Outside Innovation: Nature Education’s Scitable.com

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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.

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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.

September 08, 2011

What Do Customers Want to DO on Your Web Site?

We’ve been thinking a lot about web site design recently. In particular, how to ensure that your prospects and customers know what they can DO on your site and understand how what you offer fits with their needs. One of our favorite reference sites is Nature Education’s Scitable.com. You’ll notice that at the top right of their home page is a simple box that lists 4 things you can DO on their science library and personal learning web site:

- Browse & Search Science Articles
- Get Help or Connect with Peers
- Build an Online Classroom
- Contribute & Share Your Content

Ronni Marshak uses an analogy to describe the need for this kind of clear navigation on your home page. She calls it “Book a Load, Track a Load.”

Promoting Your Sweet Spot
Make Sure Your Web Site Makes It Easy for Customers to Do What They Most Likely Want to Do
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, September 1, 2011

Posted by Patty Seybold on September 08, 2011 in Customer Experience, Customer Scenario(R) Mapping, Design, Nature Education’s Scitable.com | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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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Nature Education’s Scitable.com

September 08, 2011

What Do Customers Want to DO on Your Web Site?

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Patricia Seybold Group Web Site

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