By: Zach Kunz
In case you forgot, we are talking about customer-driven innovation, which is fuelled by big data. Customer-driven innovation is different from traditional innovation, because it comes directly from the customer. It's perfect because there is no guesswork of if the idea will sell, the customers came up with the idea because it was something they wanted, and they will buy it. Maybe you're like me and learn best by examples. If so, you're in luck, because the following are five of the leading brands to use customer-driven innovation.
1. DHL
For those that don't know, DHL is a package delivery service. However, they are the leading brand for package delivery when it comes to utilizing customer-driven innovation to drive their business. DHL has three top-notch innovative spaces within their business. They have "DHL Innovation Center," "Innovation Logistics Solutions," and the one that specializes in customer-driven innovation, "Customer Innovation Workshops."
In their "Customer Innovation Workshops," DHL communicates and collaborates with many of its customers on problems and concerns that they have, brainstorming potential solutions to existing issues, and refining other ideas. From there, DHL will take the ideas they gather from the customers and send it to their "DHL Innovation Center" and "Innovation Logistics Solutions" to make those ideas a reality.
2. DeWALT
The next brand that utilizes customer-driven innovation well is DeWALT, who quite literally gets product ideas directly from their customers. As far as being straightforward about how customer-driven innovation can be applied, DeWALT is the easiest to understand. It has a community of industry professionals, contractors, regular customers, and designers who have access to communicate with one another to curate new tool ideas. Regular customers can submit their product ideas directly on the DeWALT website as well. From there, DeWALT will take the products that are different, useful, and profitable, and turn them into real tools. It even takes similar methods with its marketing and packaging, by outsourcing to its trusted community of over 10,000 users.
3. Manchester City F.C.
Similar to DeWALT using customer-driven innovation for marketing and packaging, one of the most famous soccer clubs in the world, Manchester City F.C., uses customer-driven innovation when it produces content to engage with its supporters. The club will often have new themes every year, create new content week to week, and overall want to encourage more people to become their fans. In order to do this well, Manchester City F.C. has taken its branding and content creation to its supporters, asking them what types of content they want to see and what messages they want to see portrayed by their team. The club then takes that information and creates exactly what the fans want to see. This helps them to maintain the fan base it currently has, while also ideally attracting more fans with similar taste.
4. Made.com
For Made.com, it does a lot of creating and shipping of its own. However, it does keep an eye out for promising innovators in the interior design space. The furniture and interior design store encourages everyday people and especially designers to submit their own pieces of work the website. From these submissions, made.com will allow other customers and designers to vote on products that they enjoy and would purchase. This is great for innovation, because the public shows its support and intent to buy the product before made.com even creates and carries the product. Once there is a clear winner among the submissions, the winner is created in mass quantity and sold by made.com. You can't get much better than that for customer-driven innovation.
5. LEGO
I saved my favorite of the five businesses for last, LEGO. Growing up, I always loved playing with LEGOs because of the endless possibilities that existed. My brother and I had over 1,000 individual pieces, maybe even close to 2,000. The great thing about LEGOs was that we could build for hours, tear it apart, and build something completely different for the next hour. It was always fun to see what new boat, airplane, castle, or car we were going to build.
LEGO has taken this very concept that I loved as a kid and turned it into a genius way of innovating its product line. Virtually identical to Made.com, LEGO allows anyone to submit new designs to its website. By submitting photos of what they built, people are entered into a contest of potential new LEGO IDEAS sets. Others who are actively engaged with LEGO vote on these new sets. The winner of the contest receives royalties for the new set, which LEGO will produce in mass production within a year, and get his or her name on the box of the set. This would have been a dream come true for me as a kid, and it's a dream come true for LEGO as well, who shouldn't have to worry about that well loved new set selling, because it utilized the power of customer-driven innovation.
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