Using Insights to Inspire & Innovate

Entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovation labs at big companies in the modern world face a similar challenge - how to inspire their people to innovate in a way that will result in big ideas that actually make it out of the lab and into the marketplace.

Many of these talented individuals miss a critical step in their innovation process:  gathering the right consumer insights to inform their innovation & brainstorming process.

The right insights are NOT:  demographics, what consumers say they want.

Those kinds of insights don't help inform innovation, in fact they can stifle or mislead it.

The right insights come from: understanding your target consumer unmet needs, observing the habits of the extreme users of your existing products,  understanding your customer's perspective by putting yourself in their shoes as they shop for and use your product.

This last one is really important - what is it like to be a mom toting three kids to the grocery store to shop for your product?  What is it like when she gets home and tries to open your product, figure out how to start using your product?  What could make her experience more rewarding for her?

It's easy to forget that how you see the world is likely very different from the consumer you are trying to win over.

Once you understand their perspective - by literally putting yourself in their situation - you can put your product development hat back on and create a new product that will not only make it out of the lab successfully, but will win over customers again and again with your product alone, not a marketing gimmick or message.

Are you gathering the right insights to inspire you and your team?

Turning Insights Into Innovations to Change the World

Using business to combat poverty.  A powerful story about innovation and business changing the world to inspire you to take a break from your daily routine, like the Bangledeshi entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir did when he came up with the idea to bring mobile phones to poor people in his home country.

What insights to have you unique access to in your life – personal or organizational - to spur innovation?

The Idea:   Issue loans to current, reliable people in these poor villages in Bangledesh who would then use mobile telephones to earn money in their village as an income generating enterprise.

The Product:  GrameenPhone, which started with one phone and is now the leading telecommunications provider in Bangladesh.

The Insights:  

• The lives of poor people in Bangladesh are full of inconvenience associated with isolation and a lack of information. Farmers, for example, sell their products to an unscrupulous middleman who cheats them with an unreasonably low price, when a simple telephone call would have enabled them to find out what the market prices are or what prices the competitors are offering.

• Wasted time is a huge cost for everyone and poor people should not waste time —time is at least one resource poor people have the same amount everyday as rich people do.

• The costs of software and hardware decrease as volume rises.

• The value of a product increases when greater numbers of people use it. 

The Result: 

Saving valuable time for poor people and empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.

Read the full story here.