Innovation and research
October 12th, 2006
A couple of days ago, Ben had a post asking whether research and innovation are incompatible. The answer depends on the type of research you’re doing. Survey data and focus groups are useless when it comes to innovation, because those approaches aren’t designed to surface unarticulated needs. But “empathic” research, i.e., methodologies through which the organization seeks to understand the customer’s experience in a very personal way, can be quite powerful in generating fresh innovation insights.
For more on this subject, I encourage you to listen to my podcast interview with Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO from the BIF-2 conference last week. Jane gave a great talk on rethinking research for innovation, and we discuss empathic research, and specifically the experience of Bank of America in discovering a previously-unknown customer insight that led directly to an innovation. The interview can be accessed below.
(The time on this interview is 11:57)
Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Audioblogs & Podcasts, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator
Ben Martin and P.I.
Association exec Ben Martin, CAE is P.I.’s Architect of Participation. Jeff and Ben help clients harness the power of the Web through the strategic application of social tools.
New P.I. workshop
You may now register for The P.I. Business Model Innovation Workshop, which will take place on September 28-29, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia.
