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Print Edition StoriesWednesday, June 9, 2010
How I See It
Focus on the customer experience, not the technology
By Saul Kaplan, founder and chief catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory
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The imperative of our time is to unleash the power of innovation to solve the big social challenges of our time, including health care, education and energy. I think a lot about how to simplify the innovation narrative, make it more inclusive and become more experimental. Unleashing the power of innovation is about making customer experience central, focusing on outputs and looking up from our silos.
For starters we need a shared definition for innovation. Our rhetoric is all over the place and innovation has become a buzzword. Everything is an innovation and everyone is an innovator. When that happens, nothing and no one is. We conflate invention with innovation. They are not the same. A simple definition: Innovation is a better way to deliver value. It is not innovation until value is delivered one customer at a time. Often we don’t have to invent anything new to deliver value or solve a problem. We have to get better at reconfiguring and combining existing capabilities to deliver value. It is not technology that gets in the way of innovation, it is stubborn humans and organizations that resist change.
I am amazed at the number of innovation discussions where the voice of the end user is missing. Customer experience must be at the heart of any innovation and design process. Solutions are not about institutions, they are about patients, students, citizens and customers.
Far too much attention and resources are focused on the inputs versus the outputs of innovation. There are more ideas and new technologies than we could ever use or implement. There are too many inventions stuck in the garage or lab. We need to get more ideas and solutions off of the white board and into the real world. The imperative is more real-world experimentation. We need to try more stuff to see what works and is scalable. If you are like me, it drives you crazy when one branch of government has no idea about your interaction with the department right next door, and when one part of the health-care system can’t seem to share information or collaborate with any other part. Don’t get me started on education. It just makes me cry.
We have the inputs for innovation at our disposal. Our focus needs to shift to the outputs. It isn’t an innovation until value is delivered. Innovation should be measured based on outcomes.
Are there proof points that the solution works in the real world and at scale? We need to invest in platforms and tools to enable new model and system experiments. We need to organize safe zones where we can try new approaches in the real world designed around the end user.
We are in love with inputs. We have bought in to the invention narrative and haven’t been successful at replacing it with a compelling innovation story.
Making progress on the social challenges of our time also requires us to stop hunkering down in our silos. Excessive introspection, and self absorption will not enable system-level solutions.
We need to collaborate with unusual suspects across organizations, disciplines and sectors. System-level challenges like health care, education and energy require system-level experimentation and innovation. We have to make collaboration a natural act. It will only happen if we lean against the human tendency to stay in our silos, and we move beyond comfortable solutions that are within our sphere of influence.
The imperative is to enable collaborative innovation. We can design and scale new systems that take advantage of 21st century technology if we move beyond our normal tendency to stay entrenched within comfortable silos.
We are fortunate to live in an exciting time where big things are possible. It is the innovator’s day. We don’t have to invent anything new. Unleashing the power of innovation is about making customer experience central, focusing on outputs and looking up from our silos.
Saul Kaplan is a regular contributor to MHT. He can be reached at skap@businessinnovationfactory.com.
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