Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Chapter 4. What Are They Really Thinking?: INSIGHT BLOCKAGES

The Key Dangers

• Only a few people have access to the voice of the customer.

• We are more focused on generating ideas than insights.

• There is no formal approach to generating insights.

• There is no global sensing network.

• A higher priority is placed on execution at the expense of insights.

Overview

While invention may be driven by ideas, innovation is driven by insights. You have to imagine for the customers something they can't ask for but that, once properly defined and communicated, they can then imagine for themselves. Most companies are built on a single customer insight that drives their early success; from there it gets much harder. Often as organizations grow, many people in the organization lose access to the voice of the customer and have a reduced ability to contribute insights to drive future product or service success. In addition, insight capture can become overly structured and formal, causing organizations to develop poor insights that focus the wrong solutions on the wrong problems of the wrong customers. We will look at methods for knocking down insight barriers and helping organizations generate better customer insights.

Four Lenses of Innovation

There are many different ways to look at generating insights. My favorite model because of its brevity and substance is the "Four Lenses of Innovation" from Innovation to the Core, by Rowan Gibson and Peter Skarzynski.

1. Challenging orthodoxies: Questioning deeply held dogmas ...