Press
Current Voice-of-the Customer (VOC) Methods Are Destined for Obsolescence
with New Definition of “Customer Need”
(Aspen, CO) July 23, 2007 – Today, Strategyn announces the release of an
article that details a groundbreaking discovery in the field of product and
service innovation. This discovery makes current voice-of-the-customer (VOC)
practices obsolete and brings clarity and predictability to the fuzzy front end
of innovation. “This breakthrough has important implications for all companies
striving to achieve growth through innovation,” says Strategyn CEO Anthony
Ulwick.
“In our years of studying the innovation process, we have found that companies
believe that customers do not know, or cannot effectively articulate, their
actual needs and requirements. This is just not true – they can,” says Ulwick.
“The problem is that companies do not know how to define ‘need’ or how to listen
to customers.”
Strategyn’s goal has been to bring clarity and simplicity to the archaic VOC
process and to make innovation and its attendant success more predictable. The
company has accomplished this goal by questioning conventional thinking and
through relentless analysis of the innovation process.
“In our years of studying the innovation process, we have come to recognize that
requirement statements must possess several unique characteristics in order to
be useful,” Ulwick says. “For example, they must be based on a value measurement
system that is universally acceptable to customers, reflective of the way
customers actually measure value, and stable over time. In addition, we
discovered that requirement statements must have a consistent structure and
format, otherwise their prioritization becomes problematic. Over the past few
years, we have defined the precise structure and format of the requirement
statement. We have turned requirement gathering into a science.”
Ulwick’s thinking has been supported and refined by Dr. Lance Bettencourt, a
longtime Strategyn consultant. “Defining just what a need is and devising
methods to capture these critical inputs into innovation have revolutionized and
energized the innovation process,” says Dr. Bettencourt. “In most companies,
there is disagreement on just what a need is, what the customer’s actual needs
are, and which needs are unmet.” Bettencourt asks, “If a company cannot agree on
any of that, how can it gain agreement on which products and services to develop
and what strategies to pursue? Getting the right inputs into innovation changes
everything, including a company’s ability to create, brand, position, and sell
products.”
The article “What Is a Customer Need?” is available for download on the
Strategyn website at
http://www.strategyn.com/publications/whitepapers.asp..
About Strategyn, Inc.
Strategyn is a pioneer and leader in Outcome-Driven Innovation™, a revolutionary
approach to innovation management that enables companies to unlock hidden
opportunities, reveal high-growth emerging markets, create breakthrough products
and services, and streamline business processes. Strategyn offers turn-key
innovation management programs to companies throughout the world. The programs
include education, tools and mentoring and support; everything a company needs
to build a competency in innovation.
Strategyn’s thinking has been adopted by organizations such as Microsoft, was
voted one of the best business ideas by Harvard Business Review and is cited by
thought leader and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in his
book The Innovator’s Solution. In addition, it has supplanted QFD, VOC, and
other programs in many firms as a best practice and new standard for innovation.
For more information, read What Customers Want by Strategyn CEO Tony Ulwick,
visit www.strategyn.com, or call
866-729-8400.
About Anthony Ulwick
Anthony Ulwick, author of the best-selling book What Customers Want, has
published dozens of articles on innovation management and market research,
including the landmark Harvard Business Review article “Turn Customer Input into
Innovation.” He is also the founder and CEO of Strategyn, a pioneer of the
outcome-driven movement, and one of the leading authorities in the field of
innovation, market research, and marketing strategy. Ulwick’s methods have been
adopted by many companies, including Microsoft, AIG, Robert Bosch Tool
Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, HP, Motorola, Syngenta,
Chiquita, and others. He holds several patents on his unique approach to
innovation and strategy formulation. He can be reached at
press@strategyn.com.
About Lance Bettencourt
Lance Bettencourt, who earned a doctorate in marketing from Arizona State
University, is an expert in marketing strategy, research design and analysis,
and service quality improvement. Dr. Bettencourt has helped companies such as
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, State Farm Group, Kimberly-Clark
Health Care, Advanced Medical Optics (AMO), and Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon
Endo-Surgery division apply Strategyn’s outcome-driven innovation principles to
the development of market, product, service, and positioning strategies. Prior
to joining Strategyn, Dr. Bettencourt was a professor of marketing at Indiana
University and Arizona State University. Dr. Bettencourt has published several
academic and managerial articles on what it takes to be a market-oriented
company.
Press Contact:
Lisa Jey Davis
Jey Associates Marketing & PR
CELL: 970-948-1109
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