Outside Innovation - Page 2

The good point about having customers involved in the

The five types of customers who
1. innovation process is your products, services and other solutions
can help your firm innovate
play a supporting role rather than becoming the focus of
attention. This is good. Companies tend to make their offerings
the focal point of everything they do but customers really only
There are five distinct groups of people you should be attempting
care about what gets done. Customers are willing to utilize any
to recruit when you set out to harness customer-led innovation:
products or any services which helps them close the gap
Lead Customers between what they have and what they actually need.
1
People who invent new solutions by themselves There are five different roles customers can play in helping
Contributors shape your company’s innovation projects:
2
Those who are happy to donate their work to help
5 Customer Groups 1 Lead Customers
Consultants
3
People with deep expertise who offer insights These are the people who take the initiative and invent some
Guides new solutions which are better suited to their needs than what
4
Advisors who help others to solve their problems you currently offer. If you watch these people and take note of
Promoters what they develop, you may come up with some hybrid products
5 which are well worth commercializing. It makes very good sense
Enthusiasts about your brand and your products
to do everything possible to encourage these people so you
should:
The secret of outside innovation is to find ways for your
organization to engage as many of these five groups of people as n Try and provide them with a toolkit which will enable them to
possible and feasible. Your goal should be to redesign your extend, modify or personalize your normal products and
entire business from the outside in with the help of your most services. Sponsor their research by providing lead customers
visionary customers. with your product and an open invitation to innovate together.
n Get alongside them and see what they’re thinking, what
they’re doing and what outcomes they especially want to
The traditional approach to innovation is something like this:
achieve. All of this will be invaluable information.
Product Development Come up with something new and Case Study #1 – LEGO Group
figure out how to produce it
The Lego Group is one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers
Brand Development Decide how you will differentiate it making Lego bricks for construction projects. It took careful
notice when Fred Martin, a graduate student at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a
Distribution Model Determine the optimum channel
of distribution for the product “programmable brick” which could be used to make Lego toys
(like robots) that can move without any wires being attached. In
Customer Audience Identify which markets to target 1997, the company brought to the market a new product called
Lego Mindstorms. It turned out to become the best-selling
product in the company’s entire history. Soon adult hackers and
When you involve customers in your development process,
other hobbyists were using Lego Mindstorms in an incredible
however, the innovation process changes quite noticeably. It
array of applications including soda machines, blackjack dealers
then becomes more along these lines:
and even toilet scrubbers. An entire community has sprung up
Customer around the product and customers are involved in developing the
Audience next generation product, Mindstorms NXT.

5 Customer Groups 2 Contributors

Customer’s Current Reality These are people who donate their work for the benefit of others.
Distribution For example, contributors may use your product to develop a
Innovate to close this gap Brand
Model Development new design and then offer their creation freely to others.
Customer’s Ideal Outcome Contributors are happy to act as debuggers or testers of new
products or new concepts. They enjoy seeing their ideas being
used by others. Contributors may get some reciprocal benefits,
but that’s not their main motivation. They enjoy being recognized
Product for their skills and talents. To encourage more contributors to
Development come forward:
n Develop communities where people with like interests can
find each other and communicate with each other.
Identify a customer audience and their ideal outcome
n Make it possible for the ideas put forward by contributors to be
Decide on the brand experience you want to create acknowledged, either by your company or by their
like-minded peers. The more appreciated a contributor feels,
Develop products and services which deliver that experience the more motivated her or she will become to generate even
more ideas in the future.
Determine the most appropriate channels of distribution