Too often today, I see hype around various social interaction methods in the enterprise. Some companies even talk about internally adopting social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets may provide tremendous outlets for interacting with customers, gathering market intelligence, or promoting your brand. However, they can be more destructive than productive. Collaborative initiatives without a specific business purpose are disasters waiting to happen.
The future technology to IT to customer to market integration paradigm will require meaningful Web 2.0 technology to bring it all together. But the real issue here is, what do you want technology to do?
Below is a rough systematic process for using technology collaboration tools to innovate products or services that are also customer focused.
Conceive
- Collaborate (technology integration)
- Gather intelligence and research
- Ideas (customer immersion narrative) [FN1]
- Socialize (customers, employees, other stakeholders)
- Evaluate (emerging trends)
Develop
- Organize and prioritize
- Prototype (mock-ups, story boards, paper prototypes, actual working models)
- Pilot (finalize design, costing, materials or talent, etc.)
Market
- Market trial
- Refinement
- Sales Campaign
Where Can Technology Enable and Support Innovation Breakthroughs?
Technology tools can support collaboration, gathering marketing intelligence/research, prioritizing, and potentially piloting (engineering, design, etc.) a new product or service.
What are your thoughts? Is this a process model worth exploring?
======================
[FN1] See the three-part series that explores this topic in more detail. This series lays out initial guidance on understanding and then deploying customer-focused innovation.
- Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 1 of 3
- Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 2 of 3
- Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 3 of 3
For more details on the specifics of collaboration, social media, technology integration, and a look at creating a learning organization, see these posts:
ERP III – Is the Integration of Collaboration the Future of Enterprise Applications
https://www.iitrun.com/erp-iii-is-the-integration-of-collaboration-the-future-of-enterprise-applications
SAP, ERP III, SOA — Learning Organizations through Social Media Collaboration
https://www.iitrun.com/sap-erp-iii-soa-learning-organizations-through-social-media-collaboration
The entire innovation series is outlined below:
From Collaboration to Innovation to Market – Toward a Working Model
A process-oriented approach toward a process model for moving from collaboration to innovation to market. A first pass at integrating collaboration with a structured creative process and moving from idea (conceive) to design (develop) to market (sell).
=========================
Business Strategy and IT Strategy to Reproduce Apple Innovation
Overview of Apple Innovation and the focus on Jobs as the head of Apple. The Apple innovation secret (if it can be called that at all) is relentlessly pursuing improvements when you notice customer frustration. Where there is customer frustration or customer dissatisfaction, there is opportunity for gaining market share.
=========================
Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 1 of 3
Categorizing and defining the three primary types of corporate innovation. I have dubbed these as “Stoic” (minimalist or continuous improvement); the “Stretch” (striving for a known future state); and the “Maelstrom” (directionless, chaotic storm of ideas).
=========================
Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 2 of 3
Explaining the use of an “innovation narrative” in the “Stretch” type of innovation. This method produces a future state narrative that may not be achievable but provides a customer- and market-focused direction to aspire to for new products or services. That narrative acts as a future state blueprint for product or service development to move toward.
=========================
Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 3 of 3
Practical ideas and application of some methods to move toward an innovation culture. Some specific examples around how SAP (the big ERP vendor) has been successful at integrating their customers, vendors, and their internal organization into an extended development dialog are explored. Includes an overview of how this all ties into the collaboration model I started in a post entitled “From Collaboration to Innovation to Market – Toward a Working Model”
=========================
Process Execution of Business and IT Innovation
The final post in the series on innovation. After this same short review of all of the material covered in this series, the article suggests that you must appoint owners or champions at key points in the innovation process.
