Outside Innovation: BRANDChild

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What is Outside Innovation?
It’s when customers lead the design of your business processes, products, services, and business models. It’s when customers roll up their sleeves to co-design their products and your business. It’s when customers attract other customers to build a vital customer-centric ecosystem around your products and services. The good news is that customer-led innovation is one of the most predictably successful innovation processes. The bad news is that many managers and executives don’t yet believe in it. Today, that’s their loss. Ultimately, it may be their downfall.

Observations

LEAD USERS
Eric von Hippel coined the term "lead users" to describe a group of both customers and non-customers who are passionate about getting certain things accomplished. They may not know or care about the products or services you offer. But they do care about their project or need. Lead users have already explored innovative ways to get things done. They're usually willing to share their approaches with others.
LEAD CUSTOMERS
I use the term "lead customers" to describe the small percentage of your current customers who are truly innovative. These may not be your most vocal customers, your most profitable customers, or your largest customers. But they are the customers who care deeply about the way in which your products or services could help them achieve something they care about.
LEAD CUSTOMERS AND LEAD USERS
We’ve spent the last 25 years identifying, interviewing, selecting, and grouping customers together to participate in our Customer Scenario® Mapping sessions. Over the years, we’ve learned how to identify the people who will contribute the most to a customer co-design session. These are the same kinds of people you should be recruiting when you set out to harness customer-led innovation.
HOW DO YOU WIN IN INNOVATION?
You no longer win by having the smartest engineers and scientists; you win by having the smartest customers!
CUSTOMER CO-DESIGN
In more than 25 years of business strategy consulting, we’ve found that customer co-design is a woefully under-used capability.

July 09, 2010

What’s the Future for Build-A-Bear?

This week, I took a new look at Build-A-Bear Workshop, the retailer that specializes in letting kids create their own stuffed animals. I’ve been a big fan since I discovered Build-A-Bear and wrote about it in BRANDchild. But I was discomfited to discover that this mid-size retailer’s stock has been in a downward slide for a number of months, despite a stronger Q1 performance in 2010. Build-A-Bear makes an interesting case study. It’s also a great brand that could use your help and insights! What’s your prescription for Build-A-Bear? How could this amazing brand continue to grow, increase its sales and profits and attract more young customers? Please give us your ideas. We’ll pass them along to Build-A-Bear’s execs and reward the best ideas with a Build-A-Bear gift certificate!

Build-a-Bear Workshop’s Challenge
Can an Early Innovator in Personalized Retail Experience Recapture Its Momentum?
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, July 8, 2010

Posted by Patty Seybold on July 09, 2010 in BRANDChild, Build-A-Bear, Business Innovation, Business Models, Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Customer Innovation, Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Internet/Online Strategy, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Outside Innovation

New ways to engage customers in co-designing your company's future - a weblog to complement the book, Outside Innovation, by Patty Seybold

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July 09, 2010

What’s the Future for Build-A-Bear?

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