There is a simple reason why we must change the way we innovate: Survival.

The Great Recession has spawned competition from some unexpected places. Countries that were never considered as sources of innovation are now uncovering new markets and creating solutions to real business problems. Technology is not only making the world flatter, it is making it smaller and more responsive.

Business downturns are happening more frequently and causing more disruption, including jobless recoveries. With this compression of the business cycle comes shorter product lifecycles and the imperative to make the entire product planning and development process more agile.

Finally, the silo approach to innovation that is so prevalent today is not conducive to making customer-oriented products. Companies need to make transparency and open communication their number one focus, both internally and externally.

Only when data are shared, decision criteria are understood, and finger pointing is eliminated can companies build products that customers truly need and build them quickly.

No doubt you’ve been in meetings where a customer has said something like, “This would be an unbeatable product if only it _______.” I’ll let you fill in the blank.

Unless it’s a top-tier customer with lots of money at stake, the chance of one of these suggestions turning into a product feature is very, very small. Yet, companies receive ideas from customers all the time. And many of them are quite good.

Why? Because customers know what they need from the products they buy.

But even if individual ideas are not feature worthy, combining and analyzing them may reveal trends or needs you hadn’t considered before. And those revelations could lead to some competitive products and capabilities.
Ingredient number 3 in this series on turning innovation into a core business process is simple: Embrace the voice of your customer.

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A product management consulting group called Brainmates did an interesting survey on social media and product management.

The survey was a series of questions that all start with “Do you use social media to…?” The answers were yes, yes and yes. We use social media for everything… except to get feedback about our products.

A survey like this has a lot of bias, because answering “yes” equates to “I’m doing my job” and answering “no” could mean “I may be missing something”. The natural inclination is to respond with yes, which makes the anomaly statistic even more compelling.

We all know (I hope) that we should be using social, collaborative tools to gather feedback from our customers that impact product development, so why aren’t we?
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Suggestion boxes are a great tool in a restaurant, spa or car dealership. It allows customers to submit anonymous tips on whimsical non-timely items that could improve service.

Now BP is using this proven technique on a much larger scale. So far they’ve accepted 35,000 ideas on how to stop the flow of oil in the Gulf in a giant suggestion box manned by 70 staffers.

At Accept Corporation, we don’t know much about oil, but we do have a suggestion based on our expertise in ideation; BP, improve your suggestion box.
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We announced today that we have secured $17M in Series B funding.  In today’s economy, any funding announcement is a huge deal, however, what makes this announcement extra special to us, is that it’s because of our outstanding customers who continue to support us, and who are critical in our continued growth and success.    Our customers and their successes are the real stories, and it’s what makes us all work harder to continue to provide outstanding products for them.  Thank you to all our customers for this acheivement, this is your win too!