Tag Archives: Ethnography

Great innovation teams are driven by customer insights

in Innovation

Customer discovery never stops

If you look deeply at hundreds of examples of business innovation, an interesting pattern begins to emerge. Specifically, what we find is that an innovative idea came not from some inherent individual brilliance but from looking at the world from a fresh perspective; an alternate way of seeing things.

Innovators don’t pull ideas out of the air, rather they obsess about a particular challenge, ask questions and dig deep to discover insights. And one way innovators come to their insight is by understanding the unarticulated needs of people.…

Deadly innovation sin: Depend on customers to tell you what your next product / service will be

in entrepreneurship, Innovation
English: Logo of Ikea.

English: Logo of Ikea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Want to know why innovation is so hard?

Though the vast majority of companies do some kind of market research, it isn’t enough because whatever insight is gleaned from it is lagging by the time a formal report is made. Instead, companies need to go deeper and step into customer’s lives. A good part of why most new products and services fail is because people don’t understand how it fits into their lives; which stems from an organization’s lack of understanding of people unarticulated needs.…

To find the truth you have to look within

in Innovation, Marketing

Peter Drucker famously remarked, “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said”. The same could be said of innovation techniques such as direct observation and journalistic interviews. You might ask people questions and have them tell you stories about themselves, but they can’t tell you how to matter. Finding the WHY is similar to uncovering market insights, you’re piecing together a puzzle and then suddenly the missing piece to the puzzle pops into your head. But that missing piece was founds as the result of perspective shifting and synthesis.

Last week I spent some time with a client who wants to develop his own brand. I literally shadowed him for 4 days in an effort to help him find his truth. In industry parlance this is called ethnography. For me it’s simply Finding The Truth.…

Practice frame shifting to spot untapped innovation opportunities

in Creativity, Innovation

drawing on the right side of the brainPerception separates the innovator from the imitator. To see anew, learn to set aside preconceptions by exploring new perspectives.

How might we shift our perspective and explore what we might be missing? This is a common question I ask myself all the time because I want to overcome our human tendency to bring our preconceived notions with us whenever we are attacking a problem; therefore limiting our view of potential alternatives.

How do we overcome that?

Innovation is more a matter of attitude and perspective than process. I’ve written previously that there are four ways we can discover new insights. Insights are unexpected shifts in the way we understand how things work, and one way to get insights is by shifting our frame.

Ed Catmull makes a poignant point in his book, Creativity Inc., that Pixar has avoided stagnation because they’ve created mechanisms that force them to constantly fight their own mental models, and put Pixar’s collective heads in a different frame of mind.

The most innovative leaders are reframers, and unleash innovation in their organizations by asking new questions, and/or immerse themselves in the environment they wish to understand. I’ve written extensively about asking better questions to get better answers, here I’ll extend on that to include immersion.

But first…

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How do you source ideas for innovation out of customers?

in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

How do you source ideas for innovation out of customers?

Phil McKinney asks: are customers a source of ideas for innovation?

Two years ago The Economist published a report where it indicated that by 2020 customers will replace R&D as the main source of new ideas. Well, apart from customers, there are many sources where companies can get ideas for innovation; partners, competitors, non-competing companies and employees.

Some of the most innovative ideas can come from customers themselves. But, you must involve them.…

5 toxic assumptions businesses make about people

in Innovation

undertstanding human behaviorThough business leaders say they want innovation, the vast majority hate the concept of creativity.

But as much as us innovators are fed up with this, the truth is that it isn’t the executives fault because people are wired to reject uncertainty; no matter how smart they appear to be. Fears and biases stand in the way of a boss that talks a good talk, but doesn’t walk.

But, there is a flip side to all of this: business-as-usual, no matter how predictable it may feel, is littered with biases too. …

5 reasons why ethnography is not going to become mainstream anytime soon

in Innovation

It seems that since design thinking and lean startup methodologies have a “talk to potential customers to validate” component, it may seem that ethnography is becoming mainstream.

It isn’t.

In my opinion, of all the innovation techniques available to an innovation practitioner, entrepreneur, marketer or business leader none is more important than getting out on the field and observing people in their domains. And, we have ways to go before this ever becomes mainstream.…