How to storm the norm

Market norms are stormed either by irreverent new entrants or by gutsy incumbents who have seen an opportunity they can’t unsee. These storms tend to leave markets far more vibrant than they find them. What does it take to storm a norm by design, and at will?

The 20 brands featured in Storm the Norm belong to diverse industries that have their own unique challenges. Yet, they demonstrate an interesting ability that’s common to all of them — the ability to shake up and transform stale, stagnant markets into fresh, vibrant ones.

This unique collection of stories proves beyond any doubt that market storms aren’t purely accidental. There is a method to the magic, and they can be made to happen by design.

The method to the magic: It all begins with staleness. A market that has stagnated is ripe for a storm. These markets don’t necessarily have a felt need; just simmering, often indiscernible, tension of discontent below the surface.

Stale norm: Stale markets have norms that haven’t changed for years, leading to commoditised offerings, mindless ritualised operations and wafer-thin margins. The market generates very little revenue and hardly any profits. The players seem to have grudgingly accepted it and become resigned to their fate. Scarcity makes everyone risk-averse and unimaginative.

Every entity adapts itself to survive in the resigned-to-fate industry, until a stormer arrives.

Spot the hidden suboptimal: For the stormer, it’s not about finding new answers to old questions but really about discovering new questions. Questions that no one is asking. Questions that challenge not just the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ of the industry but also the core ‘whys’ of it.

Once the critical question is discovered, the answer is often staring at you. The disproportionate impact the future possibilities could create fascinates the stormer. The present seems dismally suboptimal in comparison. The realisation is breathtakingly obvious in hindsight and is so surprisingly powerful in its promise that once the stormer sees it, he can’t unsee it.

Conceive and iterate the breakthrough to elegance: The stormer conceives a breakthrough — a new product, process or business model. It’s so compelling for him that he can’t wait to build the first prototype, plays with it in the market and rapidly goes through multiple iterations to evolve it. Unlike the usual belief, generating an idea isn’t an event but a process that involves multiple iterations.

Rapid iterations lead to discarding many concepts before hitting the most powerful one. One that is elegantly simple, with the kind of simplicity that is found only on the other side of complexity.

Pace to critical mass: To become a true game-changer, the new concept must trigger a storm and for that, it must hit the critical mass at a certain pace. Any slower, and the concept could join the large number of ‘great ideas’ that almost made it.

Concepts that have evolved rapidly through iterations in live markets are not just accepted but lapped up by the market that is surprised by their elegance. This leads to their hitting the critical mass at vigorous pace. The large-scale impact of newly unlocked value begins to show. Synergistic economies of scale and scope get triggered; and the bandwagon effect follows.

Fresh norm: And before anyone realises, the new concept has become the new norm and the lazy, cynical incumbents are anxiously playing catch-up.

It doesn’t end here. It’s a cycle. The fresh norm is after all a norm. And norms are usually the lull before the next storm arrives.

The next stormer will spot the suboptimal in it and pursue unlocking of newer surplus that reinvigorates the market.

Storm The Norm is a business book authored by Anisha Motwani with a unique innovation framework by Ranjan Malik. It contains case studies of brands that wrote or rewrote the norms of their respective industries. In a special series for cat.a.lyst, the authors will interview these brand custodians every fortnight.

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