ERRC Grid : A way of starting
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What would be the first thing that comes to your mind if you’re asked to tell about some of the delightful parties you’ve been to. Undoubtedly, wines would be one the first things. Either you’re a cocktail drinker, a beer drinker or a traditional drinker, you would love to see those bottles in parties. But, wines never used to be that important because they were yukky. Unless you’re a regular drinker, wines were never in your territory. Well, circumstances have changed and they are consumable as any other kind of drinks.
It’s so obvious that startups are what bring revolutions and in above case it was definitely a startup (Casella Wines). But, startups are never easy and never will be. What we can do is gather as much informations as possible and create a framework we can go with. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne has been one of the great books on startups and ERRC Grid, which it has emphasized on, is one of the magical steps any startup can go with.
Blue Ocean refers to an uncontested market space of an unknown industry or innovation which has been able to provide unique set of values to the customers along with its profitability being maintained
Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create (ERRC)Grid
There is no tribulation entering into the existing market space but it’s lot more harder when it comes to creating unique market space that provides unique set of values to the customers. So, how does one proceed? Here’s where ERRC Grid comes into a play.
Eliminating conventional features that had no impact on the customer base.
Raising the aspects having impeccable impact on the customer base
Reducing the aspects having minimal impact on the customer base
Creating the aspects that will add values to the customer base.
Unification of the above points gave arousal to ERRC Grid.
Casella Wines and its ERRC Grid
So, back to wines. There were times when wines were never social. Whereas today wine is what makes gatherings delightful. This transition would have never happened if an Australian company, Casella Wines, never intended to introduce Yellow Tails(a kind of wine).
Casella Wines created a social drink consumable to everyone contra to what conventional drinks used to offer. What I mean by everyone is:- beer drinkers, cocktail drinkers and traditional drinkers. Italy and France used to be the closest wine trading pals of the United States. Somehow circumstances have changed today and Yellow Tails is the most imported wine to the United States. All these turn of events happened within the time interval of 2 years. But it didn’t come out of thin air. Of course, there were some brilliant strategies and ERRC Grid was a crucial part of their strategy.
The above picture shows some comparison of Yellow Tails with Premium wines and Budget wines. Horizontal line corresponds to the features of the wines and vertical line corresponds to the degree to which the features are included in the wines. What we can see are Elimination, Reduction, Raise and Creation of some features respectively. The overwhelming part is Yellow Tails stands out of all. Thanks to ERRC Grid.
Non-conformity vs Performance : Why ERRC Grid Works?
Relying on one’s opinion is absurd and I intend not to believe what I get fundamentally. Unfortunately, I feel immense pleasure reading research papers by great scholars and on this quest I came across a research paper by Patrica Norman from Baylor University, which had some impeccable impact on making my opinions even more stronger towards ERRC Grid.
Relationship of Non-conformity with performance of a company resonates to the complete abstraction of ERRC Grid.
In simple words, relationship between non-conformity and performance is curvilinear (inverse U-shaped).
As the above picture depicts, moderate non-conformity has superlative impact on the performance of a company. On the other hand, ERRC Grid always supports mild divergence. Whether it’s a company or a product, diverting a little from the conventions would impeccably raises the performance of a company. But we cannot overlook some exceptions in the history.
iPhone was one of the top offbeat products on the view point of customer. Contradicting my own words, it was evenhanded integrations of different other features. So, it was never a different kind of beast. Mild divergence from conventional tech products made what iPhone is today.
ERRC Grid of iPhone
Conclusion
Above concept can neither be generalized nor be completely avoided. It’s impossible to converge the concept with real life scenarios. What we can do is ‘hit and trail’ and see how things will turn out.
It seems like, whether it was Apple or Casella Wines, ERRC Grid has always been the first building block of a business empire. By God’s grace, we’re living in the 21st century where knowledge is accessible as air and I intend not to make this opportunity a desolation. Keep learning, keep sharing 😃.
