In the quest for innovation, companies all over the world are embracing the need for customer insight to drive product development, with many corporates investing in innovation labs with user testing facilities, and embarking on large scale customer research. These kinds of undertakings do not come cheap - so when you do choose to invest in customer research, how do you make sure you get the most out of your spend? Here's Wilson Fletcher's view on getting the most out of user research and the best way of implementing it to consistently drive successful innovation. As presented by Lauren Argenta at Wilson Fletcher's Sydney event on 7th April 2016.

1.
Insight-led innovation:
Seeing what others don’t
WILSON FLETCHER

2. We are seeing almost every industry investing in innovation at a faster, more significant pace than has been seen before.
Globally, businesses have recognised that markets have become digital and mobile. This often means that customer
behaviours, expectations and values no longer align with exisiting business models and processes.

3. In 2014, around US$1.6
trillion was spent on R&D
globally
‘‘
Unsurprisingly, organisations feel great pressure to understand and harness these rapidly evolving consumer behaviours.
To try and answer this need, we are seeing large amounts being invested into R&D…

4. 38% of the world’s largest
businesses have set up
innovation centres or labs
of some description
- Capgemini innovation centre report
‘‘
And the creation of innovation centres across many organisations both here and abroad…

5. Research shows that
more than 85% of new
products fail
‘‘
But research suggests that we aren’t seeing this investment translate into a wealth of more successful products and
services…

6. About 80 to 90 percent
of innovation centres fail,
and end up being a
massive waste of
resources
- Capgemini innovation centre report‘‘
Very few of these innovation centres are having the desired impact of aiding the organisation to gain a deeper, more timely
understanding of customer insight.

7. So why, even with the best intentions, are we not seeing increased creation of amazing, user-centric products and services?
At its core there are three main challenges to insight-led innovation. The first concerns…

8. CHALLENGE 1
The nature of innovation.

9. A lot of people focus on incremental innovation - improving what you have. This not what companies have in mind when
they invest millions in innovation labs. They are looking for disruptive potential. Innovation does disrupt sectors, but it does
so by changing customers’ behaviours, expectations and relationship with you. This can mean that your customer of
tomorrow has little in common with your customer of today. It’s very hard to design for a customer that doesn't exist yet.

10. CHALLENGE 2
The nature of insight.
Insight itself is an inherent challenge, because it can be defined and interpreted in so many ways…

11. Often, the word ‘insight’ is confused with ‘feedback’.
Feedback is how people respond to something. Insight is understanding why people respond the way they do.
To see what others don’t, you must ask the right questions informed by what you have observed and gathered.
Literal interpretation will not help to uncover insights for innovation.

12. CHALLENGE 3
Getting them to play nicely
The third challenge is finding an appropriate dynamic between the first two hurdles…

13. Often, businesses want to use customer research to validate a decision or course of action. But the role of insight in an
innovation programme is not to validate. It’s to identify where and how you can transform or design an experience which
benefits both your customers and your business.

14. ‘‘
Sometimes when you
innovate you make
mistakes. It is best to
admit them quickly and
get on with improving
your other innovations.
- Steve Jobs

15. INSIGHT-LED INNOVATION
Pitfalls
So, before we get into methods and solutions, what are some of the common pitfalls when embedding insight into the
innovation process? What can we learn from them?
How do we better join the dots to ensure that we see those elephants in the room before they become too costly?

16. The “faster horse”
conundrum
PITFALLS | ONE
Customers can’t tell you what they will want tomorrow. They can only tell you about today. Asking how to make something
better will only trap you in a cycle of imitation with your direct competitors rather than redefining a product or experience.
But just because customers can’t tell you what they want, doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from them.

17. PITFALLS | TWO
Solving business problems
not customer problems
Pitfall number 2 is focusing on solving business problems not customer problems.
Concentrating on business problems and technology solutions won’t always fulfil a customer need, no matter how much
effort you put into it.

18. PITFALLS | THREE
Looking to the competition
for the answers
Competitive reviews and market evaluations can be incredibly valuable to understanding trends and identifying
opportunities. However, they run the risk of being interpreted literally; e.g. they are doing this, so we should too.
This leads to copycat behaviours, which is not innovation. Learn from the comparative and competitive landscape but
don’t emulate it.

19. PITFALLS | FOUR
Confirmation bias
Hearing ideas validated is incredibly comforting, but it won’t help you to uncover something new. In order to identify
something new, everyone working on an innovation programme needs to be open to hearing new things and willing to
accept data that contradicts established practices and long-held beliefs.

20. PITFALLS | FIVE
Confusing ease
with value
Everyone knows how to read a newspaper, use a landline telephone or watch TV. That hasn’t stopped the declining
influence, reach and value each of these over the last decade.
Research aiming to drive innovation should not focus on usability - that comes much, much later. The critical question to
answer is how much value does this bring to our target market.

21. INSIGHT-LED INNOVATION
Tips and tricks

22. Understanding
the context
HOW WE DO IT | ONE
At the start of many programmes, we have a good view of what customers are doing. A good way to deepen that
understanding is to uncover “when, where and how”.
You need to be close to the problem as possible to identify opportunities.

23. Mapping value
HOW WE DO IT | TWO
When you’ve got a stack of ideas and you’re not sure where to start, value mapping exercises with a sample of the target
market allow you to see the relative value of different concepts.
Once you understand what people value, turn your attention to why they value it. Your customers are not going to be able
to tell you what they need, but they can tell you what they are missing.

24. Reverse pitch
HOW WE DO IT | THREE
Many research sessions are essentially pitches. A product is presented and feedback is elicited in the hope that most of the
candidates will indicate a preference for it. To understand why users like the offer, a good approach is to reverse this
process. Give candidates the building blocks of your product. Then ask them to pitch it back to you. The results are often
fascinating, revealing value hierarchies and the motivations behind them.

25. Symbiosis
HOW WE DO IT | FOUR
Insight-led innovation is not simply about understanding customers. Nor is it about establishing what works. At the heart of
it is the need to establish business/product/market fit.
You are looking for the overlap between customer need and business benefit.

26. Thinking time
HOW WE DO IT | FIVE
??
In today’s market, we all need everything yesterday. These time pressures mean opportunities can sometimes be
overlooked entirely.
To ensure that you uncover the meaning behind what your users are saying, you need to have time: thinking time. This too
often gets diminished, because it is not seen to be as important as other activities.

27. ‘‘ We cannot solve a problem by
using the same kind of thinking we
used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

28. Thank you