"Every company wants to be innovative. Most approach this by trying to hire highly creative specialists or by spinning up a new "innovation" team. But companies that consistently innovate do something different: They build company-wide systems focused on customer solutions and make innovation part of everyday business. Smart organizations focus on building reliable processes to understand customers, test assumptions, and scale what works."
"When someone says they "know" what customers want, we dig deeper. Who did you talk to? How long ago did you talk to them? In our business reviews, we've made it mandatory for every business review to include not only operational performance, but also market updates and competitive intelligence. We want to push people to ask more questions, not just review more slides."
"Most innovation fails because we solve the wrong problems. Teams focus on how customers are using a product instead of understanding what they're trying to achieve. Take time to sit with customers and understand their complete workflows-which teams they interact with, how they'd be impacted by process changes, and identifying opportunities to improve. Go deeper than marketing personas to understand the decision makers who will ultimately sign off on new programs."
Companies that consistently deliver innovation build company-wide systems that focus on customer solutions and embed innovation into everyday operations. They create repeatable processes to understand customers, test assumptions, and scale what works. Teams are required to challenge assumptions by using current customer data, market updates, and competitive intelligence in business reviews. Organizations that prioritize customer workflows over product usage identify the right problems and decision makers. Direct customer engagement reveals complete workflows, stakeholder impacts, and improvement opportunities. A culture of questioning and data-backed opinions drives better problem definition, experimentation, and adoption of validated solutions.
Read at Fast Company
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