Google Predicted the Election
As I pointed out in my book “Ron Paul Revolution: History in the Making” Google trends is much more accurate measure of the public opinion than limited polls. Since Google searches are what people are really interested in and can’t be swayed by the wording of the questions it’s more truthful. Also Google searches tracks every search so it is not as prone to sample bias.
Google Trends for Obama and McCain
I believe the polling methods used are part of the reason the Republican party failed. And even though the election looks like a big win for Obama and the Democrats I suspect they are missing very important aspects of what happened. Looking at people as groups rather than individuals hides what is really going on. People act as individuals not groups. Individuals have very different needs and desires. The entire election process forces people to pick a watered down version of what they really want.
There are enough people who don’t vote to win an election. That is the unserved long tail majority. In politics it might be possible to ignore the real majority by fighting over pieces of the small pie but businesses can’t do that and succeed. That huge group of potential customers are fuel for disruptive innovation. Any company that reaches that untapped group will jump to the industry leader.
Old methods of polling and marketing research won’t find these hidden non-buyers. Predictive Innovation can show you the untapped markets and how to reach them. As more distributed tools like Google Trends become available it becomes more important to learn how to use the Predictive Innovation Method.
Revealing Emerging Expectations, the most important step of innovation.
Emerging expectations are the things customers will start to demand next. These are features, benefits, and values current products are missing but customers haven’t started demanding yet. When customers realize these desires can be met they will demand it from all future products. It’s essential to have something ready when that happens or you will lose customers.
Working on things customers are already asking for puts you in a race with others. If you try to meet existing desires you are in a race against time. Even if you make it to market first, your advantage will quickly disappear. Others will develop competing products, if they haven’t already been working on them. If you don’t have the next product ready your innovation will be overwhelmed with copycats that make improvements on your design.
Revealing emerging expectations allows you to work two steps ahead so you always have the next great thing perfected and ready to release when the demand is strongest and profits are greatest. Plus if you can accurately predict the future innovations you will be able to overwhelm competitors with improvements faster and with less expense than they can copy you. You get ahead, stay ahead, and increase your lead.
Just because you can make it doesn’t mean customers will want it. To get the best return on investment you need to choose the innovations customers will do anything to get. And even if it’s something customers want it doesn’t mean its right for you to sell. So the innovation system you use must reveal a large selection emerging expectations, preferably all, and provide a way for you to compare and rank them in order of value to you.
Many people can think of pie in the sky “futuristic” products. Science fiction is full of those types of ideas. Some of those sci-fi products actually do become real products and are successful. The question is, when? Absolutely predicting the future is impossible but understanding the land marks to watch for gives you the information to plan your actions. If a new product depends on other developments then you should wait for those to be released before releasing yours. You can have everything ready to go and jump into the market at the exact right time. You maximize profits and minimize risk. A complete innovation system shows you those land marks with enough lead time to act.
Revealing the emerging expectations is what makes the OutCompete Predictive Innovation Method predictive and not just another feel good innovation system. The way it does this is by using certain laws of systems that apply to every system. Understanding that every system must follow certain laws allows you to see which things will become “must have innovations” and the order it will occur.
Innovation Is Predictable
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Yesterday I was told, “Innovation isn’t predictable. If it was predictable then they would already be doing it.” That statement shows why most people can’t innovate. Every assumption was wrong. Innovation is Predictable. Innovation MUST BE Predictable.
Innovation isn’t about new. Its about satisfying peoples unmet desires. Innovation doesn’t have to be new at all. And lots of new things don’t innovate. You must satisfy a desire. That is innovation.
As soon as you realize innovation is the act of satisfying someone’s unmet desire its obviously predictable. You can’t innovate doing the same thing. That doesn’t satisfy an unmet desire. So you automatically know a big don’t list. So you can find the innovation TO DO list.
Unmet desires are easy to find. Just ask, “What could make this better?” You will get a big list of possible improvements. And the designers, engineers and marketers knew a huge list of things they didn’t include in the current product. They chose the current features from a big list of possible features. They didn’t include every feature because some features like price and simplicity were needed. So before they ever made the current product they knew how to innovate it. They had a list of innovations.
So when you realize that Innovation is Predictable your next question is how do I predict the best innovation?
