Your Innovation Pipeline Is What You Feed It

The Era of Little Consumer Choice

There was a time once, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, when business organizations could develop a technology, make a product out of it, and then go sell it.   It didn't matter so much what their customers thought of it — as customers just didn't have very many choices to choose from at the time.   Thus, so long as it mostly met the need at hand, it was bought.   This mentality was perhaps best epitomized in Henry Ford's famous line… “you can have it in any color you want, so long as it's black.”

And so it was that the marketplace was characterized by a few undifferentiated products that all more or less worked the same.   The world was awash in a sea of black cars.   The balance of power lay squarely with producers.   And it was an era of indifference.

The Birth of Consumer Choice & The Era of Listening

But then things changed.   After World War II, competition – especially global competition – entered into the markets, and with it, far more choices.

Suddenly, the balance of power began to shift toward the customer, and what customers thought began to matter to producers.   Consequently, business organizations started to listen – and at least somewhat care – if for no other reason than their own survival.   Those that didn't listen didn't survive!

It was at this point that the market research industry came into its own (and the field of product design entered its heyday).   As time went on, businesses became increasingly ‘customer centric’.

By the time the 1980s rolled around, the concept of being customer centric was firmly entrenched.   The mantra of the day was to listen to the ‘Voice of the Customer’ – or VOC.   And as with all such things, an entire industry of consultants sprang up to capture this VOC and promote its adoption.   The focus group was in vogue.

This era – from the 1950s to the 1990s – was an era of listening.   Unfortunately, it was not an era of thinking — specifically of thinking deeply about the human psychology and motivations involved.   It was what we refer to as “the golden age of gullibility”.

And so it was that, as we wrapped up the Twentieth Century and organizations continued to rack up market failure after market failure – despite their listening – the evidence was mounting that something was still not right.

Fortunately, a new era lay around the corner.

The Era of Thinking — Modern Innovation Practice Comes of Age

Here's what happened after the start of the Twenty-First Century (and coincidentally the dot-com bust).

First — a new wave of thinkers came along and demonstrated – via Outcome–Driven Innovation – that for existing product categories, instead of thinking in terms of demographics, we instead needed to think and talk in terms of psychographics — of outcomes, jobs, and constraints — thereby allowing us to segment markets far more effectively according to the desired outcomes — each of which derives primarily from underlying motivations and needs (functional, emotional, and social).   This often ended up being quite different from what traditional Voice of the Customer inputs were telling us.   All of a sudden we realized that the customer's ‘voice’ was not always entirely reliable.

Second — people like Steve Jobs came along and made it clear that, at least for new product categories, there was no basis for an explicit Voice of the Customer.   Instead, we had to look beyond what customers were saying and doing, as those were rooted in the context of what they presently knew.   Consequently, we had to place our focus on what outcomes were ultimately being desired — as well as the motivations behind those outcomes — together with the experiences needed to best deliver them.   Combining these insights with emerging market and technology trends, we ourselves could then define what ‘might be’… something entirely new and different — a process known as Discovery–Driven Innovation.   As a result, the world got breakthrough new products like the iPod, iTunes, and the iPad.

This ushered in the era we are presently in… an era of looking, listening, feeling, smelling, and tasting — and, most importantly, of thinking deeply about the outcomes that people ultimately need and the underlying human motivations behind those outcomes — really the essence of Design Thinking.

We call this the “Age of Considered Motivation”.

The Present – And Ongoing – Dilemma

Given this present era of truly thinking, the tools – along with an understanding of how to use them – now exist — and indeed have existed for almost two decades now — for being able to feed our innovation pipelines with high caliber inputs.

And yet, the sad fact is that so many organizations have never availed themselves to these things.   They continue, to this day, to feed their innovation pipelines ‘junk food’ — stuff that makes the outcomes flabby and ineffective.   In fact, just as often as not, their inputs amount to random guesses.

Of course, we're not the first to say this, and we probably won't be the last, but it doesn't have to be this way!   There are sound discovery methods for getting the knowledge and insights an organization needs to feed its innovation pipeline ‘health food’ — stuff that will make its outcomes fit and effective.

Part of the problem is that the majority of traditional MBA programs do not teach these methods – because they don't know the methods.   Consequently, managers come out of these MBA programs no better off than when they went in, in terms of having an ability to discern the right inputs for their innovation pipeline.   This means they end up making the wrong investment decisions — putting their money in places where the market is already overserved, and missing many key opportunities in areas where the market is underserved.   This is almost ‘anti–strategic’ — their innovation portfolios and roadmaps are full of things that simply don't matter, or even that do more harm than good!   As a result, their outcomes are less than impressive, and their business suffers – falling well behind the market and the competitors who get this.

The Take Away

So the message is simply this:   What are you feeding your innovation pipeline?   Are you feeding it ‘junk food’ or ‘health food’?

Are you using the right discovery tools and methods to uncover the insights you need to produce ‘health food’?   Make sure you are — your customers will thank you for it.   Especially if you happened to ignore their voice!

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