Market Research and Innovation

Innovation, by definition, is doing something new. This makes traditional methods of market research (focus groups, surveys, mall intercepts, and so on) pretty useless. (And a waste of money.) Customers, particularly satisfied customers, don't know what they don't have. If you ask them what they want, more often than not they'll say, "Nothing! Keep up the good work!" You will continue doing what you've been doing AND be able to claim that you are "customer driven". Then a competitor does something innovative, and the same "satisfied" customers buy their product, leaving you scratching your head. "What could I have done?", you lament. More than likely, your competitor was watching how customers use products, or services, and noticed certain accomodations that they had to make, or work arounds to get the product to do exactly what they wanted. When my team at IBM was developing the Young Explorer workstation for kids in conjunction with the Little Tikes company, we watched dozens of kids for hours as they used the computer. A key observation -- they liked to use it with a friend. So we designed a bench sized for two people. We could have surveyed our customers (day care centers and hospitals, mostly) for years and never gained that insight. One of the keys to marketing innovation successfully is anticipating unmet or latent needs. The best way to learn that is to watch your customers use your product, and figure out how you might make that experience better. Or cheaper. Or more convenient. Or...you get the picture. It isn't all about adding technology or features. Lead your customer. P.S. Another pertinent lesson is one that I came across in a book by Harry Beckwith titled "The Invisible Touch": Don't strive to satisfy customers, strive to delight/energize/captivate them. He offers this test: How do you want a customer to respond when a prospective client asks them "How do you like [insert your company here]?" Do you want them to say, "I'm satisfied."? I didn't think so.