How Customer's will Co-Design Your Company's Future

From the Innovation Weblog by Chuck Frey

"The difference between traditional and open innovation

Patricia Seybold, in her new book Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future, explains the difference between traditional 'inside-out' innovation and 'outside in' or customer-focused innovation:

Traditional innovation: 'Traditional 'inside-out' approaches to innovation assume that our subject matter experts (within our company) invent and design innovative new products to meet needs customers may not even realized they had. Then our marketing and advertising departments make prospective customers aware of those needs, wrap a brand experience around our innovative products, package and price those offerings... and bring them to market.'

Outside-in/customer-focused innovation: 'The 'outside-in' approach is to flip the innovation process around and assume that customers have outcomes that they want to achieve, they have deep knowledge about their own circumstances and contexts, and they are not happy about the way they have to do things today. They will innovate - with or without your help - to create better ways to do things or to design products and services that meet their specific needs.'

The difference between these two types of innovation is quite stark."

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