New Opportunities

GROWTH

Existing Business New Categories New Businesses New Markets New Offerings

Design What’s possible? Culture What’s desirable? Business What’s profitable?

Cast aside personal biases. Listen and observe with empathy. If you want people to be interested in you, you need to be genuinely interested in other people. This open-heartedness needs to translate into a general curiosity about the world beyond yourself.

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Understanding different perspectives to create true empathy. There’s a Native American prayer that asks us to not judge another person before walking a mile in their moccasins.

Look for disconnects. Note contradictions between what people say and do. People lie, when you ask them about their actions, habits and motivations.

Listen to people’s personal stories. Deconstruct stories to understand how people frame meaning in their lives. Stories reveal what people find normal, acceptable and true. They reveal the implicit rules and ‘frames of meaning’ in their lives.

Distinguish needs and solutions. Work from needs to create new and compelling solutions. Solutions are nouns. Needs are verbs.

GE Enters the Fibers Market

connect emerge reframe roadmap results

connect reframe roadmap results emerge

emerge Let the big picture

Let the big picture emerge. Looking for patterns from a wide variety of inputs.

new fibers technology

textile adoption stories

case studies for ingredient material across industries

empathy interviews with fiber manufacturers

Let the big picture emerge. Identifying for patterns in what we see.

The fibers industry operates in an artisanal culture

Individuals take extreme pride in the work they do

A firm’s importance isn’t necessarily linked to its size

connect roadmap results emerge reframe

reframe how you see the world.

The well-defined value chain isn’t the most useful way to describe the fibers industry.

Instead, cultural and emotional drivers point to the way GE Plastics should approach the fibers business.

Reframe how you see the world. Resin Supplier Extruder Nonwoven Mfr. Weaver Cut and Sew Spinner End User

roadmap results connect emerge reframe

connect Create things that with ordinary folks.

Create things that connect with ordinary folks.

Interpersonal relationships are critical to success in the fibers industry.

These relationships impact the kinds of products and services that succeed.

Create things that connect with ordinary folks.

We had thought that fibers products would require heavy investment and months of development.

We identified key materials applications and go-to market specs that leveraged relationships with potential customers to develop new products and technology.

roadmap your ideas. Develop ways to

We thought that specific new products would be best suited for GE Plastics.

We learned that solutions that fit specific technical and cultural criteria would be most likely to succeed.

Based on these criteria, we developed an evaluative tool to help identify and roadmap new offerings.

Develop ways to roadmap your ideas.

Based on our evaluation tools, we identified key application areas to pursue in the short term.

We also identified several application areas that were likely to be lucrative opportunities in the longer term.

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results Be savvy about possible

Results.

GE Plastics fibers team is engaging in rapid experimentation with potential suppliers – and they’ve already made progress toward new textiles. The team is leveraging the artisanal nature of the industry – and letting kitchen engineering work for GE Plastics.

GE has changed who it hires for the fibers group. They now look for knowledge of the motivational needs of people in the fibers industry, not just knowledge of the business aspects of fibers. The team is looking for people who understand the emotional and cultural drivers in the business.

GE has incorporated Jump-style interview techniques into its conversations with current and potential customers. GE is inquiring about customers’ needs and actively learning from them, not just making sales calls.