It’s March! Can you believe it?
This month, we’re tackling the idea of innovation. Too often, we believe, innovation is housed in the R&D department. It’s cloaked in secrecy until it becomes something – a new product? A stunning ad?
That’s not the type of innovation we’re interested in.
We’re interested in how companies innovate to keep customers by staying ahead of the market. We’re interested in how innovation pushes the entire human race forward. We’re interested in how often innovators fail.
In our Customer Experience Investigations™ we see a lot of innovation. Sometimes, to the chagrin of our clients, it’s happening more with their competitors or even their customers creating workarounds than within the company’s own walls. Whether it’s how customers paid for shipping, like Amazon’s Prime Membership, or how we watched tv, like tivo, it’s all about innovation.
Plus, since Lisa Diomede and I will be attending the SXSW Interactive Conference, we’re hoping to find some great examples of innovation. We’re hoping, but not necessarily hopeful. 
Innovation is a big part of improving the customer experience, whether it’s obvious or not. So we’re unpacking the idea and looking for what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just being ignored! Here are a few ideas we’ll be investigating:
- Growing companies who are faced with scaling their operations, hiring new staff, finding new customers and staying cashflow positive struggle with how and when to innovate. They are hungry and aware of what’s happening in the market and with their customers’ expectations, but can’t always keep up with dedicated staff and resources to innovate. What should they do?
- Where does innovation fit in a cost-sensitive market? How do value brands keep up?
- When is too much innovation off-putting to customers? Change is scary.
- Which brands took the ordinary and created the extraordinary through innovation?
I personally cannot wait to dig in more. Let’s start with you. Investigative minds want to know:
What brands make your jaw drop from cool innovations? What brands are falling behind? How do you find time to innovate?
Photo credit: Vermin Inc via Creative Commons license
