Companies already talk to
customers, brainstorm ideas, prototype potential solutions, test
concepts, build business cases and decide what products are
worthy of entering the product development process. The goal of
these activities is to identify and invest in the development of
solutions that companies believe will address unmet customer
needs – and none of this needs to change. Companies must
continue to invest in the development of products – but they
must go the extra mile to ensure they are investing in the
development of the right products. To do this they must know
with certainty which product ideas most effectively address the
customer’s unmet needs.
Success in innovation is dependent, then, on using the right
data to make these decisions. The companies that have and use
the most accurate data to decide which customer needs are unmet
and what solutions best address those unmet needs are the
companies that are most likely to produce products that
customers want. Companies are already using data to make these
decisions – but the high product failure rates experienced by
most companies strongly indicate that the data being using is
inadequate.
The secret to success in innovation lies in a company’s ability
to adopt the use of new data to help decide what products to
invest in. This sounds simple, but it is not. Before this can
happen, companies must first admit that the data they are
currently using is incomplete, inaccurate or misleading. They
must recognize that when it comes to innovation, traditional
market research is flawed. They must admit that unintended
factors, such as executive edict, personal goals and interests
and company politics, have great influence over what products
enter the product development process. They must recognize that
current practices are ineffective and that a new approach – and
new data – is needed to decide where to invest.
Outcome-driven research enables companies to uncover true
customer needs, determine which are unmet and the degree to
which they are unmet. Using it enables companies to focus
brainstorming efforts and to accurately quantify the degree to
which a proposed solution will increase customer satisfaction.
It provides the data needed to decide where to invest and to act
with confidence. Recognizing the benefits of using
outcome-driven data and adopting the use of this data, in my
view, is the key to success in innovation.
