the market for toilet paper or substitutes? As it turns out – yes! A small group of consumers made the decision to no longer be beholden to toilet paper supply. They installed bidets in their homes.
Lest we be accused of only paying attention to the U.S. market, we should acknowledge that bidets are commonplace in many countries around the world, even mandatory. In Italy, for example, a 1975 hygiene law requires bidets to be in at least one household bathroom. In Asia, a company named Toto brought bidets into the digital age with electronic control panels and became a staple in Japanese homes. And then in March 2020, sales of bidets rose dramatically in the United States. Some companies saw sales peak at more than 10 times normal volume.3
The critical question this raises – for paper supply companies, for white goods manufacturers, and for consumers looking to move when prices are right – is whether this shift is a one-time blip in sales or a more permanent trend toward the use of bidets among Americans.
Let's leave the bathroom behind for a moment and generalize the concept that we are going to examine for the remainder of the book. Broadly, there are two phases of any trend, each characterized by the nature of the uncertainty around the trend. In the initial “if” stage, it's still uncertain if the trend will come to fruition; in the “when” stage, the trend has progressed, gathered momentum, and crossed an important inflection point where it's no longer uncertain whether it will come to fruition. It's only a question of when and, sometimes, to what extent.
Our core hypothesis for this book is that once an “if” becomes a “when,” the nature of a leader's response must change. The opportunity is to focus on the moves you can make that will shape the trend to create a better future – one where your organization is advantaged.
The “if-to-when” shift is, as we wrote in the Introduction, similar to a rollercoaster. That big initial climb as a cable pulls the car up the hill is the “if” stage. The rollercoaster cars are building up a ton of potential energy, and if they stop, they might just slide backwards. But when the cars get to the peak and start to tip, that potential energy becomes kinetic and the momentum takes the cars through loops, twists, and turns, seemingly with a life of their own. Once you hit that inflection point, the “when” stage kicks in. During this transition – something we call the “phase change” – the critical question is how long it will take for the trend to resolve into inevitability.
While it's impossible to be exhaustive about all the mechanisms that might be at play in moving from “if” to “when” (human behavior is admittedly more complicated than the physics of rollercoasters), we like to lean on something from the world of design-driven innovation called the “Balanced Breakthrough Model.” The basic notion behind this model is that a “balanced” innovation that has more likelihood of succeeding in the market will simultaneously build in aspects of desirability (the market wants it), feasibility (the innovator can produce it), and viability (the innovator can eventually make money from it). Similarly, a trend that seems headed in the direction of checking all three of these boxes has a much higher likelihood of passing through the phase change to “when” than other, less robust trends.4
The most critical aspect of desirability is the degree to which the trend has an unequivocally better outcome than the current state. If the endpoint of the trend is better for all customers on every dimension relative to what exists today, then it's only a matter of when it will take off. That assumes it is or becomes feasible and someone figures out the right business model to make money from it … but we're strong believers in almost anything being possible if the right demand conditions are in place. If the improvement is only marginal or only meaningful to a small proportion of the population, then feasibility or viability needs to be off the charts – likely via a cost advantage – since it offers less potential economic reward.
Consider the cord-cutting example from Chapter 1. The main benefit of cord cutting is that you get to watch the shows you want to watch, when you want to watch them. When compared with the need to conform to someone else's predetermined schedule, it is unequivocally better to have the flexibility to watch your show on your time. Even if by some amazing coincidence you wanted to watch the shows at the exact time that all the networks scheduled them, you would be no worse off than before. In this case, there is no uncertainty around the trend's desirability. Cord cutting is clearly better for consumers, so the question is whether you can overcome the feasibility and viability barriers.
Naturally, desirability is always relative: defined by the perspective of any individual consumer. Each has different tastes and might find different things attractive. Therefore, you should never (only) look at the market on an aggregate basis. Even with cord cutters, where the feature of being able to watch your shows when you want is better for all, that feature may be of more or less importance to different segments of the population. Especially in the early stages of a trend's appearance, “superusers” who are more willing to break longstanding habits to adopt a new behavior hold the key to understanding what the future might have in store.
Consider the launch of ride-hailing services. In markets like New York, where the existing taxi infrastructure didn't allow for calling a taxi, or consumers didn't find the experience clean, having the ability to hail a clean car from your phone at a similar price is unequivocally more desirable for the vast majority of consumers (granted a small minority just liked the yellow cab experience or took some comfort in the fact they were regulated). All the existing features are present with zero trade-off. However, other segments of the market might include significant trade-offs. In London, for instance, where taxi drivers are required to go through comprehensive training, there might be a trade-off on knowledgeability of the driver.5 Or in other markets where it was easy to phone for a taxi, the trade-off might have been less obvious. Therefore, it was quite predictable that ride hailing would take off quicker in markets with less attractive existing competition (other things being equal). The question was not “if” but “when.”
At this point, some readers may be wondering – “Wait, don't these if-to-when rollercoasters come in different sizes and shapes?” Absolutely: slopes vary, the height of the peaks vary, and the overall cycle time passing through the phase change from “if” to “when” varies as well. This additional dimension of “to what extent” a trend matters naturally leads to the question of how to know which early, weak signals to pay attention to. There is sadly no simple answer to this. The best provocateurs pay attention to all weak signals, at least to begin with. As a general rule of thumb, anything that has the possibility of impacting your foundational business model – or mission – should be paid particular attention to. For our Al Bundy executive, his business model was predicated on bundling multiple products to derive higher revenue from a stable customer base. Early on, he should have recognized that having that 1.75% segment – with customer buying behavior signaling desire for unbundling and less traditional product features – grow substantially could disrupt his whole growth system. The trick is to develop a method to pay keen attention to all early and/or weak signals and quickly assess their possible level of influence on your model for success. There will be some red herrings in the mix, for sure, but better in the early stages to set the aperture purposefully wide rather than to apply inadvertent blinders.
Many trends are complicated to consider because they aren't easily characterized by unequivocal desirability. Typically, a feature will be desirable for some but not others. Consider the market for e-readers. There were many predictions that e-readers would eventually dominate the market since their inception in the late 1990s. However, as of a few years ago, they only accounted for about 20% of all U.S. book sales according to the Association of American Publishers. Penetration outside of the United States is lower, with user penetration in Europe approximately 12.5% in 2021 according to Statista. As it turns out, the segment of customers
