The Innovator's Spirit by Chuck Swoboda

Author:Chuck Swoboda
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781732439177
Publisher: Fast Company Press
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

OPENING UP NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Finding ways to innovate and solve problems no one else is tackling can open all kinds of new opportunities, what you might call “blue oceans.” That’s a term coined by business professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their best-selling book Blue Ocean Strategy. Kim and Mauborgne write about how many companies operate in “red oceans,” where they face stiff competition, rather than finding ways to move into competition-free “blue oceans.” And to do that, they argue, companies need to think beyond making incremental improvements to the existing status quo and do something innovative instead. “Our studies revealed that [innovation] is about redefining the problem an industry focuses on rather than finding solutions to existing problems,” they write.

One great example of a business that found a blue ocean is the Canadian-based performance troupe Cirque du Soleil. If you’ve never been to one of their performances, you’re missing out. It’s a true spectacle that mixes incredibly athletic aerial stunts—people literally fly through the air—with storylines and even some comedy. Cirque du Soleil created “a new form of entertainment that offers the fun and thrill of the circus with the intellectual sophistication of the theater.”6 It’s something utterly unique—something I didn’t fully appreciate until I had a chance to visit their company headquarters in Montreal, Canada, several years ago. The place mixed a giant gymnasium where performers practiced breathtaking new acts with an amazing costume design factory where they were inventing new kinds of costumes that could keep up with the acts of the performers.

At last official count, Cirque du Soleil shows have been seen by more than 150 million people in some three hundred cities around the world. It has become a cultural phenomenon at a time when attendance at more traditional circuses has fallen off dramatically. In fact, attendance became so bad at the iconic Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—formerly known as “the Greatest Show on Earth”—that it was forced to shut down after 146 years, with its last live performance coming in 2017.7 What did Cirque du Soleil realize that the traditional circus folks missed? They didn’t rely on what customers were asking for, and instead they solved an entertainment problem.

Consider what it might have been like in 1984 if you were the founders of Cirque du Soleil. Basically, you have come up with a new invention—a combination of high-flying circus acts mixed with theater. How do you think that would have market-tested—especially at a time when competition for people’s entertainment dollars had become increasingly fierce? Would theatergoers have suggested adding circus acts? And what if you asked kids—the customers who normally loved the circus—what they wanted? Do you think they would have said they wished the circus were more artsy and theatrical? No chance. There was no basis for audiences to even imagine this concept was possible.

What’s interesting is that around the time that Cirque du Soleil made its debut, traditional circuses were asking their customers what they wanted. And they gave them more of what they asked for.

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