You can often find valuable and an out-of-the-box lesson on innovation in fields that are not immediately connected with your work. Recently, I was struck by two decisions made by the WWE; the organization that owns and manages many professional wrestling events including WrestleMania. This newsletter is about one of these decisions:
It happened this year in April. For the first time in WrestleMania history, the main event was a fight between female fighters.
WWE made a bold choice.
To put it in business terms, they made the choice to change a key feature of the highest visibility, as well as modify the highest revenue generating product. They had the courage to make this change, even though (or maybe because) the revenue of this product had been declining in recent years. (When business isn’t going well for you, are you more likely to make a bold move or cling to what is still there?)
I wouldn’t be surprised if many people inside the sport, such as fighters, agents, advisors and consultants, have told them not to do this. They probably told them the risk is too large, or that it might alienate core fans, and “why not try it out in a smaller and safer setting?” They did it anyway.
The innovation: changing a key feature of their main product.
The result: an overwhelming amount of positive publicity and 38% more revenue than in their previous record year of 2013.
Will they do it again next year? We don’t know yet. They haven’t announced the 2020m line up yet. But here is what we do know: they have done a bold experiment and could learn from it. No doubt, they’ll apply their lesson on innovation in 2020. I’m already curious to see how it goes…
Take the Next Step and Apply this Lesson on Innovation
Take a look at your existing products and services. Especially the ones that don’t work so well. What’s an experiment you can do that changes your products? Maybe that even changes your core product? How can you do an experiment to see how your market responds? What is a bold move?
Related articles: Go for Impossible,