One of the hardest things to do when defining what your business does is explaining it in the simplest of terms; the key challenge is distinguishing between features and benefits. The reason that this is so vitally important is that, in the words of User Onboarding: “People don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves.”

They use this ingenious sketch to illustrate the idea:

Spot on!

Who do you want your customers to become?

A few years ago Michael Schrage proposed an idea about innovation that really resonated with me, that innovation isn’t about transactions; it’s about transformation. So, the key question becomes what kind of customers are we trying to create?

To transform customers is to give them a superpower through our product or service. It isn’t about selling them a set of benefits that will resonate with them more so they open their pocket books, it’s about making them and their life more awesome!

Bottom line: Successful innovation is more of an act of empathy than an act of imposition. Ask yourself, who do you want your customers to become?

Also published on Medium.