In this post, I wrote about Andrew McAfee’s book on innovation culture, “The Geek Way.”
In it, he writes about the blunder Coke managers made in swapping its classic soda with New Coke in the 80s. I also mentioned in my previous post on why I’m not a fan of the term, ‘data-driven decisions.’
Full disclosure: I lived through the trying times of the Pepsi Challenge. My buddies and I thought we found a cheat code for scoring free soda.
I thought the New Coke story was a good choice for backdrop for McAfee to discuss one of the his four innovation norms (listed in the linked post), just not the one he used it for: openness, or how free people are to speak up, even to senior people.
I think it could serve as a better backdrop for one of his other norms, ‘science.’
In McAfee’s telling of the story, he points out that the taste tests are not a good predictor of what people will actually buy.
But, then McAfee claims if Coke’s culture had more openness, someone may have made that point and prevented the CEO from making a big blunder.
It turns out that while people preferred sweeter soda side-by-side after they came into a mall from the heat of summer, there were reasons and situations where people still preferred Coke. Some folks, for example, preferred a less sweet drink paired with dinner. For others, old Coke was what they were used to.
I doubt that openness alone would have led to that discovery. I think believing it would is hindsight bias.
Had they asked Coke employees to list why this move might not work beforehand, this reason may have appeared on that list, along with hundreds of others and it would be impossible to tell which are valid or not.
If managers let those reasons prevent any new trials, then we would never get any new hits. And it would just be a guessing game to try to pick the good reasons from the bad.
This is why the other norm of science is so important. It can help you discover what will really happen despite the hundreds of reasons we can imagine why it won’t work.
Taste tests might be an early indication to help guide product development and new products.
But, before making the bold move of replacing a core product with a new one, it’s best to dip your toe in and try it in small experiment that as closely resembles how that decision will play out as possible, like a pilot or test market, to see how customers will truly respond.
Our Dinner Table 