Time is precious and leisure is the new currency for innovation

Innovation is in the midst of a significant shift in trajectory and intent. No longer is innovation solely focused on improving organizational profits, the new target is the individual and their need to maximize the most precious commodity - Time.

The early technology innovations (1804: gas lighting, 1821: electric motor, 1895: Diesel engine, 1951: Nuclear power reactor) from the beginning of the 19th century to nearly the 1960s mostly focused on increasing group / organization / national efficiencies. 

In the last 50 years however, income levels around the globe have risen more than 22 times. Consequently,the cost of our time and the value of every moment spent on leisure have also significantly increased. Consumers today are willing to dedicate an increasing proportion of their resourcesto maximize the quantity and quality of their free/leisure time.

No surprise that the business of Innovation (yes, it is a business) too started to focus on milking the currency of leisure with record profits. Innovative leisure enhancing products with high launch prices became huge successes (1968: Video game console, 1973: Personal computer, 1989: High definition television, 2001: iPod).

Nick Talbot, Global Design Head, Tata Elxsi says, “The tide is now turning once again. From leisure being a currency in the hands of the fortunate few it has now been globalized and democratized. Between 1981 and 2001, China lifted 680m people out of poverty, globally the proportion of people living below the poverty line has halved in the last 20 years.”

According to McKinsey & Co, the share of Indian salaries spent on necessities will fall from 61% in 1995 to 49% by 2015; that means 51% will be reserved for discretionary expenditure (likely to be spent on leisure enhancement).

This is a direct consequence of structural, legal and economic factors (gender equality, education and transport infrastructure) encouraging dual income families – and this trend is here to stay.

The next 20 years can be expected to continue with the same trend, when leisure time is expected to become even more valuable for a larger cross section of the global population. It is therefore natural that innovation chases this venerable pot of gold.Hence timehas now become the great frontier for innovation for the next decade. Companies that master time and attention innovation will find lots of market traction.

In today’s increasingly fast-paced world, design and innovation are gaining increasing relevance, as businesses continue to find new ways to catch consumer’s attention, offering targeted and time-saving solutions. By understanding the consumer mindset and the growing value placed on ease and speed, intuitive solutions will position forward-thinking companies ahead of the game.  Extending this thought, Time is extremely important in today’s culture. Mobile and digital technology assists by bringing items to a user at the right time and place. By continually residing with the user, mobile technologies insert into people’s lives in ways that were not possible in the past.

Take Johnson & Johnson’s InTouch diabetes care services, for example. People with diabetes don’t just want to keep their diabetes in check; they need to, since the consequences of uncontrolled diabetes are severe, even fatal. Still, J&J found that about 50 percent of diabetics in the U.S. struggled to maintain the daily regimen necessary to keep their diabetes under control. These people needed help managing their time and attention in order to follow through on their wants and needs.

Organizations are beginning to wake-up to this opportunity. Through integrated sensors and software, our products and environments becomesmart and it is this assimilation of technology, into our everyday environment, thatunderlies the maximization of leisure time. Connected devices, connected homes, connected cars, automotive entertainment/in-vehicle infotainment are some of the manifestations of the ‘leisure is the new currency’ theme that are in advanced stage of development.

Examples of Consumer Innovation enabling maximising of time :

SMART TRANSPORTATION- Traffic congestion cuts into worker productivity, delays deliveries, eats up gasoline and boosts air pollution. And it's annoying and time consuming. IBM has developed software that can examine current traffic patterns and foresee congestion up to 45 minutes ahead. The system, being tested in Singapore, has proved to be about 90% accurate in predicting the volume and speed of drivers in the central business district. The information is then used to adjust 1,700 sets of traffic lights to smooth the flow of traffic.

Starbucks, which straddles the consumer-goods and retail categories, sees business potential in the advent of smartphones. The coffee chain has implemented the largest deployment of mobile payment technology in North America, enabling customers to make purchases with wireless phones. Starbucks reports that lines move faster and the company stays tethered to patrons through email, text messages, and a mobile app that includes a store finder.

Star Bazaar is an example of specially designed modern retail format innovated to capture the huge life time value on offer.

However success will not come on a platter, the whole product / service design process will have to be rethought. It is not about cutting down the feature set to cater to the emerging markets aspirations. The whole product design philosophy has to be thought through to deliver on the right features, durability, and functioning given the environmental constraints. Tata Swach, the collaborative effort of several Tata companies like Tata Chemicals and TCS is an product of this new paradigm of innovation. These collaborators put together their ideas and technology in the making of this low cost, near-zero maintenance and user-friendly water purifier.

The ramifications of this tectonic shift in consumption and thus innovation ecosystem are no less than tectonic. As Apple has demonstrated the subtleties appealing to the finer senses will become paramount. Innovation teams will no longer be limited to engineers; they will have to include a wider set social scientists, behaviourists, ergonomists, artists, experts in different cultures, languages, customs demographic and futurologists for a truly winning product design. This is the new world of desig n innovation for the leisure seekers and it is here to stay.