Strategic Planning Analogy #276: Bias to Stop

THE STORY
Ford invented the minivan, but refused to build them. Why? First, Ford was #1 in the sales of station wagons at that time. Ford feared that the minivan would cannibalize the sales on all those station wagons. Second, the truck division thought it might cannibalize some truck sales, as well.

Ford saw little benefit in spending all the money needed to gear up production for a new vehicle (the minivan) if all it was going to is steal business from their other profitable lines. Therefore, they did not introduce the minivan. It seemed like a wise financial move at the time. Why needlessly spend all that extra capital to get sales you already had?

Of course, when Lee Iacocca left Ford and went to Chrysler, he found himself at a company that was weak in the station wagon and truck businesses. There wasn’t much at Chrysler to be cannibalized by the minivan. Therefore, Chrysler introduced the minivan. It was a huge success, mostly at Ford’s expense.

Ford was correct about one thing. The minivan did make the station wagon obsolete. Ford lost nearly all of its station wagon sales. Too bad Ford did not factor in a competitive introduction of the minivan into their business model. In the end, Ford did not save the expense of introducing a minivan (as they had hoped). They had to do it anyway, as a response to Chrysler. However, because they let Chrysler get a head start, Chrysler got most of the benefit of the minivan.

THE ANALOGY
As this story illustrates, one can create logical arguments to kill a new project, as Ford did with the minivan. One can even back up that argument with solid financials. However, that does not always mean that the new project should be killed.

Logical arguments and financial models can be flawed. A natural bias to kill new initiatives can exist in an organization. This bias can cloud one’s judgment, leading to a flawed analysis.

Due to a bias towards past success, Ford failed to take into account the inevitability that station wagons would eventually become passé. By not proactively planning for their replacement, they allowed Chrysler to replace them.

Businesses need to be aware of the potential for this bias, so that they do not fall into the trap which hurt Ford.

THE PRINCIPLE
In the last blog, we looked at how a bias to “go” on new ventures can hurt a company. In this blog, we will look at how a bias to “no go” on new ventures can also hurt a company. We will look at the causes of the “no go” bias, how it can distort our analysis, and questions to ask ourselves in order to keep the bias from causing us to make the wrong decision.

1. Bias Source #1: Avoiding the Hammer
The old saying is that the hammer hits the tallest nail. If you stand out too much, you are vulnerable to attack. New ventures have high visibility and stand out. If they fail, you run the risk of being attacked. Their failure becomes your failure. By contrast, it is easier to hide in the bureaucracy of the established businesses.

2. Bias Source #2: Avoiding Accountability
If you say “go” and the new business fails, there is hell to pay, because a highly visible loss is right there on the books for all to see. However, if you say “no go” and the business would have been great, there is less of a backlash, because it is all subjective. Hence, if you want to avoid accountability for your decision, it is easier if you say “no go.”

3. Bias Source #3: New Game Threatens My Game
You’ve been working yourself up the corporate ladder playing by the old rules associated with the old way of doing things. The new ways could make your “game” obsolete. To protect your personal future, you need to protect the ways of the past.

4. Bias Source #4: Short-Term Pressure
There tends to be more pressure on hitting the targets for the current month or current quarter than for long-term profits. Since new initiatives usually have a near-term drain on profits, there is a tendency to put them off, so they won’t hurt near-term earnings.

5. Bias Source #5: Not on My Watch
The remaining tenure for most CEOs is relatively short—shorter than the time for a new initiate to have a positive impact. The leaders may be retired or have moved on by the time the new initiative pans out. As one CEO put it, “Why should I invest in something that hurts earnings on my watch, but provides benefits for my successor that he will take credit for?”

6. Bias Source #5: Fear of Cannibalization
As we saw in the story, new projects often cannibalize older businesses. The thought is that by avoiding the new businesses, we can protect the old ones while at the same time avoiding all that new investment.

These factors can cause a bias to say “no go” to projects which should move forward. They can even distort the financial analysis, to make “no go” look better than it should.

1. Distortion #1: Old Cash Flow Will Go On Forever
New initiatives are often compared to the status quo. If you assume the status quo will always be strong and healthy, then it is hard to justify change. However, it is a fact of life that all strategic initiatives eventually fail. Customer desires change and innovations from others change demand. Product lifecycles eventually reach maturity and decline. The “next big thing” eventually becomes “that obsolete thing.” 8-Track players were once the rage in music. Now they are junk.

