Challenge The Paradigm
To describe Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty as having revolutionized the beauty industry is an understatement. Fenty exposed a glaring deficiency: the industry had largely excluded people of color, and of body types beyond an incredibly narrow, Euro-centric stereotype. By obliterating the “acceptable spectrum,” they literally changed the definition of beauty.
Whereas before, beauty was a relative statement — an exceptional characteristic, rarely found and all the more valuable because of its scarcity — Fenty flipped the script and made an absolute claim: there’s beauty in every person. “Beauty for all.” And whereas before, most of the messaging in the space was predicated on the not-so-subtle paradox that beauty (as portrayed by advertisements) was unattainable for the majority, yet somehow a particular product could help a hopeless victim close the yawning gap. The Fenty team’s insight and innovation earned it a well-deserved place on TIME Magazine’s Inventions of the Year list in 2017.
Fenty’s mode of innovation was to shatter definitions, and to close a different yawning gap, a gap in the beauty product experience that left the vast majority of the market neglected.
Such “experience gaps” are an incredible opportunity for innovation. Be on the lookout: Where are parts of the market left behind? Who does the conventional experience neglect? What really stinks about the way things currently are? What are you sick of? Write these things down on a “Bug List.”
Rihanna had firsthand experience with the experience gap she closed with Fenty, having often been disappointed by even a professional’s ability to compliment and accentuate her skin tones. So she had a natural sense of empathy for the pain that so many other women experienced.
That awareness of real, raw human emotion, that sense that “This could be soooo much better…” is the soil in which the seeds of innovation are sown. But the harvest is only reaped by the organizations that will boldly challenge paradigms. The ones that will venture past that sense of discomfort with the status quo to taking courageous action.
It only took one category-redefining product introduction to trigger an industry-wide “Fenty Effect,” with many incumbent players changing their stripes and expanding their color pallets in short order. What other industries are in need of a “Fenty Effect”? More broadly, what other industries are in need of a “Your-Name-Here Effect”?
Related: Beware Conventional Wisdom
Related: Look Out For Problems
Related: What Stinks?
Related: The Bug List
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The fine folks over at Section recently interviewed me about some common mistakes I’m seeing folks make when they use AI. One of the biggest ones? The tendency to expect too little, and get just that.