Turning Customer Insights and Collaboration into Winning Ideas

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.

- Dee Hock

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Looking for winning ideas for your small business? From customer collaboration? Absolutely. One of the things customers do quite well is understand their peers’ needs.

To quote Steve Jobs:

It can be really hard to design products by focus groups.

A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

This is certainly true in some instances, as it can be rewarding for brands to give their customers things they didn’t know they needed before they even ask ( the iPod is a perfect example).

But there is certainly a flip side to this however. Research says customers DO know what they want in many situations. In fact, a study from the Institute of Management Sciences paints a very interesting picture of just how important customer input is in the success of many businesses.

The crucial conclusions of the study were as follows:

1. In a study of 1,193 commercially successful innovations across nine industries, 737 (60%) came from customers (i.e., customers can have very innovative ideas).

2. User-created innovations have been successfully utilized to turn around “innovative slump periods.”

The first conclusion is certainly unexpected, isn’t it?

Always remember: Laws of Complaints as Sources of Remarkable Customer Insights

In the second conclusion, there is a unique case study that really paints a believable picture for just how valuable customer input is.

The example comes to us from 3M, a large multinational conglomerate well known for its innovation. 3M’s poorly performing Medical-Surgical Markets Division was looking for a way to kick start its lackluster innovation record in the 90s. In this case 3M formed two independent innovation seeking groups. The first was comprised of 3M employees. The second group was comprised of a group of users/ customers. The objective of both groups was to create new, winning product ideas.

When the results of these two groups (users vs. employees) were compared side-by-side in terms of revenue generated, the differences were quite drastic:

· User-lead innovations had average revenue of $146 million dollars (in 5 years).

· Internally generated innovations had average revenue of $18 million (for the same span of time).

Customers are very capable of coming up with the winning ideas more often than not. So, a simple recommendation. Start with the best customer insights you can get your hands on. Then utilize customers collaboration to help generate lots of good, winning ideas.

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.