The cash flow on the old business will not go on forever. If you don’t replace it, another company will. Either way, there is inevitable decline. Make sure you put it in the model.

2. Distortion #2: Things Won’t Change if I Don’t Change
Ford thought that if they didn’t build the minivan, the minivan would not be built. This, as we saw, was not the case. Innovation is going on all over the place in your industry. If you can see the potential in the new venture, so can others. Just because you like the status quo and don’t want change (because right now you are the leader) does not mean that everyone likes the status quo (especially the non-leaders). Change is inevitable. Either you can take advantage of it (by action) or be hurt by it (through inaction). Therefore, your modeling should assume changing conditions caused by others.

3. Distortion #3: Old Beasts don’t Need to be Fed
To keep older businesses vital, one needs to reinvest in them. For example, I know of a retailer who built a lot of stores in the 1970s and 1980s and then hardly ever reinvested in those locations. Eventually the stores looked rather shabby. In addition, over the next 30 years, those neighborhoods changed and became less desirable locations for stores. People wanted to shop the newer, nicer stores of the competition which were closer to their new homes, rather than drive into the dangerous inner-city locations where these old shabby stores were. By not reinvesting in the old business and refusing to relocate those stores to better locations, the company eventually went bankrupt. In the near term, those relocations looked more expensive than staying in the older locations. Over time, however, the lack of reinvestment killed the old business. Does your business model include reinvestments in the status quo? The old beasts still need to be fed, or they will die.

So how can we avoid this bias and resulting distortions? If helps if we ask ourselves the following questions before making a decision.

1. If you were assured of a promotion regardless of the success or failure of the new initiative would you still want to kill it? (This unlinks your fate from the fate of the project, so that you can look at it more objectively)

2. If near-term pressures were eliminated, what would you do? (near-term is biased towards status quo) Keep in mind that astute investors value your firm based on future cash flow potential, not history. If you can convince them that these are good long term investments, they will support you. It helps if incentive programs de-emphasize near-term and also reward good long-term decisions.

3. What if another company says “go” to your “no go” decision? Can you survive the impact to your core businesses? (This provides a more realistic way to evaluate cannibalization)

4. In your model, are you adequately feeding the old beast to keep it relevant or are you choking it? Either the modeling needs to include lots of cash to invigorate the old, or the future prospects for the status quo need to be significantly reduced. Make sure the residual value on the status quo does not overstate its potential.

SUMMARY
Since all current initiatives will eventually fail, there is a need to continually reinvent a firm with new initiatives. Otherwise, your company will fail when all the current initiatives fail. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to justify the cost of reinvention while the old initiatives are still cranking out healthy cash flows. This creates a bias to kill off new initiatives. The more we are aware of this bias, the more we can avoid its disastrous consequences.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Just as the station wagon did not live forever, it appears that the minivan is now in decline. Crossover vehicles are starting to take its place. And guess what? Ford has aggressively gone after the crossover business, because they do not have many minivan sales to cannibalize. By contrast, Chrysler has been slow to get into the crossover business, in large part due to not wanting to cannibalize the most profitable piece of their portfolio (the minivan). Times may change, but the mistaken logic appears to live on.

The Same, Yet Better

THE STORY
Sometimes I feel sorry for the American automakers. In their advertising, they always seem to find a need to tell the audience something to the effect that, “We are just like Honda and Toyota, only better.”

Of course, a statement like than brings up a number of questions:

1) The more you keep telling me that Toyota and Honda are the ideal benchmark for comparison, the more you are convincing me that they are the gold standard. Aren’t you then implying that the foreign car is the one I should really be desiring instead of the American car?

2) If you are just like them, how can you be better than them?

3) If Honda and Toyota are the ones you are trying to imitate, how can a copy become better than the original? At best, shouldn’t you only be able to achieve parity? And if you are trying to catch up with them, won’t you always be a step behind?

4) If you are better than them, then why do you have to sell your cars at a discount to a Honda or Toyota?

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has trouble with this logic, since Toyota just keeps getting stronger.

It’s sort of like a child on the playground saying, “I’m just as tall as the tall kids, only taller.” First, if you were really that tall, wouldn’t you be one of the “tall kids”? Second, if you are just like them, then how can you be taller?

