By , Richard Koch
Published September 20, 2016
The following excerpt is from Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood’s book Simplify. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
Successful simplifiers always come up with a new key, or keys, to unlock and transform a market. These keys are almost never based on market research. Instead, they come from insight -- often a sudden epiphany or a bolt from the blue that nearly always arrives away from the office. But one of our aims is to simplify and systematize insight. We believe that by studying previous conceptual breakthroughs, it’s possible to emulate them and adapt them for a new context.
A striking finding of our research is that certain patterns keep recurring in the most successful simplification stories. Though there might be one initial key that unlocks the imagination -- IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad chopping off the legs of a table to stuff it into his car boot; the McDonald brothers applying the industrial assembly-line process to their burger restaurant -- usually that key leads to another, then a third, and a fourth. So there's usually a cluster of keys.
Related: The Attitude Test: How to Determine If You Should Simplify Your Business
Another finding is that the keys for the two main types of simplifying are different, yet similar within each type. When you think about it, this isn’t surprising. Just as there are said to be only seven basic plots for a successful novel, there are only a handful of ways to achieve the objective of price-simplifying, and a different handful of ways to meet the contrasting aims of proposition-simplifiers.
The sole objective of price-simplifiers is to cut costs by at least half. Here are the main keys successful businesses have used to achieve this:
The aim of the proposition-simplifier is to make the product or service a joy to use by increasing its ease of use, usefulness and art. Here are examples of the proposition-simplifying keys:
Related: The Gap Test: How to Determine If You Should Simplify Your Business
If you can see a key in your business, does it belong to price- or proposition-simplifying? That will give you at least a clue as to the better strategy for you.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/the-keys-test-how-to-determine-if-you-should-simplify-your-new-business