Flywheels “R” Us

Reputation, iPhones, and Beauty got us talking.

Imagine your products on the edge of a flywheel, connected by spokes. Relationships with products give the wheel a push. If the relationship sticks, it stays for a spin. If it doesn’t? It gets spun off into the ether.

If you design the flywheel correctly, sticky relationships get pulled towards the hub in the center. The first pushes are hard, but over time, it gets easier because the flywheel stores energy in the form of relationships being pulled in.

From the hub, all of the spokes are accessible – a relationship has access to an entire ecosystem of products.  Critically, once spinning, the flywheel is easier to push for new relationships, and the centrifugal force that is the hub pulls even more inwards as the velocity becomes self-sustaining.

How do we get people to take that initial spin? How will people engage with the product from a distance and eventually be willing to push? How will we make sure that once they are sucked in, that they can reap all of the benefits of the ecosystem?

These are big questions. We know design matters. We know we need to work from the inside out and the outside in. We know we need to understand the stories along the way – from the epic myths to the wives tales to the latest water cooler chatter.

The flywheels are based on “us.” The products are based on a map of who/what/where we want to be and when/why/how we want to be there. It’s 2018, let’s build.