THE ANALOGY
The point of most strategies is to find a way to gain market share. For your product or service to gain market share, someone else’s product has to lose market share. As a result, strategies tend to target the place where the most market share lies—with the market leader.

That is why American automobile brands tend to target Toyota and Honda—because that is where the market share is. The problem is not that others have the market share you want. The problem is in how you go after that share.

It is safe to assume that the market leaders got there for a reason. Therefore, many believe that if they can take that reason away from the leaders and attach that same reason to their brand, then they will become the leader. Hence the strategy of “I’m just like the leader, only better.”

The problem, as we have seen, is that it is difficult to win with that type of logic. Saying that “I’m just like the leader, only better” is not very convincing. That type of logic points the consumer to your competitor as the standard for what is good. Instead, it is better to discount the standard set by the leader by setting a different standard for what is good, and claim that for yourself.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is the principle of comparison. To win market share, one must convince the customer that, when compared to the competition, you are superior in some meaningful way. As we have seen, it is difficult to create a sense of superiority for yourself if you use as your benchmark the factor which made the current leader successful. All you are doing is playing into their strength.

Over the years, I have learned two important facts:

1) BEFORE YOU CAN CONVINCE SOMEONE THAT YOU ARE SUPERIOR TO THE COMPETITION, YOU MUST FIRST CONVINCE THEM YOU ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE COMPETITION.

2) THE BEST WAY TO CONVINCE SOMEONE YOU ARE DIFFERENT IS TO EMPHASIZE A DIFFERENT SET OF ATTRIBUTES.

These are explained below.

1) Before you can convince someone that you are superior to the competition, you must first convince them you are different from the competition.
Claiming to be the same, but better is a hard sell, because it is impossible to be viewed as better if you are perceived as merely the same. This is especially true if another brand has already achieved ownership to that attribute in the minds of the customer.

To be better, one needs to be different. There is a specific order here. First you have to prove you are not the same—that you are different. Then, and only then, can you prove that the thing which makes you different is the thing that makes you better. This can be very convincing.

This is how Dawn won the dishwashing liquid war. Before Dawn, the standard upon which one rated a dishwashing liquid was on how clean it made the dishes. Dawn came to market by ignoring this. First, it claimed to have unique superiority in fighting grease. Since nobody else was making that claim, and since Dawn was pretty good at fighting grease, it won that argument. Then, Dawn tried to prove that grease fighting is the most important attribute for choosing a dishwashing liquid. It won enough people with that argument to win the entire dishwashing war.

2) The best way to convince someone you are different is to emphasize a different set of attributes.
It is hard to prove a difference to the competition if you are picking on the competition’s strength. First, there is less room to create a differential, since they are already good at it. Second, the consumers will always give the leader the benefit of the doubt on the attributes which gave them the leadership position.

Therefore, if you want to prove you are different, it is better to pick a new, unclaimed territory. Dawn did that with grease fighting.

Going back to the automobile industry, Chrysler was an also-ran in the truck business. Looking at the leaders (Ford and Chevy), Chrysler saw that they were trying to win with a rational appeal. They were emphasizing rational facts, like how much weight you could put in the truck bed, how much it could tow, how long they last, etc. Rather than try to compete in this rational space, Chrysler went for something entirely different—an emotional appeal.

Chrysler designed its trucks to look sexy in a testosterone sort of way. They were made to look like the big rigs—the semis. They even put an engine in them built by the company that makes semi engines. They made you feel like you were driving something special—that you were a big man on the road like a semi driver. The commercials emphasized the bragging rights to having a manly machine rather than to any rational features. This strategic approach boosted their market share more than anything else they had ever done in the truck space.

In the retail space, I remember when Wal-Mart was just starting to expand out of their southern US base. As they were moving east to the Carolinas, they were going to meet up with the local chain, called Rose’s. Rose’s decided that Wal-Mart was a leader based on certain things, so before Wal-Mart got to the Carolinas, Roses had converted its stores to look as much like a Wal-Mart as possible. They painted their stores with the same color scheme, put up signs that looked like Wal-Mart, displayed merchandise like Wal-Mart, and so on.

Unfortunately, when Wal-Mart came to town, people saw that one thing Rose’s could not copy was how low Wal-Mart’s prices were. Since it imitated everything else, Rose’s was seen as having no distinctive advantage—it was just a higher priced version of Wal-Mart. Rose’s soon disappeared as a company.

