Mapping Innovation with the Customer Experience moderated by @StacyLeidwinger

Framing post by Stacy Leidwinger

“When it comes to the innovation process, executives and product developers often come to the conclusion that the customer’s voice is actually the least influential aspect of the idea generation process.” This statement gave me pause for thought. Is this really the case?  After all didn’t the 2007 Booz Allen Hamilton study clearly indicate that “companies that directly engaged their customers had superior results regardless of innovation strategy?”  Why then would the c-suite veer from this course?

As a product manager, I take pride in ensuring our customer voices are heard in the product development cycle.  Often times however, there are conflicts of interest as once a customer is using the product their top priorities are for more efficiency – how do you manage the application, better reporting, lower total cost of ownership, etc. I agree all of these are important for growth but are not always considered ground shaking innovation. So the question then becomes how do you leverage your customers to drive innovation but also prevent focusing on incremental improvements?      

The onus is on the organization to breathe, move and live like their customer -- customer intimacy. It takes knowing your customer to a higher dimension.  Not only do you need to know their current needs but you must foresee market changes and predict customer demands as they emerge.  I believe the answer to accomplishing this is in the collection and sharing of customer data [2]. It isn’t always just mapping exactly what customers are saying, but what are they not saying? A great example is the classic Ford example. When customers approached Henry Ford they wanted to be able to travel from Point A to Point B more quickly. Henry could have invested in better horse shoes to get more leverage out of the horses. Instead he said, isn’t there a better way to travel than horse & buggy? Many know the story yet it is amazing how often as innovators we get stuck in the world of practical and not innovation.

Innovation resides in the world of unmet need - all too often consumers don't even recognize what that is because they have a work around. They don't care if their work around is time intensive, results in poor quality, or is expensive. Thus it’s important to live in our customers’ shoes and map their experiences. Companies need to actively study and watch customers in their day to day lives to predict the right solutions. With this in mind organizations must also have the right processes in place to capture customer changes/feedback AND react quickly to it. A customer idea might be good but if you can't get in the roadmap for another year it could become irrelevant. Today in our #innochat we discuss how organizations can map innovation to the customer experience.

Here are the questions for our discussion

Questions:

1. Should customers drive innovation?
2. What are some best practices for capturing & sharing customer ideas? 
3. Who in the org should champion customer innovation?
4. How do you avoid innovating for a single customer & drive innovation for a market?

Related Articles
[1]  Is Voice of the Customer valuable in the innovation development process?
[2]  Open Innovation Possibilities by Organizing Customer Data