Five Insights into Innovating via Mobile Devices

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Anticipatory Roles

How do you position yourself in safety recovery, i.e., peace of mind, reassurance, freedom from "what ifs?" Well, it's easy for specific industries. Take something as traditionally mundane and low-tech as insurance, which just about everyone considers a necessary evil and at the same time a commodity. Sure, you can set the bar really low and e-mail or text customers when their insurance comes up for renewal, or you can offer some kind of discount if they buy two or more policies, such as home and auto. But wouldn't it benefit you to make their lives truly better by playing a more meaningful, anticipatory, and interactive role?

Long before the iPhone came along, we predicted that this was where the category was headed. So it didn't come as a surprise when insurance companies such as State Farm, Geico, and Nationwide came out with accident apps that walk you through right then and there what you have to do if you are involved in a crash: "Take a picture of the damage and the other person's license and insurance card and upload everything to your agent," the app will instruct you. Once your insurance company receives the info, it might even notify the nearest authorized repair shop and have a tow truck to you within 30 minutes. Once your car is in the shop, you might get to watch the repair in real time via webcam.

If the insurance companies were thinking bigger, they'd have already fully integrated those mobile apps with the back end of the claims process, the front end of the sales process, and up and down your value chain to be completely seamless, paperless, and totally centered around the needs of the customer (and around the agent in some cases), not around the product.

When thinking about how to use mobility to leverage your business model to capture new opportunities, revenue, and connections with consumers, repeat after us: "I will not limit myself to mobile marketing. I will think behavior, not technology. I will master the five mega reasons people love their mobile phones so much, and I will capitalize on them—before my competition does."

G. Michael Maddock is CEO, and Raphael Louis Vitón is president, of Maddock Douglas, an innovation consultancy that helps clients invent, brand, and launch new products, services, and business models.

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