By Shivaji Dasgupta
It is well known that brands inspire people and people inspire brands. Equally remarkably, brands have been inspiring other brands, passing the baton in a generational relay race.
Fundamentally, inspiration must be delinked from copying. The latter is the mindful replication of process and product, for convenient profits. The former is the evolution of value, for customers and society.
The first successful commercial jet aircraft , Boeing 707, owed a lot to the failures of the De Havilland Comet, its predecessor. Metal fatigue from window frames led to repeated crashes, rectified ably by the Seattle successor. Freddie Laker’s Skytrain established a low-cost no frills air travel model in the1970s, influencing both Richard Branson and EasyJet. Important lessons in policy management and value creation, leading to globally scalable businesses.
Many technology brands are built on this principle of evolving inspiration. Facebook learnt a lot from Orkut and outsmarted it with superior user sensitivity. Both VisiCalc and Lotus 123 helped define Microsoft Excel. ONDC emulates global standards in APIs, transactions and data models. ChatGPT draws its genes from the works of Alan Turing and the Dartmouth Conference, from the 1950’s.
Henry Ford was famously enthralled by the meat packers of Chicago to develop automotive assembly lines. Air India, in the original JRD avatar, was the soul of Singapore Airlines, in service excellence. Volvo invented the three point safety belt in 1959, curating a defining culture of safety, quite like Toyota’s ‘Just-in-Time’ and ‘Jidoka’ quality processes.
Founders serve as category-agnostic benchmarks for other founders. Steve Jobs was influenced by Edwin Land of Polaroid fame. Hindustani classical music invests in the gharana structure to institutionalise continuity, while the late Imtiaz Quereshi curated the ‘Dumpukht’ menu from Awadhi home recipes. Jack Welch’s Six Sigma quality mandate for GE became universal currency, across industries.Science thrives on such relays.
Currently, brands study other brands for performance tracking, chiefly sales and growth. Else, in the context of mass replication, arguably the ‘China’ model. What is missing as a system is Inspiration Mentoring, to deliver the next frontier of user experience. As an able ally of technology, research and management wisdom — to learn from mistakes and scout unfulfilled potential.
To build a culture of inspiration mentoring, brands need to identify a benchmark set, closer to experience domain and relevant to preferred worldview. The candidates must represent proven milestones in customer experience delivery. Then, brands need to integrate these learnings in business models. An immersive organisational mandate, from boardroom to last mile.
The wheel was invented by the Mesopotamian civilisation in the fourth millennium BC. Just one good reason why brands must value meaningful inspiration and not attractive reinvention in the onwards journey.
The author is an autonomous brand consultant and writer