Jack returned to his office after the leadership meeting. He felt exhilarated – he and Kim had actually pitched a new approach to innovation that started with the customer instead of the idea. And while they only got a lukewarm response … and a lot of skepticism … from the rest of the team, they did get approval and investment to move ahead.
Kim stopped by for a high-five. “Yes, we did it! What did you think?”
“I’m excited but also a bit daunted by the task ahead. What did we sign ourselves up for?” replied Jack. “And I can’t help but think there must be something we overlooked. It seems like an obvious approach to us. What are we missing?”
“Yes, it seems we have some convincing to do. How can we make a stronger case for investing in customer discovery?” Kim queried. She looked around Jack’s office. He was the head of marketing and during his 10-year tenure, he had received the coveted Brand Impact award two years in a row. But it had been more than five years since they had made any splash like that in the marketplace.
“We’ve been talking about the strength of our operations. What about leveraging our brand? We need to go back to our roots. What does our brand mean and to whom? And is our brand promise still strong?” said Kim. “It seems that part of our innovation efforts as an established business should be to explore how we build our brand.”
Jack’s eyes lit up. He was proud of the work he and the team had done on the brand. The thought of building on that hard work was appealing, and the strength of their brand was a clear asset that set them apart from their competitors.
That was the problem with the self-service app innovation idea. It was a deviation from their brand message. Looking back on other innovation investments over the last five years, they all suffered from the same problem. Their customers were probably scratching their heads wondering why – why would our company provide those services that clearly didn’t fit.
“The lack of fit with our brand seems clear now, but how can we predict the misfits ahead of time?” asked Jack.
“That’s the beauty of the customer discovery approach. We can ask them for their input as we go instead of investing a lot of money in something before we test it on the market. And, as we discover customer pain points, we can ask them what they think about us solving them,” replied Kim. “We need to be disciplined. Our innovation investments need to harness all three components: solving a customer pain point, leveraging our operational capability and strengthening our brand.”
“I think that’s the missing piece! Our brand needs to be part of our innovation sandbox. Let’s run it by some of the others,” said Jack. They needed to build more support for their approach, and this might just be the piece that wins over the rest of the team.