Olivia: I've got a wild business story for you. A company, at the peak of its power, intentionally made its own product worse, year after year. And their own data told them it was a brilliant move. Jackson: That sounds like corporate suicide. Who would do that? And why? Olivia: It was Maxwell House, the coffee giant. And their story is one of the core case studies in the book we're diving into today: "Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy" by Dev Patnaik and Peter Mortensen. Jackson: Ah, Dev Patnaik. He's the founder of the innovation firm Jump Associates and teaches design thinking at Stanford, right? So he's seen this empathy gap firsthand with huge companies. Olivia: Exactly. And he argues this isn't just a historical fluke. It's a systemic problem. The book was widely praised by people like Malcolm Gladwell for showing that empathy isn't a soft skill—it's a hard, economic advantage. And the Maxwell House story is the perfect, terrifying example of what happens when you lose it. Jackson: Okay, I’m hooked. A story about a company that succeeded by making its product worse? This I have to hear.

Olivia: It all started with a freak frost in Brazil in 1953. It wiped out the entire crop of smooth, nutty Arabica coffee beans, and prices went through the roof. Maxwell House was in a panic. Jackson: A classic supply chain crisis. So what did they do? Olivia: They made a fateful decision. They decided to mix in a small amount of a cheaper, hardier bean called Robusta. The problem? Robusta tastes awful. It's bitter, almost undrinkable. But they did consumer sensory tests, and the reports came back clear: "almost no one could tell the difference." Jackson: But the data! The tests said it was okay! Isn't that what you're supposed to do, trust the data? Olivia: That's the trap! And this is the central metaphor of the book. Patnaik, borrowing from the philosopher Alfred Korzybski, says, "The map is not the territory." Jackson: The map is not the territory. What does that mean? Olivia: The "map" is the simplified data, the market research, the PowerPoint slide. In this case, it was the report saying "no one can tell." The "territory" is the actual, real-world experience. It's the feeling of drinking a slightly more bitter cup of coffee. Jackson: And I'm guessing that "little bit" of Robusta didn't stay little for long. Olivia: Not at all. For years, every time there was pressure on profits, they'd add a little more Robusta. And every single time, the "map"—the consumer tests—said the change was negligible. But over a decade, those negligible changes added up. Jackson: So what happened? Olivia: By 1964, for the first time in US history, coffee sales declined. The executives were baffled. Their data showed existing drinkers were still satisfied. But they were missing the bigger picture. Jackson: The territory. Olivia: The territory. An entire generation of young people, trying coffee for the first time, found it bitter and disgusting. They couldn't understand why their parents drank this stuff. So they turned to something else: Coke and Pepsi. Maxwell House had optimized its product for a dying market and completely alienated the next one. Jackson: Wow. They were so focused on their map, they didn't realize they were driving off a cliff. It reminds me of Microsoft with the Zune. They had all the resources, a talented team that had just made the Xbox a huge success... Olivia: Exactly! The Xbox team succeeded because, as one of them said, "We were those guys." They were hardcore gamers building a console for themselves. They had an intuitive, gut-level understanding of the territory. But for the Zune, they were trying to build a music player for a broad audience they didn't understand. They had a map of the iPod's success, but no feel for the territory of music lovers. And the sales figures tell the story: in its first 18 months, Zune sold 2 million units. Apple sold 84 million iPods. Jackson: An empathy gap of 82 million units. Okay, so if relying on the 'map' is so dangerous, how do you get back to the 'territory'? How do you possibly fix this empathy gap in a huge organization?

Olivia: Well, the book offers two powerful models, at opposite ends of the spectrum. The first is the story of an individual hero, a designer named Pattie Moore. Jackson: What did she do? Olivia: In 1979, she was a young designer at the famous Raymond Loewy firm. They were designing a new refrigerator, and she suggested they consider the needs of people with arthritis or poor vision, inspired by her own grandmother's struggles. Her colleagues literally told her, "We don't design for those people." Jackson: That's infuriating. Olivia: Pattie was so frustrated by this lack of empathy that she decided to do something radical. With the help of a makeup artist, she transformed herself into an 85-year-old woman. She wore a body brace to hunch her shoulders, earplugs to impair her hearing, glasses to blur her vision... the whole nine yards. Jackson: Whoa. That's not just walking in someone's shoes, that's building the shoes, the feet, and the entire person. Olivia: And she didn't just do it for a day. For three years, she traveled to over a hundred cities in this disguise. She experienced the world as an elderly woman. Pill bottles she couldn't open. Bus steps she couldn't climb. And the social invisibility, the feeling of being "not a person anymore." Jackson: That must have been agonizing. Olivia: It was. But it was also profoundly insightful. She realized the problem wasn't just "getting old"; the problem was a world not designed for the elderly. Her work became the foundation for what we now call Universal Design. Think of OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, with those big, soft handles. That came directly from her insights. She proved that designing for the margins often creates a better product for everyone. Jackson: That's an incredible story of individual courage. But you can't ask every employee at a Fortune 500 company to become a method actor for three years. How does a giant company like IBM do it? Olivia: That's the second model. When Lou Gerstner took over a dying IBM in 1993, the company was famously insular and arrogant. Gerstner knew his own empathy as a former customer wasn't enough to change the culture. So he launched "Operation Bear Hug." Jackson: Operation Bear Hug? Sounds... friendly. Olivia: It was a mandate. He required each of his top 50 managers to meet with at least five of IBM's biggest customers within three months. And the goal wasn't to sell anything. It was just to listen. He personally read every single report from those meetings. Jackson: He was forcing them to leave the map room and go out into the territory. Olivia: Precisely. And it worked. Managers discovered huge, unarticulated needs. The biggest one was that large companies needed help building infrastructure to use this new thing called the internet. That insight led directly to IBM's wildly successful "e-business" initiative, which basically saved the company. Jackson: So it's about creating systems for empathy. Olivia: Yes. Patnaik calls it building an "Open Empathy Organization." You have to make it easy, make it everyday, and make it experiential. Like Netflix giving every new employee a free subscription, so they experience the service as a customer. Or Spalding building a basketball court right outside its headquarters, so employees using their own basketballs discovered the annoyance of inflation, which led to the invention of the ball with a built-in pump. Jackson: You're creating constant, low-effort feedback loops from the territory. Olivia: Exactly. And when you build this empathy engine, the results are staggering. It's not just about avoiding disaster; it's about unlocking explosive growth. It's what Patnaik calls a "reframe."

