By: Zach Kunz
There is no doubt that innovation is one of the major keys to success in the business world. According to a study done by Tamara Zimmerman for Accenture in 2015, "93% of enterprise-level executives said they think innovation is critical to their business, but only 34% said they believe they have a well-defined innovation strategy in place" (p. 3). Whether it's developing a new product, way of managing people, or shifting the way products are used and perceived, innovation sits at the core. What can you do to stay on top of the trends and ensure your business is part of that 34 percent?
In the past innovation has been a little like gambling. You set up an atmosphere where your employees are comfortable sharing their ideas and not being afraid to fail. You allow employees time to develop their own ideas and provide them with the resources they need. You spend money on research and development of ideas that seem promising (Dyer, 2011). In the end though, you are hoping that this will all culminate into something your consumers will actually want to pay for, and you can't really be sure until bringing the idea to market, despite your best efforts.
That uncertainty, while it may not go away completely, can be eliminated greatly by introducing and utilizing "consumer-driven innovation." This style of innovation is relatively new and has become a staple for top innovating brands. It allows the business to ensure customers will want the products they produce because the ideas themselves come from those customers. A slightly different way of looking at this is that instead of making something that you think your consumers will want, you instead take information directly from your consumers in order to know what they want.
It's surprising to me, honestly, that this consumer-driven innovation style has taken so long to be used by businesses since it is so effective. The correlation between consumer-driven innovation being utilized and the birth of social media, likely tells us why it has taken so long. Social listening is when individuals, or in this case businesses, are aware of what the general population, and ideally their target market, are talking about and what their desires are. Kristian Bannister explains, "Social media is fast becoming the go-to place for understanding consumer behavior, with social listening providing the necessary technology to listen to consumers at an unprecedented scale and speed" (2017). So, big data, which is available through social media, is proving to be very beneficial in creating new innovative ideas straight from the customers. All that is left for you, the entrepreneur, to do is to be in that social media space listening to ideas and making them a reality for your target markets.
References:
Bannister, K. (2017). Keeping Up With Your Customers: Shifting to Consumer-Driven Innovation. brandwatch. Retrieved from: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/customer-driven-innovation/
Dyer, J., Gregersen, H., Christensen, C.M. (2011). The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Zimmerman, T., Gardiner, S., & Wallis, J. (2015). A Guide to Self-Disruption: Driving Growth through Enterprise Innovation Strategies in the Digital Age. Retrieved from: https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/Microsites/Documents21/Accenture-Self-Disruption-Enterprise-Innovation-Strategies-Digital-Age.pdf
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