Innovation Does Not Mean Inventing a Lawn Vacuum

               Insurance innovation brought the Insurance Elephant out of the jungle, and his posse of Six Blind Men. All cool dudes but just a little narrow focused on their respective understanding of what insurance is- the insurance customer. Many discussions later about the six (and many others) who work to know what insurance is and work to innovate/disrupt/improve, and we still have room to understand what customers have known for decades for some coverage lines, and centuries for others.

               Ah, but what has that got to do with lawn vacuuming, one might ask? Nothing and everything regarding innovation. What struck the Beast’s attention today was how working on the back yard removing leaves was a little microcosm of an innovation’s results- hard work by an innovator, idea roll-out, successful use by a few customers but miserable acceptance by the market as a whole.

               Here’s the deal- as anyone who has leaf bearing trees knows, come Fall and those leaves come tumbling down. Rake ‘em, burn ‘em, leave ‘em, or blow them- they’ve got to go. It’s an issue that dates since suburbia decided lawns should be in order- weeds out, and leaves out. A landscaping pain point- but how to do it? Kids don’t want to help, it can be hired out but that is a cost, homeowners do it but that’s a time problem (and motivation problem), the neighbor’s kid wants to but doesn’t. Pain.

               Along comes Craftsman- sees the pain, figures they are equipment experts, comes up with an innovative plan- the lawn vacuum. Suck ‘em up, shred ‘em, and they can be disposed of:

Looks familiar, costs about the same as a lawn mower, and takes this situation:

And turns it into this compact byproduct:

in a few minutes and a few back and forths. Cool, useful, efficient. 

Or not, because the Beast figures most of you reading this article have never heard of or seen a lawn vacuum. It’s innovative- efficient, reduces the volume of leaves to less than a tenth, makes the results transportable, easy to dump, easy to handle. And a lot less time.

               Why then did this innovation not become the ubiquitous yard tool? One could suggest reasons:

?        It’s just another tool

?       One only uses it for a few weeks in one season

?       You still need something to haul the leaves in

?       Power tools are scary

?        Folks like to force their kids to rake

It’s certain there are many reasons the item failed to become the next leaf blower, but ask Craftsman- they probably don’t know, and at this point don’t care (Sears has other problems). 

They probably don’t know because the customers didn’t lead the innovation. It’s a great help for the Elephant’s household- does the work of hours in one hour. But the Beast is a little handy (trunky?), and also has kids who can team up with him. And a shed in which it can be stored. And an acceptance that time is money where it comes to leaves. But for most, it was and is a mystery item.

The mistake is the innovation did not start with the customer first, it surely was a designer’s idea, a marketer’s dream, and a manufacturing scheduler’s solution for some production slack time. All good things but not for the customers’ needs.

The point is- the Elephant likes the innovation but is not the average target market. No one asked the Beast but he could see the utility. The balance of the potential paying customers said ‘meh’, and spent their dough (eventually) on leaf blowers, landscaping companies or simply left the leaves for the kids to handle. The innovation didn’t even get vetted because the potential end user was left out.

So think about your innovation, your cleaver idea, your world-changing concept. Is it a lawn vacuum or a win for the market? You’ll know when you ask the customers- potential or actual.

We don't need a lawn vacuum, but there are many innovations that would be cool, if they were available. So-

#innovatefromthecustomerbackwards