain points in their lives.

Mars Petcare invested in direct relationships with their customers and professionals within the pet-care industry, through which the company became more familiar with the specific needs, frictions, and efficiencies within the industry, and thus became further equipped to facilitate and enhance interactions therein.

By increasing the interactions within this field, the company gained clearer insight into where it could direct its resources to continually advance its goal: creating a better world for pets.

There are opportunities to create an interaction field everywhere.

The mindset behind Mars Petcare looks to the growth of the entire field, not just of Mars Petcare, as a measure of its achievement. The end result of production and manufacturing is merely the foundation for the interaction field.?

The interaction field company does not think about what their product is, but why it is.

Want to learn more?

Check out my book, The Interaction Field: The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society.

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