Turn Customer Input
into Innovation
by Anthony W.Ulwick
Reprint r0201h
HBR Ca Study r0201a Bob’s Meltdown
Nicholas G.Carr
First Person r0201b Saving the Business Without Losing the Company
Carlos Ghosn
HBR at Large r0201c How Snapple Got Its Juice Back
John Deighton
Leading in Times of Trauma r0201d Jane E.Dutton,Peter J.Frost,Monica C.Worline,
Jacoba M.Lilius,and Jason M.Kanov
Getting It Right the Second Time r0201e Gabriel Szulanski and Sidney Winter
Inside Microsoft:Balancing Creativity and Discipline r0201f Robert J.Herbold
A New Game Plan for C Players r0201g
工程管理专业就业前景Beth Axelrod,Helen Handfield-Jones,and Ed Michaels
Tool Kit r0201j Selling the Brand Inside
Colin Mitchell
Copyright © 2002 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.All rights rerved.
5
very company prides itlf on giving customers what they ask for.Healthier fast-food prod-ucts.Nicotine-free cigarettes.Bigger engines in cars.After all,giving people what they want will guarantee success – or so you would think.Customers often de-scribe the solutions they want in end-less focus groups and surveys and then sit back and wait while R&D rolls up its collective sleeves and gets to work on materializing their ideas.How sad it is,then,when the product or rvice is finally introduced –and the only reac-tion in the marketplace is a resounding ker-flop.
多锻炼
Why does this happen? Becau com-panies go about listening to customers all wrong –so wrong,in fact,that they undermine innovation and,ultimately,the bottom line.
by Anthony W.Ulwick
My company has spent the past 12years watching organizations get mar-ket rearch and product development wrong –and right.The problem,when there is one,is simple: Companies ask their customers what they want.Cus-tomers offer solutions in the form of products or rvices.“I’d like a pi
cture or video phone,”they say,or,“I want to buy groceries on-line.”Companies then deliver the tangibles,and customers,
Turn
周记怎么写
Customer Input into Innovation
E
B e s t P r a c t i c e
Lots of companies ask customers what they’d like to e in new products and rvices–but they go about it all wrong.A new methodology for capturing customer input promis to galvanize
the innovation process.
B E S T P R A
C T I C E • Turn Customer Input into Innovation
I L L U S T R A T I O N : J A M E S E N D I C O T T
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harvard business review
very often and much to every-one’s chagrin,just don’t buy.The reason is also quite simple.Customers should not be trusted to come up with solutions;they aren’t expert or informed enough for that part of the innovation pro-cess.That’s what your R&D team is for.Rather,customers should be asked only for out-comes –that is,what they want a new product or rvice to do for them.Maybe they want to feel a clor bond to people when talking on the phone or to spend less time traveling to and from the gro-cery store.What form the so-lutions take should be up to you,and you alone.
Over the years,my col-leagues and I have developed a methodology for capturing customer input that focus on outcomes,not solutions.
The methodology gathers data in a way that reveals what the customer is really trying to achieve in using a product or rvice.Any company can execute this methodology on its own,following five steps.First,develop a different style of customer interview.Then conduct the interviews,organize the data,and rate the outcomes.Finally,u the informa-tion to spur in-hou innovation.In the following pages,we’ll look at each step in turn.
Before that,however,let’s confront one of the esntial implications of adopting this methodology.Using it means a company must admit to itlf that it is not entirely customer-driven.It is informed by customer input,yes,but it must also accept the heavy responsi-bility for coming up with new products and rvices on its own.That may not sound like a rious shift at first reading,but for many companies,it constitutes a radically different approach to market rearch and product development.In short,it marks a radical shift in strategy.
The Problem with
Listening to Customers
忆读书教案People in your organization may resist this new approach.But the fact is,the traditional approach of asking cus-tomers for solutions tends to undermine the innovation process.That’s becau most cust
omers have a very limited frame of reference.(To learn more about the psychology of customers’needs,e the sidebar “The Limitations of Listening,”by Harvard Business School professor Dorothy Leonard.)Customers only know what they have experienced.They cannot imagine what they don’t know about emergent tech-nologies,new materials,and the like.What customer,for example,would have asked for the microwave oven,Vel-cro,or Post-It Notes? At the time the transistor was being developed,radio and television manufacturers were still requesting improved vacuum tubes.
By asking your customers for solu-tions,then,your company turns into a counter clerk at a fast-food restaurant.You take orders and rush to fill them.Compare that with the waiters at a small café.They can listen to cus-tomers –“Do you have anything with fruit and chocolate for desrt?”and “The cod was too salty,but the sauce was wonderful”–and u this informa-tion to help the chef come up with new and inventive menu items that cus-tomers could only dream of.
