How To Breed An Innovative Business Idea — #23 of 31 Proven Skills [Research]

John Purdie-Smith
4 min readFeb 21, 2023
— — — Integrating Initiating Resources and Responding Resources Guarantees an Innovative Result — — — With thanks for the photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Skill #23: Integrate Resources to Compel the Desired People Result

Compelling people to behave in some desired manner can be difficult and is potentially offensive if they are uninterested or are opposed to such behavior. The innovative way to tackle this challenge is to blend what you want them to do with what those people are predisposed to do anyway. Their activity then simultaneously achieves your goal

Persuading people to buy your goods or services is a tough enough challenge but it is much tougher when you want their money and you are promising nothing tangible in return. This is the world most charities and humanitarian organizations inhabit. Their enduring challenge is getting people to ‘take their money out of their pockets’ when nothing of equivalent commercial value is on offer.

This is a classic situation in which Skill #23: Integrate Resources to Compel the Desired People Result provides an answer. Its basic thrust is that you locate a people's behavior that overlaps with what you want. In the case of charities, they need to find people who are already taking their money out of their pockets and integrate with that activity. A humanitarian aid organization obtains permission to place facilities for collecting donations at security checkpoints. They recognize that at such locations, travelers typically need to remove items such as money from their pockets prior to screening and retrieve it later. At that point, for some people, placing money in a donations bin can appeal as much as re-pocketing their money. By integrating with a specific behavior of people in transit, the charity secures additional donations income.

As this illustration demonstrates, Skill #23 is a powerful innovative strategy. It is the gold standard of Transition Resources because it compels the desired outcome. It guarantees that the targeted people group will behave in the manner intended by the innovative initiative. It is integrated with the intended audience whose behavior is equivalent to the realization of your goal.

Other Examples of Integrating to Get People to Respond*

Consider a common situation in many organizations serving customers where the process of dealing with complaints from them is extremely cumbersome. This not only upsets and loses customers but is also very stressful for those employees on the end of such complaints who become the meat in the sandwich between aggravated clients and an unwieldy complaints resolution regime. A large supplier of home improvement products, after ascertaining the cost of settling most legitimate complaints authorizes anyone in the organization dealing with a customer to settle any complaint immediately to a maximum cost of $500 if they consider it justified. This integrating of complaint decision-making with employee roles, more specifically with the disposition of most people to look after others’ affairs more responsibly than their own, improves customer service. The employees concerned respond to such trust by deciding on complaints promptly and with great maturity.

A tricky judgment call that often arises for any enterprise designing a promotional offer is pitching it at the right level. If it is too attractive, the larger-than-expected response can end up costing more than the promotion will generate in extra revenue. Or, peremptorily closing an unexpectedly ‘successful’ campaign early could be a PR disaster. The understandable caution can result in a needlessly weak marketing initiative. A ring-manufacturing jeweler gets around this difficulty when it offers the guarantee of a perfect ring fit or replacement free of charge. It simply limits the promotion to the first 1000 people to purchase from a specified date. The jeweler then has the option to justifiably terminate any time after that. The decision safely makes itself when the jeweler integrates the conditions of the offer with the self-regulating behavior of buyers.

The most desirable employment of Transition Resources occurs where the people who are targeted are not only aware of an Initiating Resource but are compelled to behave in a specified manner. This occurs when an Initiating Resource is effectively integrated with a Responding Resource. This means that when people behave in their normal manner, they simultaneously deliver the result sought by the initiative being mounted. This combination delivers a very satisfying innovative outcome.

Takeaway

*Thousands of categorized innovative business ideas can be found at Sebir.com

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John Purdie-Smith

Creator of Sebir.com — a large vault of curated ideas that have innovatively solved typical business problems