John A. List, international business guru and chief economist at Lyft, is an expert at why some companies can scale and why others fail. In the latest Harvard Business Review, he cites a critical factor that led to McDonald’s unsuccessful launch of the Arch Delux, a more expensive burger that he says fell victim to selection bias. Turns out, focus groups didn’t represent the majority of Americans, who preferred to continue eating Big Macs.
For any product or service to scale successfully, a business leader needs to know the needs and desires of their targeted population. Business offerings are far more successful when based without the bias intrinsic in decisions solely reflective of management preferences.
In fact, gender, seniority, wealth, and other personal qualities often reflect the bias of those making the decisions – not the opinions and needs of the market the company is targeting.
As simple as this seems to put into practice, bias is inherent in the corporate decision-making process. Sure, focus groups could be more selectively diverse, but focus groups don’t scale.
At CrowdSmart we’ve developed a cloud service that solves the bias issue and helps leaders make accurate, predictive decisions about product launches, innovations, and growth opportunities. That’s because our service engages all stakeholders to share their ideas, opinions, and yes, their biases, without revealing their identities.
Remember that meme early on when social media first became viral: “You could be talking to a dog?” Because our clients get to select the participants in a CrowdSmart session, we’re pretty sure no dogs will be included. What will surprise decision makers is the diversity of insights, knowledge, and actionable ideas that result from CrowdSmart’s ability to capture, filter, and deliver the best of their stakeholders’ collective intelligence.
Our secret sauce is a patented AI combined with human intelligence that delivers actionable results on an ongoing basis. The streaming service is simple to implement and scales, whether you include 10 or 10,000 participants. Results can be delivered in hours or days, critical for making decisions quickly when facing immediate inventory and staffing issues, for example.
Why wait? Contact us today at CrowdSmart.ai.