We’ve Got This Whole Unicorn Thing All Wrong!

Arthur C. Clarke famously said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The corollary to that statement is: “But once that technology has been around long enough, no one thinks it is anything special.”

[---]

So what makes a real unicorn of this amazing kind?

• It seems unbelievable at first.
• It changes the way the world works.
• It has enormous economic impact that is not all captured by the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who birthed it.

We’ve talked about the “at first unbelievable” part. What about changing the world? Michael Schrage wrote a fascinating ebook for Harvard Business Review entitled Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? He wrote:

“Successful innovators don’t ask customers and clients to do something different; they ask them to become someone different. Facebook asked its users to become more open and sharing with their personal information, even if they might be less extroverted in real life. Amazon turned shoppers into information-rich consumers who could share real-time data and reviews, cross-check prices, and weigh algorithmic recommendations on their path to online purchase. Who shops now without doing at least some digital comparisons of price and performance? Successful innovators ask users to embrace — or at least tolerate — new values, new skills, new behaviors, new vocabulary, new ideas, new expectations, and new aspirations. They transform their customers.”

- More Here