Dealing with the trifecta of cultural shifts, global conflict and economic turbulence is becoming as hard to manage as it is essential. As the cost of living continues to bite, consumers are craving more certainty, mood-boosting moments of respite, and relationships based on solidarity not just empathy.

Chief executives know this. Nearly half ( 42%) say their company won’t survive the next decade without reinvention (up from 39% in 2023, according to PwC). But instead of investing, McKinsey’s 2024 global survey found that 60% were freezing or cutting innovation spend. Companies hoping to do more with less is dampening Britain’s innovation prowess.

A shopping list for smarter innovation

How do you adopt a culture of reinvention that is smart, but also effective? 

I love an analogy, particularly one that forces us to step outside our category lane, so let’s take a trip to the kitchen, hotbed of creativity, not to mention a few broken eggs. 

With limited ingredients, the best chefs improvise with what’s on their bench, to serve up new delights for their guests. Reinventing a business is, in some ways, no different. Yet we tend to swim in a limited pool of data and echo-chambers. Large language models (LLMs) offer seductive instantaneous gratification but amplify existing biases.

Businesses need a better way to rethink how they keep their products, services and experiences relevant in a changing world. It needs to be grounded in real-world insight beyond the echo-chambers of a category and business. An outside-in process, that starts with the ‘edges’ of a category, will challenge the ‘usual suspects’ as well as the internal assumptions of what the business usually does.  

Trained not just to analyse, but to reframe questions, insights professionals are adept at toggling between big picture and details. On our best day we’re well placed to avoid the ‘black hat’ thinking that bedevils innovation processes, to help businesses glimpse new ‘adjacent possibilities’.

To achieve all of this takes courage and requires space for curiosity and creativity.

Drones hitting airports in the UAE is another shock to a travel system that only recently endured, and recovered from, Covid-19. But these are shocks that we can anticipate to innovate faster. With 68% of travellers saying the ongoing conflict has impacted their travel plans, according to recent research by Escalent, travel companies must embrace and adapt at speed.

At the same time, consumers are becoming more selective about where and why they travel, and looking for experiences rather than destinations that tap into their health and wellbeing goals. As a result, slow and local travel are moving more mainstream.

Such diverse insights could be a boon for rail travel for example, which is forecast to be the fastest-growing travel category, with 12.7% estimated growth from 2024 to 2029 (Escalent Leisure Travel Market forecast).

Despite news of rail closures and travel disruption hitting the headlines in Britain, in Europe, rail operators are busy reviving overnight sleeper routes, app-based dynamic ticketing and high-capacity sustainable travel services. Leading operators are expanding cross-border networks with community-funded business models and affordable, all-private room cabin concepts to rival short-haul flights.

Add some spice by co-creating with unexpected groups

Involving cross-functional teams early helps avoid ‘innovation rejection’ later.

It’s equally important to avoid speaking to just the ‘usual suspects’ by working with customers on the edge of ‘normative’ culture (whose lived experiences reveal our blind spots). Consider also more diverse internal teams, experts in adjacent fields (such as neuro-aesthetics researchers), as well as the brand rejecters who are all too often weeded out of research briefs.

By moving beyond ‘our’ customer and ‘our’ market, we are better equipped to deal with emerging behaviours and unmet needs. 

Start with the right problem

Too often companies don’t focus innovation on a customer problem that needs to be solved.

When Converse set out to find a fresh take on its timeless Chuck Taylor All Star high-top, largely unchanged since 1917, listening harder to fans and wearers highlighted a gap – a product for when wet weather is not Chuck Taylor’s friend. The result was the new weatherproof Chuck II. First year retail sales were 259% above the forecasted seven million pairs, making the trainer the most successful new product in Converse’s 100-year history. 

Moving innovation from the lab into the ‘kitchen’ boosts our chances of real-world success. It moves us from a focus on today’s needs, to a greater openness to societal, economic and technological changes, building resilience and relevance. As insight professionals often dazzled by ‘shiny object syndrome’, let’s not forget our critical role as chefs, and keep blending and tasting as we go. 

Dr Nick Coates is global director of strategy and innovation at C Space