Innovation is a team sport. (And your customers are on your team.)

Everyone knows you can't innovate in a vacuum. Not so common wisdom is that you can't innovate without customers' input. Jennifer Rice put it this way:

- Brands that aren't in touch with their customers miss out on small but critical innovation opportunities.
- Brands that seek customer insight only along predetermined lines of thinking (like taste tests) can easily miss out on the real opportunities (like plastic sheets).

My recent experience agrees with Jennifer's take. My company recently invited 10 customers in for a look at our future product roadmap. Let's just say it looks markedly different now than it did 2 weeks ago. Glad we asked.

Comments

[olivier blanchard]

Bullseye.