To succeed at innovation you need to understand what your customer wants. But most companies don’t agree about what a customer need is. How then can they determine what a customer needs and create those products if they cannot agree on what constitutes customer needs in the first place? The answer is they can’t -- which causes the innovation process to fail.
It’s not enough just to solicit opinions. Getting the right information -- the right customer inputs -- is crucial. You need a statement of what you are after. The question becomes how you create this kind of statement. Again, there are rules companies can follow that will help them capture customer requirements the correct way.
First, the statement must reflect the customer’s definition of value, the customer’s perspective -- and not interpret or translate these things, which can create an inaccurate or misleading statement. Companies must focus on the jobs customers are trying to get done -- that is, they must focus on the customers’ fundamental goals, as well as the problems customers wish to solve.
Thinking this way requires companies to shift attention from their products and toward gaining an understanding of the jobs customers use their products or services to fulfill. For instance, a vinyl record, a CD and an MP3 file all help customers store music -- the storing is the job these products solve. The point, in this case, would be to focus on the job of storing music, which would help companies discover and create new ways to get this job done better. This is, of course, innovation’s essence.
Focusing on jobs also ensures that the customer needs that companies discover will have universal relevance. The needs that customers identify -- how to get a job done better or faster, for instance -- will be valid across geographies and other demographics. Surgeons around the world have the same requirements for performing surgeries; farmers have the same requirements for farming corn; retirees have the same needs for managing finances. In each instance, individuals are trying to get the same job done -- they execute it the same way and measure success in common fashion.
Second, the statement must have continuing relevancy. If the underlying need for a product changes quickly, then it becomes a moving target and therefore impossible to hit. Intended meaning should be a constant: Without it, companies will not be able to decide what features to include in a product that may take three to five years to bring to market. Therefore, the requirement statement should not include mentions of a technology, solution or product or service feature. To innovate is to devise solutions that address unmet customer needs. Solutions satisfy those needs. So, when asking customers their requirements, companies must focus only on those requirements, and not mention solutions.
Requirement statements that contain solutions are not stable over time and can quickly become obsolete. If a company manufacturing music media in the 1970s, for instance, believed that a solution for customers wanting records that would hold more songs would be a bigger record, then they would have -- in all likelihood -- gone ahead and created a larger record. But years later, customers do not envision records as being part of the solution in solving their music storage problems.
But if this music media company had recognized that its customers really wanted to increase the number of songs they could store, it would have looked beyond existing technologies to devise a next-generation solution, creating a longer-term target.
Third, the requirement statement cannot be ambiguous. It cannot include words that may be interpreted differently by customers or employees within the company. Companies must control for sources of variation. Terminology must be consistent. If a product is referred to as a “device” in one statement, it must be labeled that way in all statements and not, for instance, as a unit, a system, a tool. Introducing variables like this can prevent companies from understanding where their real priorities are.
Be wary of complex words, but also avoid abbreviations, symbols, acronyms and jargon. Ambiguity can also stem from adjectives. What does it mean that customers want a product or service to be more reliable, durable, comfortable or fresh? These words describe quality -- but the ideas behind them must be handled with precision. Adverbs can lead to the same interpretive problems as adjectives. What does it mean to do something “correctly?” Aim always for precision. Make the requirement statement brief, but make sure the thoughts it contains are specific. For instance, it’s not enough to say “minimize waste.” What are the causes of waste? Figure them out, then note them. A properly worded statement should indicate, ultimately, what the customer wants to achieve as the result of some action.
For more information on this topic is available at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2008/spring/14/