The Desire Lines of Innovation

Once a solution to a problem has been found, the biggest challenge is to get others to accept it. Often there's quite a bit of selling and convincing that has to be done, but why force it? Is it possible to innovate without selling change?

Consider the notion of “Desire Lines”. Originally described by Gaston Bachelard in his 1958 book, The Poetics of Space, a desire line is a path left by people’s use of space. A particularly graphic example is the erosion created in the ground as people and animals walk over vegetation towards their destination. Most parks and college campuses have desire lines etched in the grass lawns – areas where people took short cuts off the carefully designed, planned and constructed concrete footpaths. Frustrated landscapers have long tried to keep people from destroying the grass and flowers by creating fences and other obstacles – but they rarely work, as people tend to simply walk around those obstacles, creating new desire lines.

Most of the roads in older communities were built on top of desire lines created by horses, people and carts as they made their way from destination to destination. Never a perfect geometric grid, these roads responded directly to the actual needs and behaviors of those who used them. Instead of fighting desire lines – it is possible to put them to use. Many designers will intentionally delay the building of walkways for several months and instead just plant grass around and between buildings. After a few months, the natural traffic of students will create desire lines in the grass that can be “read” as a plan for final concrete walkways. A wider path is built in the deeper areas of erosion and a smaller path in the light areas because the desire lines illustrate where more or less people walk.

By building on the desire line – it is possible to outsource the design to the hundreds of people who use the paths every day and unconsciously improvise their own course.

Desire lines can be found everywhere – not just on the ground. Whenever people move through their lives, interact with others, buy things, change things and improvise things, they leave a path. Everyone doesn’t always follow precisely the same path, but the desire lines can be read and understood.

A company that sells products to customers can often find desire lines right in their own balance sheet. A clear customer desire line was found when accounting discovered that one of their most profitable and steadily growing areas of business, despite falling new bike sales, was their after-market parts business. In other words, customers were changing their Harley Davidson motorcycles themselves, using parts provided by the company.

Up until the 1970’s, Harley Davidson focused primarily on supplying transportation to military and police organizations. The motorcycle gangs and tough guys that were modifying surplus bikes to their own needs were seen as an annoyance, and perhaps even a threat to their core business. Much as an eroded path through a field could threaten the beauty of a college campus.

Harley Davidson followed the desire line. They started to sell more customization, club membership and the romance of an old-fashioned, rebellious, and incredibly loud experience that had been developed by their customers. Motorcycle sales moved upwards, along with branded clothing, accessories, tattoos, and of course, after-market parts.

Harley-Davidson built their new business model on the desire lines laid down by their customers. Despite some difficulties in recent years, this remains one of the more innovative re-inventions of a company in great part because, instead of trying to stop the desire lines, they followed them and strengthened them.

Finding desire lines should not be confused with typical customer research or focus group work. Whenever a customer is asked, “what do you want?” the answer is always a version of “what I have, but cheaper, easier, or more.” As valuable as customer research is, it should never be relied upon solely to help companies and leaders chart an innovative path – largely because it reflects what exists today versus what could exist tomorrow.

One way to find a desire line in research is to ask customers or voters to fix something that bothers them. Here’s an idea for a new product – how would you make it work better? Here’s a new idea, how would you make it more attractive to others?

But even more powerful than asking questions is to watch behavior. The Internet in particular has become a very good tool for finding desire lines – by aggregating data on what people look at, how they interact with it, how they change it, how they talk about it and ultimately, how they make it their own.

The desire lines are even easier to find and harness on the Internet. Google, Wikipedia, Netflix, and now Twitter are all examples of on-line businesses that have figured out ways to harness the power of desire lines. As Eric von Hippel, author of “Democratizing Innovation” (NYT Monday October 26, 2009) put it, “Twitter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them.’” The same thing can be said of many newer on-line businesses. In an environment of transparency, where the behaviors of millions of people can be tracked and translated into data, the strange attractors become easier and easier to understand.

Whoever can follow desire lines is more likely to find successful innovation.