innovation

Innovate for the Customer First

I’ve been scratching an entrepreneurial itch since the very beginning of my career. The biggest takeaway from my undertakings has been the importance of having an extreme focus on the product solving a real problem. Not just any problem – a critical one.

I found, particularly when first evaluating the potential of the business, nearly all potential customers will provide positive feedback that is almost exactly want you want to hear. This is either because they don’t want to be discouraging, or because the idea really does sound useful to them. But even in that case, when it eventually comes time to fork over real money for the product or service, they get cold feet.

This lesson became crystallized shortly after I set aside my last project, and was gifted the excellent book All in Startup. In it, Diana Kander explains that it’s not enough to build a product for a customer that says they want it. The product must solve a true migraine problem – their biggest problem that is literally keeping them up at night. In fact, since they need your solution so badly, they should be practically begging if they can pay for the rough-around-the-edges unproven prototype.

If you aren’t solving that type of problem for someone, everything is going to be far more difficult, if not impossible, when it comes time to make your first sales and grow your customer base.

I realized that this is exactly the problem I faced in both of my startup endeavors.

For Confidently, every recent college grad loved the idea of a job search engine exclusive to entry-level positions, but the reality is that finding entry level positions with current resources was not much of a problem at all. For Obitium, many funeral directors explained they faced an important problem of declining subscribers in local newspapers. They had a need for other obituary publication solutions for their clients. But when it came down to paying for a new platform, the problem just wasn’t (yet) as dire as they said.

If it isn’t keeping you up at night, do you really need pay for an unproven solution?

I was reminded again of this important lesson during a recent introduction to the concept of design thinking in support a intrepreneurial innovation project. I was introduced to David M. Kelley’s IDEO framework. In it, desirability, feasibility, and viability are three core elements of an innovation. But it is emphasized that the idea must start with desirability – customer first. What problem are you solving and for whom? Always keep the customer’s need top of mind.

https://designthinking.ideo.com/

When innovating, it is natural for your thinking to drift toward what is possible given your current resources, limitations, and culture (feasibility). This makes it easier to envision the path to implementation. But this shortcut leads you away from the core of true innovation, and what makes innovating difficult, which is developing an entirely new approach to solving a migraine problem for the customer. Without this, your innovation will remain unused, collecting dust, while your customer loses sleep.

Have You Been Gamified?

A gamer. Likely the first image that flashes through your head is a recluse in a dimly lit room, carefully constructing the perfect fortress or barking orders into a headset – directing a squadron of cybernated soldiers to sweet, sweet victory. But, in many ways, you’re probably more of a gamer than you think.

Games have been around forever. The oldest chess piece dates from 465 A.D., excavated in a palace basement in Albania. From family game night to a round of “I Spy” or “20 Questions” to pass time on a road trip – you’ve been gaming since your adolescent years. In today’s culture, friendly competition has infected so many aspects of our lives. In the last few months you may have participated in a State of the Union drinking game, picked the Oscars, and filled in your annual March Madness bracket. It was hardly surprising that coinciding with the start of the “Big Dance,” an explosion of alternate brackets began circling the social-sphere, inspiring debates on everything from the best Disney movies to the best Mariah Carey singles.

We participate in these mini-games to increase our interest in things and events that, otherwise, may only command a passing glance in our busy lives. I just checked my fantasy baseball team. Without the game, who’s achieving the most success on the diamond would have never wandered through my brain today, or for matter, the past few years. The digital world has connected us to so much information, so much entertainment, and so many possibilities, that the best way for anything to capture our attention is to become a game.

Games create competition, and give us someone to cheer on. The only reason you can name an alpine skier or a figure skater is because you watched the Olympics and were following your country’s team, which, uncoincidentally, dominates Olympic coverage in your region.

In business, this can be used to your advantage. Gamification, or, the application of game design to non-game contexts, is an important new technique for success in today’s fast-paced digital world. As a consumer, you’ve been gamified already – whether you realize it or not. From the digital badges on Nike+, to the progress bar in your Mint account, to your current Starbucks level. These game mechanics, among others, are being consistently employed by market-leaders in their product development to increase engagement and attention among their customer base. If you’re not thinking about gamification in your product design – you should be.

Perhaps more importantly, adding elements of competition to internal projects can capture interest and boost productivity for you and your employees. This is often overlooked as leadership obsesses and struggles over how to halt decreases in productivity caused by new-age digital distractions. Instead, consider how you can borrow from the elements that make these distractions so distracting in the first place, and implement them into your project management and ongoing operational activities.

Want to learn more? There’s even an online Wharton course offered in Gamification. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself watching a progress bar move a little closer to completion after each assignment.