First published in Børsen under the title Forretningsudvikling bliver grundigere med humanister
All businesses, no matter if they are public or private, are put into the world to create value for humans: customers, users, citizens. In order to do this in both a valuable and effective way, you have to understand why humans do, as we do. Understand the complicated mix of context, identity, culture and language. This is where the theories and methods of the humanities can help us to understand how we as humans experience and act in the world.
A concrete example of this is the development of a new app for pocket money, which we created for Danske Bank. Instead of asking potential users what such an app should contain, we took a step back and asked a more humanistic question: what is the phenomenon pocket money in a cashless society? We visited families and talked with them about money, upbringing and the meaning of pocket money. This provided a deep background knowledge and understanding of the problems, which the app should solve.
We “decoded” the phenomenon pocket money, before setting the developers to program the app. In the wider context humanities can help us focus on something more sustainable and long-lasting. We often hear that the world is moving faster and faster, and that we have to place ourselves firmly in the front seat, if we want to keep up with the digitalisation.
That might be right, but in our eager, we forget that there is still one constant, and that is the human. We have not changed fundamentally over the past maybe 50,000 years. We continue to constantly trade in new ways because the context is changing, but deep down we have the same fundamental needs. And this is exactly the aim of the humanities – to obtain a greater insight into people, culture and society.
Many businesses work based on a premise that people are rational creatures and therefore predictable, which, I believe, is the reason for many failed business strategies and product launches. But as the example with pocket money shows, we often need to start somewhere else – and that is in the deep contextual understanding.
In order to exploit the humanistic potential, it requires for us decisionmakers and leaders to dare to make decisions based on a different foundation than just that which can be documented with statistics. Many decisions become better if you go deep instead of going wide – and this is exactly what the humanities can contribute with.
