The One Innovation Your Competitors Can’t Steal

Video Transcript

00:12 Danny Meyer: The shelf life of innovation is about two seconds today, and it used to be that if you had the best idea and the best execution, nobody could touch you. Today, if you have the best idea, it’s gonna get copied. And even if you have the best execution, that’s gonna get copied. So, what 100% of these companies are looking for is what’s that added experience that we can give all of our stakeholders: The people who work for us, our customers, our communities, our suppliers, and our investors that is gonna separate us from the pack, the thing that cannot be copied. Nobody can take out their smartphone and take a picture of how I made you feel. But everybody can come into one of our restaurants tonight, and if they love it, they can take a picture of a pasta and text it back to their chef. If they like our flowers, they can take a picture and email it back to their florist. So, what these companies are looking for is a curriculum that teaches them from A to Z. How do you put hospitality in practice up and down your organization, so that your stakeholders have a bond with you that cannot be broken.

01:27 Scott Gerber: Would you make the case that most businesses fail with hospitality, therefore they fail because they don’t understand that core value? Is that sort of the issue that you try to solve based on your experience in this case?

01:39 Meyer: I’m not sure that I would agree with that. I think that, if you are famous for being the absolute best in the world at something, you can ride that pretty far for pretty long. But I would also say that you will probably get a reputation for being really good at all that stuff, and you are gonna get copied. Because a lot of entrepreneurs don’t get into business, because they’re the first person to have an idea. They get into business because they see an opportunity to make money, and they think they can do something better than it’s been done before. And so, what I would say is that if you wanna build a defensible moat around being the best at something you better understand that in this day and age, where everything has gotten high tech, that high touch is really the greatest defense to having somebody try to take your number one position. So, one thing we don’t teach anybody is how to be better at what they do. But most of the customers who come to us are clients for hospitality quotient, already are in a preeminent spot and they don’t want anyone else touching them.

02:56 Gerber: What about the businesses that are not in that premium spot? What would your advise be to those businesses that maybe are still trying to find what they are excelling at?

03:05 Meyer: Absolutely. There is nothing about focusing on a hospitality culture that’s gonna slow down your ascent to being the best at what you do. As a mater of fact to the contrary, I would say that, when you surround yourself with employees who feel so respected, their motivation to innovate and to lead only increases.