Innovation in the Age of Uncertainty

We have a simple, but ambitious motto at CivicScience: “Everything affects everything, and everything is constantly changing. So, we study everything constantly.” It’s a core principle in every aspect of our company, from the thousands of survey questions we ask every day, to the products and services we deliver, to the way we manage our internal operations.

This principle was never more critical than in the early days of the pandemic when – literally – everything changed. Consumer attitudes and behaviors shifted on a dime, then shifted again. The way people worked was altered forever. The aftershocks are still rippling, as we wade through minute-by-minute undulations of economic and cultural chaos.

Innovation only matters when it solves real problems. And, far too often, business leaders don’t have a full inventory of the problems (or opportunities) they face – or they learn about them too late. Consumer insights teams are organized to be myopic, studying narrow frames of products, categories, and functions. They entrench tools and metrics in their business to measure the same thing repeatedly. They run huge studies that take weeks or months to complete, yielding insights that are outdated before the first report lands on the CEO’s desk.

We have another motto at our company (we’re big on mottos): “Love problems.” It sounds counterintuitive. Solutions are fun and sexy. People get pats on the back when they find them. Discovering problems and bringing them to light, however, is uncomfortable, scary even. I’ll fully admit, as a leader in our business, learning about new problems from my team isn’t fun.

But we celebrate it.

Because problems are the embryo of innovation. Without constantly – and honestly – taking stock of everything around your customer, your market, and your business, innovation dies before it starts.

One final CivicScience motto: “’That’s the way we’ve always done it’ is never the right answer to any question.” Continuity is comfortable. People seldom lose their jobs for maintaining the status quo. Replacing one vendor with another, simply because they’re incrementally better or less expensive is not innovation.

Find partners who challenge everything you think you know and help you level up. Find partners who bring new problems – the bigger the better – to your doorstep. Then, you can be the hero for finding the solution.

You can be the innovator.