Uncommon sense

Many, many years ago we were debating a simple question: would people order bigger pizzas if they had to add toppings to a pizza base or take them off? It is fair to say that at the time I didn’t think it would change my life, but it has.

We were in the middle of designing Pizza Hut’s first online ordering service in the UK. This question was one of a thousand that had to be answered as we crafted the user experience. But this one felt particularly important as it would determine both customer enjoyment and the average transaction value.

Since I disliked pizza and had never ordered one, I didn’t feel qualified to pass comment. But listening to the debate, a nagging thought struck me: shouldn’t there be some data on this that provides a definitive answer?

A quick google search yielded an academic study that provided it: people order more if you ask them to remove toppings. However much fun it is to build up a pizza, heuristics combined with the base factor of human laziness (these are people ordering pizza because they are too tired to cook!) means that people will defer to the ‘default’ option more often than not.

This was my first experience of behavioural economics and the science of ‘nudging’, which has since become common place. But the reason I found it life changing was the sudden realisation that there was a wealth of untapped insight in academic circles. The psychology of coffee choice? Check. Research into the selection of different price points? Check. Consumer attitudes to finance? Check.

In every brief that followed, my first source of insight came from academic archives. It wasn’t always as immediately relevant but it provided a useful counterpoint to more commonly used business intelligence, and stopped us debating what could be established as facts. You should try it.

Many of the tools UP AND TO THE RIGHT will be developing have their roots in entrepreneur theory. They will provide a useful counterpoint and alternate insights to traditional start-up methodologies and practices. One of the biggest differences is the emphasis on systems thinking, which stresses the dynamism and interconnectivity of start-ups, over a purely human-centred design approach.   

In the meantime you should check out one of the best books to come from the field of business research: Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense, by Jules Goddard and Tony Eccles. It is a compendium of what works and what doesn’t. No founder should be without a copy.

At its core is a beautifully simple model. It says that what determines the success of any business is its core belief system. This is the intellectual property that drives every decision you make. As a founder you must ensure two things:

·      Have enough beliefs that are unique to your company’s belief system i.e. not shared by competitors or wider category

·      More of these beliefs eventually turn out to be true (than the unique beliefs of competitors)

That’s it. Uncommon sense indeed. Now go and order a pizza and start writing yours down.

UP AND TO THE RIGHT.