Growth is the number one challenge on the minds' of CEOs, and innovation is the leading strategy to help companies grow. Watch this video to learn why involving the customer in the innovation process can impact companies' growth initiatives.
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend the annual SAMA (Strategic Account Management Association) conference, which was excellent. The conference theme was: Collaborate, Co-Create, Innovate.The concept of co-creation peaked my interest, but as I listened to various presenters, it seemed like some were mixing the concepts of co-creation and customer-focused innovation.
To me, customer-focused innovation is about listening to customers throughout the innovation process in order to produce something new that results in a win-win.
The lifetimes of once-core products, lines or even categories have their limits. But with the global economy changing locally on so many levels, old products can get new lives. We see B2B examples of this but one popular consumer brand story -- the Sony Walkman cassette player -- makes the point.
When considering transparency, it is natural to consider the associated risk. When considering transparency and risk, three different schools of thought emerge. Some believe that greater transparency causes more risk. Others say there is more risk with no transparency. The U-curve combines these scenarios.
"Strategy has to be based on information about markets, customers, and non-customers...Major changes always start outside an organization."
Peter Drucker 1999
As I mentioned last week, the idea of being a customer-focused company or having a customer-centric culture is all over the place. Over the past few months I've been looking into this concept in more detail and came upon an interesting finding - there is no coherent stream of academic research on being "customer focused" or "customer centric"!