By contrast, Shopko tried a distinctively different tactic. While Wal-Mart was winning the battle of low everyday prices, Shopko decided to win the battle of having the best advertising deals—a high/low approach to pricing. It provided a distinct alternative in the marketplace. Shopko is still in existence today, more than 20 years after Wal-Mart entered their territory.

SUMMARY
Before you can convince someone you are superior, you must first convince them you are different. Difference is easier to obtain if you emphasize attributes other than the ones already claimed by the leader.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Just because you want to gain market share does not mean it all has to come from the leader. Sometimes just creating clarity around something different will allow you to gain a disproportionate share of the people who don’t like the leader and are just looking for a rationale to pick someone else. And that could be enough market share to become very successful.

Stop Listening to Me

THE STORY
Auto executive Bob Lutz likes to talk about the disasters one creates when designing cars based on consumer research. Regarding the Ford Thunderbird, he said,

“Ford ruined the Thunderbird by taking [consumer survey] responses too seriously. The original Thunderbird was a sleek, zippy, tightly designed two-seater. Ford asked T-bird customers what they’d like more of: Would they like, say, a little extra room? They would. How about a back seat? You bet. So Ford introduced an “improved” four-seater (and later a four-door). The restyled car was no longer the sleek sportster that had first attracted drivers. It’s mystique paled, and what had been a unique addition to Ford’s line was now just another car.”

The larger, more boring Thunderbird sold poorly enough that it had to be retired.

When at Chrysler, Lutz saw this problem again. In the 1980s, the Chrysler sub-compacts were not selling as well as the Ford Escort. Chrysler asked the customers what the problem was. In Lutz’s words:

“By a vast majority, respondents said they would like the car much better if it were just a little bigger—say four inches longer on its wheelbase. Now, anyone even passingly familiar with the US auto market knows that most people buy subcompacts because that’s all they can afford, not because they have some warped desire to sit with their knees up around their chest. Thus, when asked what they’d like changed about their cars, it’s axiomatic that subcompact owners would like them bigger.”

According to Lutz, the Chrysler executives were so fixated on giving the customer what they wanted, that they embarked on a $170 million campaign to find a way to make their sub-compacts four inches longer and still sell them at the same low price. It never occurred to these executives that Chrysler already had popular cars that were four inches longer for which people were willing to pay a higher price. Eventually, Lutz had to put his foot down and stop the nonsense.

And then, there was the Edsel, one of the biggest design disasters in automotive history. Oh, by the way, it was also one of the most consumer-researched designs in automotive history. Consumers were given choices of many different types of designs on each part of the car. Then Ford took the winners of each part and put it all together. When all of the “consumer chosen” parts were assembled, the total design was a mess that consumers rejected.

THE ANALOGY
We live in a Web 2.0 world. Because the Web 2.0 provides unprecedented opportunities for two-way dialogue, companies are rushing to get consumer interaction—even moreso than in the heyday of Bob Lutz. It is not uncommon these days for companies to have their advertising designed by consumers or even have their products designed by consumers.

In fact, based on what companies are doing, you might conclude that the need for strategy in a Web 2.0 world is being made obsolete. Why develop strategies, when all you have to do is whatever the customer says?

Although it can be insightful to learn what customers are thinking, the examples in the auto industry above point out that if you put too much power in the hands of the customers, it can actually destroy your business.

Just because we have new web tools to better interact with customers does not mean that customers have suddenly gotten any smarter or more insightful. They still say some silly things that could get us into serious trouble. All these new tools merely do is make it easier to fall into the trap of listening too closely to our customer to our own demise.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategies should incorporate many issues which transcend the interests or opinions of customers. If you limit strategy to merely the level of consumer interaction, we can end up making some self-destructive decisions.

The weaknesses of relying too much on consumer input can be summarized as follows:

1) Consumers Don’t Care If Your Business Survives
2) Consumers Can Only Interact Incrementally
3) Consumers are More Interested in Being Polite than in Being Honest

Each of these will now be discussed in greater detail.

1) Consumers Don’t Care If Your Business Survives
One of the chief goals of strategy is to provide a path to long-term prosperity (or at the very least a path to cash out of the business well). Consumers do not typically care about these things. They don’t worry about whether investors (shareholders, banks, hedge funds, etc.) get a return on their investment or whether the employees have prosperous careers. They just want what’s in it for them. And if they are honest, that means they want it all, they want it now, and they don’t want to pay for it.

