Innovation vs. Invention - Either way It’s Driven by the Customer
Take a few minutes, close the door, and read this post: A Sunday stroll around innovation and customers and voices
A day earlier, catching up on my tweets, I came across this one from Michael Krigsman, quoting the CEO of SAP. “It’s arrogant to dictate to customers. Better to ask them and respond to what they need.” Now that’s not rocket science or even unusual per se. What makes it worth remarking on is who’s doing the saying and where he’s doing it. SAP are the post-industrial (but still pre-information) society equivalent of Ford and “any colour you like so long as it’s black”. Why do I say that? Because SAP has come from a background pof manufacturing processes, not service processes, and the information needs are therefore expressed in the words of a past paradigm. Nevertheless, even SAP is talking about asking customers what they need.
Conversations with customers have to be dialogues, not monologues, as the Cluetrain guys reminded us. And this requires us to do some shifting. What do I mean? Take this for example:
I enjoy travelling, and I’ve been blessed to be in an occupation where travelling is part of the job. Whenever I travel, I spend time observing people, and many things delight me, many things serve to educate me, and some things never fail to amuse me. An example: where an English-speaking person is under the misapprehension that the person he is speaking to will suddenly understand everything just because he speaks English slowly and loudly to that person.
For a conversation to flourish, two things are necessary. A common language and a context in which to place the conversation.
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