The conditions that enable that to happen are summed up in three key notions...
THINK PAD
Once upon a time, you would have thought long and hard before you bought sneakers from a stranger in another country or rented out your home to one. So what made you feel it was safe, useful and okay? There are some universal hurdles that need to be overcome first. The conditions that enable that to happen are summed up in three key notions: the California Roll principle, the WIIFM factor (“what’s in it for me”), and trust influencers. These three ideas can also be seen as “What is it?”; “What do I gain?”; and “Who else is doing it?”
The California Roll principle depends on making the unfamiliar more familiar. Airbnb has had to create trust around an exchange that involves one of the most intimate things in our lives: the place where we rest our heads. There are no “How does Airbnb work?” videos on the homepage. Admittedly, some people look at the “About” or “Trust and Safety” pages, but they’re at the bottom of the page. Front and center, the first thing on Airbnb is an empty box that encourages you to type in a destination.
One of the ways people get the concept is by relating to something they understand. For example, when a first-time guest living in London wants to stay in New York, they might not search for New York but for London instead. They look at the map of results and the guest’s reaction is, “Oh, oh, I see. This is somebody whose house is just near mine, over there by the river, and you could stay there if you wanted to. Now I get it!”
Once we are over the “I get this” hump, the next barrier to be crossed is the “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) factor. Research by sociologist James Samuel Coleman showed we decide whether to trust based on assessment of the upsides and downsides. We need to grasp what it can do and what it can give us. Until that chasm is crossed, we won’t abandon what we have.
The ultimate success of self-driving cars — that it becomes normal to use one — doesn’t depend on engineering success. It doesn’t even depend on us understanding the technology. It depends on that second principle of getting people to trust an idea, the WIIFM factor. Some people freak out the first time they are driven by an autonomous car. They are, however, the minority. Others are awestruck and think, “Wow, it’s doing the driving for me.”
People want to know what they will be able to do if they are freed from driving the car. They imagine being able to watch movies, talk on the phone, work and eat. These behaviors are not new; the self-driving cars allow people to do what they are already doing but in a much safer manner.
The third element needed to achieve trust is human. You’ve no doubt heard the term “early adopter.” It refers to an individual who uses a new product or technology before others do. While early adopters are critical to innovations taking off, as a group they are not necessarily the most needed to get the laggards to climb the first layer of the trust stack. What’s needed are “influencers.”
TransferWise is based on a peer-to-peer technology system that matches money flows. If I wanted to send 1,000 pounds from a bank in London to a bank in Paris, the system looks for someone else wanting to convert euros to pounds. Doing things this way means the process is faster, easier and cheaper than the transfer services we get from banks.
The conventional way to transfer money from one country to another has been to use a bank, post office, or known brand such as Western Union. So what would persuade ordinary people to trust an unknown digital startup? Seeing unexpected users doing it — people who would make them think, “Hey, maybe this idea isn’t so risky after all.”
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