Very few businesses can develop a sustainable business model around those qualifications. And guess what…in most cases, the customer doesn’t care if you business is sustainable. There are usually enough options that they will just go somewhere else to make their demands.

So if you single-mindedly try to please the customer by giving them whatever they want, and ignore your other stakeholders, you will typically end up with an unsustainable business model.

2) Consumers Can Only Interact Incrementally
Even if customers did care about the long-term viability of your business, they do not have the proper perspective to make long-term decisions. They do not know what is technologically possible. They have full-time jobs and concerns of the immediate. Consumers do not spend 40 hours a week thinking about the potential for where your brand and where it could go in the future.

As a result, consumers can only react incrementally to what is in front of them today. In the case of autos, they may be able to tell you to make them a little bigger or put in more cup holders, but they cannot help invent the future of personal transportation. Nobody was clamoring for a minivan before it was invented. They only clamored for it after a business put it on the market.

Most great business ideas are transformational—upsetting current conventions by providing something completely different than what was in the marketplace. These came out of the minds of visionary business people, not consumers. Nobody asked for the transformational coffee phenomenon of Starbucks, but now they are everywhere.

At Sony, they are proud to say that nobody ever asked for any of those great transformational inventions they have given us over the years. Instead, Sony’s great inventions came out of a deep understanding of consumer behavior (perhaps knowing people better than they know themselves) and a deep understanding of technological possibilities (for which consumers are unaware).

Incrementally, a consumer can suggest a new coffee variation for Starbucks or a new feature for a Sony computer, but beyond that, they are typically not much help. And if your company stays at only the incremental level in its thinking, your company will be passed by from other firms who are thinking transformationally, and who end up taking your customers with them (even though the customers did not ask for the transformation).

3) Consumers are More Interested in Being Polite than in Being Honest
When consumers are asked their opinions, they want to be helpful, but certain biases tend to creep into their responses to cause distortions. For example, there is a bias for consumers to say they will buy your product in your survey at a given price even if they would not, because they want to please you and encourage you. People don’t want to appear to be cheapskates, so they will tell you they are more willing to part with their money for something than they would in reality.

To quote an article in the May 18, 2007 Wall Street Journal, “The moment you ask someone for their opinion I have created a bias because of the natural human instinct to please.” Bob Lutz puts it more bluntly when he says “consumers often lie—albeit for the noblest of reasons.” Lutz’s point is that we tend to give very rational answers when being surveyed, because that is the “responsible” thing to do. Unfortunately, our true behavior is more likely to be driven by emotions.

So even if the consumer has our best long-term interest at heart and thinks about transformational issues, they may still give us answers that do not reflect their true intentions.

SUMMARY
Although consumers can tell us a lot of things, they cannot tell us what our strategy should be. If we let too much consumer commentary affect our strategic decisions, we will most likely miss the mark and allow others to take our business away, because these firms give the consumers what they really want, rather than what they say they want.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Web 2.0 technology is a great tool, just as a hammer is a great tool. But to build your strategic house, you need more than a single tool; you need the entire tool belt.

The Opposite of Love

THE STORY
There’s a type of married couple who acts in a seemingly odd manner. I’m sure you’ve known couples like this. One minute they will be passionately in love with each other. The next minute, they are going at each other with a hatred like blood enemies.

One time I heard a commentary by a marriage counselor explaining this phenomenon. He said that we find this behavior to be odd because we believe that love and hate are opposites. Based on this assumption, we are puzzled how a couple can switch on and off what appear to be opposite feelings towards each other.

In reality, however, this counselor said that we are mistaken in believing that love and hate are opposites. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. Love and hate come from the same source: intense passion. Indifference is the lack of any passion.

As long as there is passion in the relationship (positive or negative), one has an opportunity to shape the passion in a healthy direction. However, once there is nothing left but indifference towards each other, there is little one can do. The relationship has little chance of blossoming.

THE ANALOGY
The relationship between a customer and your product can be like a marriage. If the customer holds passionate feelings towards your offering, then there can be a healthy (and rather profitable) lifelong bond. However, if the mention of your offering evokes nothing but indifference in the person, it will be extremely difficult to build any type of profitable relationship.

