Always a Fresh Face
Customer-led innovation is the new trend
By Candi S. Cross
From General Mills to Xerox, the concept of taking research and development to the manufacturing stage with customer-led needs and ideas is gaining momentum. Note that market-driven innovation relies on speed and effectiveness in traditional product development backed by focus groups, surveys and purchasing habits. Customer-led innovation relies on direct interaction between companies and consumers. For example, scientists and engineers from Xerox Innovation Group frequently meet with visitors to their showroom. Both on-site and webcast conversations have resulted in actual products, said Sophie Vandebroek, chief technology officer.
In general use, the term innovation simply means the introduction of something new; however, in the business world, it can be a corporate culture or a set of criteria to benchmark services and products. Refer to customer-led innovation and you have a tall order to fulfill.
“It’s when customers lead the design of your business processes, products, services and business models,” explains Patty Seybold, author of three books on the customer experience. “It’s when customers roll up their sleeves to co-design their products and your business. It’s when customers attract other customers to build a vital customer-centric ecosystem around your products and services. The good news is that customer-led innovation is one of the most predictably successful innovation processes. The bad news is that many managers and executives don’t yet believe in it. Today, that’s their loss. Ultimately, it may be their downfall.”
In 2008, Xerox filed 600 patents. Several of them relate to a new erasable paper project that will ultimately help reduce paper use by making printed images last only a day and, consequently, allowing paper to be used repeatedly. Where did the idea germinate? The customer’s direct needs, of course. Project director Peter Kazmeier, who handles material design for the company, took that evidence of need to the next level with the associated patents.
Vandebroek insists that companies must feed the innovation pipeline even in a lean business climate or they will face huge product gaps in future years when more manufacturers accept customer-led innovation as part of the business infrastructure.
“You cannot sacrifice tomorrow to save today,” said Vandebroek. “Our investment in innovation guarantees Xerox leadership in our core business and creates opportunity to grow in new markets.”
Consider the following tips by business leaders Michael Brooke and William Mills to become a successful innovator:
• Do not be tied to one designer. Obtain excellence by using the best possible specialized expertise for the innovation project concerned.
• Never give up pioneering. Be prepared to accept and learn from failures.
• Maintain complete honesty and openness in the relationship between the client and the designer.
• Make the product look the part.
• Look back on old, obsolete techniques; they could be a solution to a modern problem.
• Never launch a consumer or consumer-durable product until it has been tested by a consumer panel.
• Stay on budget track. Be sure you get value for money at each stage of development.
Read the article on innovation at Xerox Corp. in the June issue of IE Magazine.