Of all the changes that the business world has faced in the last few years, none is more significant in reshaping how companies think about creating and delivering value to the market, than the informed and collaborative consumer.
For the better part of the 20th century, manufacturers and providers of services called all the shots, they enjoyed more power, relative to retailers and consumers. This picture changed with the advent of store and generic brands. As the size of retail operations increased, the balance of power shifted in favor of retailers. In some special cases, as in the case of Wal-Mart, the company no longer called the shots, the retailer did.
Power is shifting again today, this time from companies and retailers to consumers. Today's informed, connected, and web-savvy consumers are demanding and playing significantly more active roles in areas where only companies once functioned - such as price setting, product information, usage advice, advertising content, distribution, and packaging.
The informed, connected, collaborative customer can be both an opportunity and a threat.
Initially, more companies saw the threat, they could not understand the opportunity. That balance between threat and opportunity is beginning to change, especially in the area of innovation and co-creation of value. More companies are beginning to see and acknowledge the richness of interaction that is possible with new technology.
Innovation as a business and economic concept is not new. Companies like Polaroid, Gillette, Du Pont, and Apple have been practicing it for several decades. What is new is the urgency that developing an innovation competence has acquired and the realization that innovation need not be a solo venture, sponsored and nurtured exclusively within the four walls of an organization.
There is an emerging and growing awareness that opening the Innovation process, whereby a company connects with a large number of influences outside its physical boundaries, like universities, independent research labs, experts, and consumers will significantly improve the effectiveness of the entire co-creation of value process, from identification to delivery to post-consumption renewal.
Of all these open innovation connections, the one that interests me
most is customer-driven innovation.
Why? Because it represents a
fundamental and quantum shift in deciding which resources will be
utilized to create what value for whom!
I've decided to blog about customer-driven innovation and value co-creation for three main reasons:
- Dialogue and Discovery - new movements, whether
social or management thinking rarely arrive at our doorstep neatly
packaged, ready for plug and play use. They need to be understood and
discovered. Its my hope that my blog will provide this platform for
dialogue and discovery.
- Rigor and Depth - one liners, elevator speeches, and catch phrases are useful, but not when we are learning something new. That's when we need rigor and depth in our thinking and conversations. As Alexander Pope so eloquently put it:
A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep or taste not the Pyrean spring
These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain
But drinking deeply sobers us again
- Execution and Evolution - in the absence of enlightened implementation, moving to the next stage of understanding will be impossible. Encouraging and fostering best-in-class thinking will remain a major goal of this blog.
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