Who are your best customers? The ones with the strongest loyalty? Or the ones with the highest profitability?. Or neither? I believe it is the latter. Your best customers are the ones who will help you multiply value growth in your business by showing you you to innovate your way into the future.
It is now becoming widely accepted that lead customers (those customers pushing your products to their boundaries and beyond, and making them work) and lead users (sadly not your customers but someone else’s) are great sources of the next big innovation. That’s why companies like P&G, EliLilly and Toyota use them extensively to drive what Patty Seybold calls Outside Innovation.
A great post by Nellie Lide on her NewPersuasion blog talks about what Anil Gupta and his Honey Bee Network are doing to seek out innovation in Indian communities.
I believe this is a very valid approach to actively seeking innovations and of course, innovators, in the places where they are most likely to be found. It is a great way around the problem of not knowing who your lead customers & lead-users are.
What do you think? Is Outside Innovation used in your company? How do you find your lead-customers?
Post a comment and get the conversation going.
Graham Hill
