Intelligence: Uncovering Innovation Opportunities Through Customer Involvement

Successful products are loved by customers and in synch with their needs and wishes. Harmony between product and customer can be pursued by developing appropriate knowledge about their conscious and latent expectations. The ability to skilfully capture the “voice of the customer” (VOC) is fundamental to direct innovative efforts and to identify valuable and attractive solutions. VOC research is a primary source of opportunities for innovation. Nowadays it is widely acknowledged that a company cannot innovate on its own. The term open innovation is frequently used to characterize a system in which innovation comes from extensive collaboration with external actors: customers should play a key role in firms’ networking efforts, given their decisive impact on the processes of adoption and diffusion of new products. Companies must, therefore, build a deep relationship with customers to be able to innovate in the right direction its value proposition. It should be noted, however, that some customers may represent an element of inertia towards radical innovations. As we shall see in this chapter, it is critical to recognize the variety of voices and types of customers and the diversity of their contributions to innovative processes.