There are veral concrete dangers of listening to customers too cloly.One of the is the tendency to make incre-mental,rather than bold,improvements that leave the field open for competi-tors.Kawasaki learned this lesson when it introduced its Jet Ski.At the time,the company dominated the market for recreational watercraft.When it asked urs what could be done to improve the Jet Ski
’s ride,customers requested
dations of a narrow group of customers called “lead urs”–customers who have an advanced understanding of a product and are experts in its u.Lead urs can offer product ideas,but since they are not average urs,the products that spring from their recommendations may have limited appeal.Consider what happened to U.S.Surgical,a medical in-strument manufacturer now owned by Tyco.Acting on recommendations from lead-ur surgeons,U.S.Surgical intro-duced a t of instruments that could rotate and move in many directions.The
january 2002
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Turn Customer Input into Innovation • B E S T P R A C T I C E
ver the last decade,much has been written about the importance of
便利店利润分析
listening to customers,and companies have spent millions of dollars trying to get inside the heads of their urs.Yet the question of how to listen to “the voice of the customer”remains a mat-ter of debate.Why? Becau what re-archers hear depends upon the degree to which customers know
what they are talking about.
Generally speaking,customers can say what they want if they are asked to make lections within a familiar prod-uct category.For example,Nissan De-sign managed to figure out –through questioning and using leather samples –how U.S.customers wanted their new cars to smell.Harley-Davidson’s devoted customers can talk about how their mo-torcycles sound.They are able to express what they want becau of their exten-sive experience with the product cate-gory and their educated,sophisticated tastes.
研究条件
But when customers are asked to make new product recommendations or to venture into territory about which they have limited or no knowledge,they tend
to run into at least two kinds of blocks.The first is what psychologists call “func-tional fixedness”–the human tendency to fixate on the way products or rvices are normally ud,making people un-able to imagine alternative functions.For example,people asked to perform a task requiring the u of a wire are strik-ingly less likely to think of unbending a paper clip if they are given the clip attached to papers than if they e the clip loo.Another problem is that peo-ple may not be able to conceive of a solu-tion becau they have apparently contra-dictory needs.Kimberly-Clark wrestled with this pro
blem when it developed Huggies diapers.Parents told rearchers they didn’t want their toddlers to wear diapers any more; at the same time,they didn’t want their children to wet the bed.The solution,the pull-up diaper,dealt with this contradiction.Asking customers to focus on desired outcomes is an effective way to deal with both of the psychological blocks.More-over,the further into the future or the unknown one goes,the more one has to eschew direct inquiry for open-ended questions or other techniques.A focus
on desired outcomes can help compa-nies identify difficult-to-articulate needs.After all,asking someone what he wants to drill a hole for is likely to yield better information than asking about the desired size of the drill bit.Another tech-nique,behavioral obrvation,is also uful in determining what customers are trying to achieve.In “Spark Innova-tion Through Empathic Design”(HBR November–December 1997),I advanced the notion that especially when cus-tomers are unaware of their behavior,obrvation can help uncover their unarticulated needs.When Nightline challenged product development com-pany IDEO to redesign the lowly shopping cart,anthropologists took note of unsafe and inefficient –but unconscious –usage in grocery stores.As a result,the redesigned cart had such features as small removable baskets that customers could take to ctions of the store,fill,and then replace in the cart that they had left centrally parked.How important is the voice of t
he customer? Very.But discerning the difference between what customers are able to say and what they want,and then acting on tho unspoken desires,demands that companies learn to go well beyond listening.
The Limitations of Listening
by Dorothy Leonard
Dorothy Leonard is the William J.Abernathy Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School a padding on the vehicle’s sides to make the standing position more com-fortable.It never occurred to them to re-quest a ated watercraft.The company focud on giving customers what they asked for,while other manufacturers began to develop ated models that since have bumped Kawasaki –famed for its motorcycles,which are never rid-den standing –from its leading market position.
Meeting customer demands to the letter also tends to result in “me-too”products.Customers merely ask for missing features that other manufac-turers already offer.In the mid-1980s,for example,market studies conducted by U.S.automakers Ford,Chrysler,and GM revealed that customers wanted cup holders in their vehicles.Becau Japane manufacturers had provided this feature for years,when
American companies finally added the frequently requested cup holders,none gained an advantage; customers merely said,“It’s about time.”
Another danger aris in the common practice of listening to the recommen-O
instruments were unveiled with fanfare at a national medical some orders at the show,amounted to less than 5%.ticated.the improvements,instruments too difficult to u.
Finally,a company may be want “new and improved”functions.such new features,begin to rent panies,for example,operate phisticated ur laboratories and ploy keystroke-tracking technology ments into their products.Yet urs avail themlves of less than 10%the software’s overall capability – for upgrades.
to customers and delivering on wishes.nies,we found that 71%their customers want.and fail to e the results they for,conclude that customers don’t know what they want.
苁蓉功效
How to Focus on Outcomes
社会主义和谐社会odology in detail,Cordis Corporation,a medical manufacturer in Florida.In 1993,company’s annual sales were $lion,$20 a share.At the time,than a 1%plasty balloons,uct strategy to achieve at least a 5%in market share.
Using our methodology,views with cardiologists,nurs,other laboratory personnel.8
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