Well, in my view, companies
struggle to innovate not because they cannot come up with
solutions or ideas – companies are typically plagued with an
abundance of ideas, thousands of ideas – so creativity is rarely
the issue. What I have concluded is that companies struggle to
innovate because they do not know exactly what the customer’s
needs are – never mind knowing which needs are unmet.
I know this sounds hard to believe, but despite all the talk
about satisfying unmet customer needs, to this day, in most
companies there is no standard that defines just what the
structure, content or format of a valid customer need statement
should be. What we find in even the most advanced companies is
that they carelessly accept all types of customer inputs for use
in the innovation process. These inputs include solutions,
specifications, wants, benefits, exciters, delighters, must
haves, latent needs, and many other types of inputs – as if any
of these inputs will do – when in fact none of them will lead to
predictable innovation.
Success in innovation is predicated on first uncovering unmet
customer needs, but since companies get this part of the process
so wrong, they often end up executing the process backwards – in
other words, they’ll brainstorm ideas that intuitively seem
attractive and then test them with customers. This is an
inefficient approach to solving the innovation equation because
it is only by chance that a company will stumble across a
solution that addresses a number of key unmet needs. This is why
product failure rates often range between 50 and 90 percent.
What is important to remember is that the innovation process can
only be executed efficiently when the unmet needs are uncovered
and prioritized up front and then creativity is focused on
devising solutions that address them – that is what our approach
to innovation is all about.
