Consumer Focused vs. Consumer Driven

I recently found myself in an interesting dialogue with a colleague. I mentioned that successful innovation stems from being focused on the consumer. He agreed but within moments mentioned the phrase “consumer-driven”. I pointed out that I disagreed with him on this, and a perplexed look immediately crossed his face. “But you just said…”, he stated, thinking he was merely restating my original premise. After much discussion, we agreed that this is much more than semantics.

Voice of the Consumer (VOC) research is consumer driven. Purists of this tool insist that anything spoken by a consumer be captured verbatim, and maintained as such throughout the ideation and development process. The belief here is that if you deliver on what consumers say they want, you will be wildly successful. In other words, develop a process where the consumers “drive” what it is provided to the marketplace.

I don’t buy it. I have seen too many focus groups and one on one interviews where the researcher asks consumers “If you could have anything you want, what would you ask for?” That “ground-breaking” question is more often than not met with a room full of blank stares. If answers are provided, they typically reflect an existing product that has been seen by the respondent, but not owned.

The fundamental flaw with “consumer driven” is that your average consumer is not an inventor, a dreamer, or a visionary. Unlike product managers, their world does not revolve around specific products or categories.

Now contrast that with “consumer focused” innovation. To focus on something is to pay it special attention and to understand it from as many perspectives as possible. That still involves interaction with the consumer, but it is not limited to their exact requests. I can learn as much about a person sometimes from what they don’t say as from what they do say. I seldom conduct a contextual interview but what I see people contradicting their own words with their actions. Seeing what they own, how they live, how they entertain themselves, how they interact with their families or communities can all be very telling in understanding what new product or service would best resonate with them.

As product developers and marketers, we need to embrace this. If we allow consumers to drive our efforts, we will be limited to the types of incremental improvements that they can readily envision. We’re the experts on our businesses. Let’s understand our consumers and the true needs they have. Then we can develop breakthrough products that truly delight them!

Business is like a kidney stone...

I woke up yesterday with back pain. While I've had a sore back before, this was different. I assumed I had "slept wrong" and that was the culprit. But as the day progressed I began to wonder if it was actually something else. I've watched my wife endure several bouts of kidney stones, and based on the pain she experienced, it was clear to me that this was not something that I wanted to emulate. So, I searched the internet to see if my condition is in fact kidney-stone based. I found the following image:

Granted, the body in this illustration is shaped differently than my own (thank goodness) and the marked pain is on the opposite side than I am experiencing. However, this (along with the accompanying text) was sufficient to convince me what I am in for. A quick call to my Dr. and I learned that there is nothing they can do to help me; I just have to drink lots of water and let it pass. They did write me a prescription for Vicadin (which probably makes me think this blog entry is much more clever than it really is), which was very helpful. They also asked me to "capture" the stone if at all possible, so they can see what caused it. That should be no problem, since the same web site that helped me to self diagnose, shows me how to capture the stone...

Once again, I can see where I will have to use some imagination to develop the tactics specific to my situation.

I woke up this morning feeling much better. I foolishly assumed that I must have passed the thing last night and I was over the hurdle. Guess what, mid-morning and the pain was completely back...

And that really does make me think of the current state of many businesses.

• There's much pain to be endured at the moment, but there's hope in sight.
• If we can survive the present the future holds great promise.
• There have been some false moments of hope, only to find that we still had a ways to go.

As my mother always used to say, "this too shall pass". In the meantime, pass the Vicadin.