How do we identify new opportunities?
The source of new ideas and the resultant innovations is elusive. In fact, it is my opinion many companies are too internally focused to see new opportunity areas. Many argue that businesses' obsession with cost cutting and efficiency using Six Sigma, TQM, etc. has hyper focused our internal perspective. What is needed is for organizations to sharpen their external perspective so they become more sensitive to customer and market needs and desires and the business opportunities that lie within.
More "empathic" techniques are being applied to create more market sensitivity by the worlds leading innovators (see World's Most Innovative Companies) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_17/b3981401.htm?campaign_id=search. The empathic techniques utilize skills taken from anthropology, sociology and the like. They allow us to get inside the customers and users minds and develop new insights. The collection of tools, techniques skills and organizations that conduct this work is what Launch Institute calls the "Insight Platform", and many companies are in the process of establishing such platforms to guide their product and service development work.
A great discussion of Ethnographic approaches can be found in Bruce Nussbaum's blog "Ethnography Is The New Core Competence. The blog describes Intel's work with anthropologist Ken Anderson to "develop a deep understanding of how people live and work."
Many questions thus arise for me; How does this approach fit into the process of innovation and product design? Who should be part of a team to conduct this work? What are the techniques, tools and approaches being used to develop this understanding?
posted by Sutherland on Innovation at 7:31 AM
1 Comments:
1) How does this approach fit into the process of innovation and product design?
R/ I think the approach is fundamental to innovation and product design. To understand how a product or service is working and how it can be improved, a company needs to look at what people experience and get more in touch with their needs and expectations. However, I do think that more than an approach, ethnographic or sociological abilities need to be part of the culture of an innovative enterprise. Because you never know if a secretary will be the one to actually see a client have an unsusual problem with a product or a factory worker be at the right place at the right time when someone is telling another person the reasons why he should not buy your company's product.
2)Who should be part of a team to conduct this work?
If ethnographic research is to be done it should be led by an ethnographer but the team should include people with multiple backgrounds and points of view. It is good for the engineer to realize that a cheap well-hinged lid on a bottle is actually impossible to open. Also, the ethnographer may see one problem but the marketer, the budget people, the engineer, the designer, etc. may be able to see other things.
3) What are the techniques, tools and approaches being used to develop this understanding?
I guess the question refers to what is or can be done inside an organization in order to develop this understanding. I can suggest starting small. Put your crew together and make them talk about what they think is good or convenient about one of the company's product. Once a list is made, show them what users actually do (via video tape, for example) and/or screen a focus group of customers talking about the product. With an exercise like this one, I think many companies would discover that they do not know their clients. Once this major surprise hits employees, I guess it would be good to train people on observation techniques and go from there.
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One note of caution with the voice of the customer though. I think this kind of research is good for product improvement or for discovering new opportunities. However, the voice of the customer can be misleading sometimes if the company is not paying attention to other factors in the environment (i.e. other companies' developments, advances in substitute products, other needs that may not be obvious to the customer, etc.). I guess what I am trying to say is that observation does not waive creativity or research and development.
This discussion reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Homer is the main source for a company's ideas for developing a "car for the common man". You can imagine how the car came out...
11:37 AM
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