Tag Archives: customer experience journey

Understanding the Customer Journey is the key to innovating in an ecosystem

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evolving-innovation-a-new-formPaul and I have been exploring the interrelationships between innovation, ecosystems and platforms for a few weeks now.

Hopefully we’ve made the point that innovators must expand their horizons, because increasingly customers don’t want or need stand alone, discrete products as much as they want integrated, seamless, holistic solutions.

In fact I think we can easily predict that moderately interesting new innovations that integrate with existing ecosystems and platforms dominate disruptive new products that ignore ecosystems and platforms.

Why?  Customers don’t want to give up all that they have invested in the totality of their use of a solution or the experience when using the solution.  Even if the disruptive product or service delivers outsized benefits, if it causes the rest of the customers’ experience to suffer or degrade, many will choose to remain on a more integrated solution.

There’s a lot here to unpack. Continue reading →

The new innovation pursuit- extending the connected difference

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customer-experience

visual credit: www.janrain.com

We need to discover the new innovation pursuit; connecting, coherent and collaborative for customers to be provided seamless experiences

The pursuit of the ‘holy grail’ of business – is offering coherent, connected customer-facing solutions – will increasingly only be achieved through a combination effect of broader collaboration, working in ecosystems arrangements and coordinated through a platform design.

It is through this ‘combination effect’ there is further potential to deliver innovation that solves existing need or uncovers unmet ones that advance on the existing solutions in unexpected ways. Ones that can improve productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, taking the complexity out of our existing lives, giving us new experiences we connect into and highly value for what they provide and solve. (think Apple, Social Networks, Amazon, Uber or AirBnB)

The whole combination of crowds, customers, collaborators, competition, and co-creators can define and reshape complete offerings that are often unthinkable when you are operating in individual ways, so the potential to achieve a different scale, access, and engagement can be made. In our view

Innovation ecosystems can radically alter the value proposition. Continue reading →

New innovation realities require new mindsets and tools

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new-minsets-tools-and-skillsOur belief is that customer demand is changing. This will have a significant impact on the way organizations will have to adapt and change their innovation approaches in the future.

Jeffrey recently wrote this, initially on his blog site of Innovate on Purpose and reproduced here.

We felt this is an important point of understanding to bring into this dedicated site as it addresses one of the present sets of challenges we need to resolve, one of updating our innovation tools, thinking and methodologies.

Paul & I have started outlining the key needs of change here  in this dedicated site and will through an evolving series of blog posts about innovation, ecosystems, platforms discuss these changes and needs to respond to what we believe customers will ultimately demand:  seamless experiences.

Our view is as products and services proliferate and basic needs are met, customers become more sophisticated and more demanding, desiring products, services and business models that work together and don’t require configuration, integration or effort by the consumer to “make them work”.  Customers and consumers increasingly expect a seamless experience when using a new product.  If the product or service requires the customer to combine products, read manuals, acquire other products or services to make the solution work, the new product is likely to receive far less acclaim.

Understanding that, we should understand also that the tools that once helped innovators create new products aren’t the same tools that we need today when customers demand seamless experiences.  Or, put another way, those original tools are still valuable, but by themselves they solve only a small portion of the overall challenge. Let us here outline some of the present constraints or limitations to challenge and recognize our needs to shift our present thinking

Continue reading →