Olivia: A reframe is more than just an insight. It's a fundamental shift in how you see the world. And the book has this brilliant story about the Nike Presto. Jackson: The Presto! The T-shirt for your feet. I had a pair of those. Olivia: Well, that shoe created an entirely new, billion-dollar business category for Nike, and it was the result of three consecutive reframes, all driven by empathy. Jackson: Okay, break it down for me. Olivia: In the late 90s, a Nike designer named Dave Schenone was sent to figure out why college kids weren't buying running shoes. He went to campuses and saw they were all wearing baggy jeans and heavy boots. His first reframe: the problem isn't the shoe, it's the fashion. Running shoes look bad with baggy jeans. Nike needed to make a shoe for "sports culture," not just for sport. Jackson: But Nike was a performance company. I bet that was a tough sell internally. Olivia: It was blasphemy. But Schenone kept digging. He went to New York Fashion Week and saw a sea of black. His second reframe: when everything is black, color becomes the next big thing. Nike could lead with bold, eye-popping colors. But that created a new problem: retailers hate stocking tons of colors because of all the different shoe sizes. Jackson: The dreaded SKU-pocalypse. Olivia: Exactly. So Schenone had his third, and most brilliant, reframe. He looked at T-shirts. Why can retailers stock so many colors of T-shirts? Because they only come in a few sizes: small, medium, large. He went to his team and said, "The problem isn't the color. The problem is the sizing. We need to make a shoe that fits like a T-shirt." And from that, the Presto was born—a stretchy, comfortable shoe in just five simple sizes. Jackson: Wow. So empathy isn't just about feeling good, it's a lens that lets you see a completely different business problem to solve. Olivia: It's a strategic tool. And it pays off in other ways, too. The book argues empathy is the ultimate ethical compass. It contrasts politicians who gave vague, legalistic answers about whether waterboarding is torture... Jackson: I remember those debates. Olivia: ...with Senator John McCain. As a former POW who was brutally tortured for five years, he had no ambiguity. His lived experience, his empathy, gave him absolute moral clarity. He just said, "It's torture. End of story." Jackson: When you've been in the territory, the map of legal arguments doesn't matter. Olivia: It's irrelevant. And that's the opposite of what happened at Northwest Airlines when they laid off hundreds of employees and gave them a pamphlet with "money-saving tips." Jackson: Oh, I remember this. This was bad. Olivia: It was an empathy catastrophe. The pamphlet, intended to be helpful, included "Tip No. 46: Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash." The executives who approved it were so disconnected from the reality of their employees' lives that they couldn't see how deeply insulting and dehumanizing that was. Jackson: They were trying to apply the Golden Rule—do unto others as you'd have them do unto you—but they had no idea what it was like to be "others." Olivia: Which leads to the final, and maybe most important, payoff of empathy: meaningful work. Patnaik argues that when you connect people to the real-world impact of their work, you transform a job into a calling.

Olivia: He tells the story of Chip Conley at Joie de Vivre hotels, who had his executives work alongside the housekeepers. They ran an experiment where the housekeepers did a mediocre job for two days. The guest complaints rolled in, and the housekeepers suddenly saw, firsthand, how much their "little touches" mattered. Their work wasn't just cleaning rooms; it was creating a sanctuary for travelers. Jackson: They connected their actions to a human outcome. They saw their place in the territory. Olivia: Exactly. It gave them a sense of purpose that a paycheck alone never could. And it makes you realize that the biggest risk in business isn't a bad spreadsheet, but a comfortable chair in a corner office, far away from the people you're supposed to serve. Jackson: That's a powerful thought. It feels like the whole book is a challenge to that comfortable chair. Olivia: It is. Patnaik's ultimate challenge is this: there are no low-interest problems, only problem-solvers who have lost their connection to people. So the question for all of us is, how are we staying connected to the 'territory' in our own work? Jackson: That's a question I'll be thinking about for a while. And we'd love to hear your thoughts. What's one way you try to bridge that empathy gap in your own life or work? Let us know on our socials. It’s a conversation worth having. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.