What you've always known isn't necessarily what you need to know now

There is something slightly uncomfortable about questioning things a business knows, particularly when it has spent an enormous amount of money finding them out.

There was research. It was rigorous. There were 86 slides. Possibly even a segmentation with beautifully named customer groups.

It was true.

The bit I’m interested in is whether it is still true.

Because knowledge has a shelf life.

Customers change. Culture changes. Technology changes what people expect. Competitors arrive. Something that once felt genuinely differentiated becomes completely standard. Life changes around the customer and suddenly a need that used to sit at number seven moves to number one.

None of this means throwing away everything you know every January and starting again. That would be exhausting and incredibly expensive.

It means being willing to reopen the question.

I think this is particularly important for successful businesses because knowledge accumulates. There are people who know the category inside out. People who have been talking to retailers for twenty years. People who have watched competitors come and go.

That expertise is incredibly valuable.

But there is a subtle difference between saying, “This is what we have learnt” and “This is how the world works.”

The first leaves room for something to change.

The second doesn't.

This is where the Sprowt line from what you've always known to what you need to know now comes from for me. It isn’t dismissing what came before.

It’s checking which bits still deserve to come with you.