Therefore, the goal is not to eliminate hatred of your product. In fact, as we will see later in this blog, having a segment who hates your product can be a great asset. Instead eliminating hatred, the goal is to eliminate indifference towards your product.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle we are looking at here is the benefit of incorporating features into the design of your product or strategy that will be offensive to some people. Now do not be mistaken. The goal here is not to be offensive just for the sake of being offensive. This is not about just trying to shock people needlessly or make a mockery of societal values just to create anger.

This is about trying to create a brand or a product that people can get passionate about. Invariably, the products that tend to evoke some of the strongest positive passion in a group of consumers will also create some of the strongest negative passion in a different group of consumers. What some people love will be found offensive or hated by others.

Often times, in an attempt not to turn anyone off on a product, we create something that doesn’t turn anyone on. We get very cautious and conservative so that we avoid controversy. The problem is that about the only way to make a product that is completely inoffensive to the greater population is to build something that evokes nothing but indifference. Blandness may not get people mad at you, but it won’t create the type of love that rings the cash register, either.

So we should not be afraid or concerned when our strategy evokes some negative feelings in a segment of the population. This is not the opposite of our desire for success by getting people to love our product. Instead, it is an indication that we have successfully tapped into some deep emotional passions. The opposite of our goal is finding out that people are so indifferent to our product that is creates no passion, for or against.

Remember, we do not have to get everyone love us in order to be successful. We only need to have a segment of the population love us—a segment who passionately wants to spend so much money on us that we can be profitable. I would rather try to get a few dollars apiece from a handful of passionate advocates, than try to get a penny or two apiece from a large crowd of people indifferent to my offering.

Look at Harley Davidson, a profitable company with passionate customers who love everything the company stands for. They love the brand so much that they will buy almost anything you put the logo on. Yet there are many who find the Harley Davidson lifestyle to be offensive and are repulsed by what it stands for. In some ways the two groups feed off each other, creating a virtuous cycle for Harley Davidson. Because some people look down on the Harley crowd, it makes the Harley crowd tend to rally around each other closer for moral support. Feeling rejected by the masses makes them cling even deeper to those that understand them and care about what they care about. Hence, the rejection by others creates a greater love within the sub-group for each other and the brand that brings them together. Greater hatred by others creates greater love in the core consumer base.

Robert A. Lutz has spent a lifetime working in the automobile industry, working his way up to top positions at both Chrysler and General Motors. Lutz is firm believer in designing automobiles that evoke strong passion, be it positive or negative. People will pay full price for a car they are passionate about. You have to give away large rebates to sell a car that evokes indifference. To quote Robert Lutz from back in his days as Vice Chairman of Chrysler (in 1998), “Chrysler’s success in the last few years has been predicated on the belief that you deliberately have to be a little wild with products—even at the risk of polarizing consumers—if you want them to stand out in a crowded market.”

When customers are passionate about your product, they become your best sales people. Passion gets people talking. Even if the passion by many is negative, they get the dialog started and get you noticed.

Many people love the New York Yankees. Many people hate the New York Yankees. Many people flock to the ball park to see the Yankees because they want to see the Yankees win. Others flock to the ball park because they want to see the Yankees lose. Either way, people are flocking to the ball park, and baseball is better off.

Some people love to be associated with winners. Other people have a passion for supporting the underdog. You cannot have winners unless you also have underdogs, and vice versa. Passion requires that both exist. Therefore, you can be successful appealing to either side of the passion and not care about offending the other. For without the offense of the other side, your side could not exist.

During the height of the cola wars, both Coke and Pepsi benefited from having the other company around. They were able to polarize the market into competing camps—the traditionalists and the non-conformists. This created greater passion for each brand, both positive and negative. Pity the poor cola that stood for nothing.

So the next time someone tells you that you cannot do something because it might be offensive to some people, just smile and keep on the path. Provided there are enough people to embrace your offering, it doesn’t matter who doesn’t like it. In fact, the more some people hate it, the more others may embrace it even tighter.

SUMMARY
In product or strategy development, the goal is not to minimize hatred. The goal is to minimize indifference. Passion and profits are closely linked. Eliminate the passion and you eliminate the profits. If you try to minimize the hatred, you usually end up with a blandness that eliminates all passion.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Just as young lovers can be fickle and fall in and out of love quickly, so customers can lose their passion for your product. Don’t take their loyalties for granted. You need to continue to continually woo them.