While in-person interviews remain the “gold standard,” we’ve found 10 advantages to virtual voice-of-customer. These include 1) lower cost, 2) reaching dispersed customers, 3) viewable probing tips, 4) colleague training, 5) probing suggestions, 6) note-taker assistance, 7) rapid debriefing, 8) easier scheduling, 9) low-impact cancellations, and 10) greater project speed. If you’re not taking advantage of these advantages, you’re forfeiting effectiveness and efficiency in your customer insight efforts.
Download our white paper at www.virtualvoc.com
The Vitality Index–% of sales from new products—doesn’t tell you how to improve. Increase your R&D staffing levels? Hire more marketing people? Improve gate reviews? It’s hard to say. Imagine guessing which car pedal will make you go faster. And then waiting years to learn if you were right (since the Vitality Index is a badly-lagging indicator). Maybe it’s time to supplement your Vitality index with two new metrics: See white paper, New Innovation Metrics. These leading indicators will tell you how to accelerate your innovation success right now. Hit the right pedal and leave skid marks.
More in article, It’s Time for New Innovation Metrics
This is one of the 48—count ‘em—48 laws of Jobs-to-be-done philosophy in Scott Burleson’s book, The Statue in the Stone. Just as Michelangelo “removed everything that wasn’t David,” so successful new-product innovators seek to remove whatever is preventing perfection in the job that customers “hire” their product to improve. Good news for B2B innovators: Customers can tell you exactly what to remove in astonishing detail… where to chisel, where to sand, where to polish… but only if you know how to ask.
More at Dan Adams interviews Scott Burleson about his new book, The Statue in the Stone
This webinar is the first in a new series of webinars hosted by AIM president, Dan Adams and Jim de Vries, founder and managing partner of Enhance International Group. In this webinar, “deRisking Execution Priorities within 30-days“, Dan and Jim share powerful approaches to transform uncertainties into certainties, saving time and money. View this recorded ... Read More
This is how a business leader described his experience with big R&D projects to me. The project that looked wonderful at first often perished later, as the facts were slowly and painfully revealed. During your project reviews, does management feel like you’re saying, “Trust me, you’ll love this”? There’s a better way, one that puts you and management on the same team. It starts with laying out all your project assumptions and rating them for likely impact and certainty. Then you follow a CheckPoint plan to investigate the critical ones. There’s a short video on this at www.deriskprojects.com.
More in article, How to de-risk projects and overcome management doubt.
In 1965, DuPont scientist Stephanie Kwolek synthesized the first Kevlar polymer, an amazing fiber with five times the strength of steel. DuPont invested several hundred million dollars to commercialize the technology for tire cords, with disappointing results. It would be another decade before the company found its first major market for this material: bullet-proof vests. ... Read More
