Product innovation is the process of creating new or improved products that offer more value to customers and solve their problems. It can help you gain a competitive edge, increase your market share, and generate more revenue. But how can you use product innovation to disrupt your industry and stand out from the crowd? Here are some tips and examples to inspire you.
The first step to product innovation is to understand your target customers and their needs, pain points, and desires. You can use various methods to gather customer insights, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, feedback, and analytics. By listening to your customers, you can identify gaps and opportunities in the market and create products that address them better than your competitors.
From my experience one of the mistakes especially in tech that happens is that companies have a technology and they look for a problem to solve. While this can be valid in some cases, this can never be the norm. You have always to start with the customer and to understand what Is the customer pain points. The value equation has to always be there, that you are providing more value than the cost the consumer have to pay. Identifying the customer need can start from different places, consumer journey touch points, ethnographic research. Understanding how to make consumer life better with a solid value equation is the beginning of the road to success
Identify customer needs is a crucial step if your innovation is mainly a product inprovement (how can I improve customer experiencing with my product?). Differently, if you are in the game of to disrupting an industry, or just a category of products, with next-level of innovation, you need to exceeding customer expectations (not just knowing’em). And the great thing is that they [customers] don’t know what they don’t expect. The starting point is to deeply know (deep knowledge) what customers expect by experiencing a product or a service (conventional or unconventional investigation methodology and product/service deep self-knowledge). Then generate a next level idea of unexpected experience!
The next step is to test and validate your product ideas with experiments and prototypes. You can use different tools and techniques to create low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes, such as sketches, wireframes, mockups, or 3D models. You can then use these prototypes to get feedback from potential users, customers, or stakeholders and learn what works and what doesn't. By experimenting and prototyping, you can iterate and improve your product before launching it.
Here’s a list of 25 INNOVATION METHODS that can help you to DISRUPT. Check them out below … 1. Design Thinking 2. Lean Startup 3. Agile Innovation 4. Open Innovation 5. Blue Ocean Strategy 6. TRIZ 7. SCAMPER 8. Six Thinking Hats 9. Biomimicry 10. Co-creation 11. Value Proposition Design 12. Business Model Canvas 13. Rapid Prototyping 14. Mind Mapping 15. Customer Journey Mapping 16. Scenario Planning 17. Innovation Games 18. Disney Method 19. Hackathons 20. Innovation Labs 21. Innovation Sprints 22. Frugal Innovation 23. Disruptive Innovation 24. Systems Thinking 25. The proven FORTH innovation method to kickstart innovation and double the effectiveness of the other methodologies mentioned above ?????. Contact me to learn more.
The third step is to differentiate and position your product in the market. You need to communicate how your product is unique, valuable, and superior to your competitors and how it solves a specific problem for your customers. You can use various strategies to differentiate and position your product, such as branding, pricing, packaging, distribution, or promotion. By differentiating and positioning your product, you can create a strong value proposition and a loyal customer base.
It is essential to have a great product. But it is not enough to be successful. It is equally critical to give the market a reason to adhere to your proposition: 'Grip or Traction'. Product alone does not create adherence. Traction only, doesn't last forever. Focusing on 'Traction' is essential too. It is about getting people to adhere to your proposition. That's the hardest thing to do. In fact, If you don't make them perceive, clearly and simply, that your proposition adds real value to what they are already getting from the market, how will it ever attract/interest them? If you do not make them perceive that the value they are going to receive is greater than the value they are going to pay you, how can they ever give you their money?
The final step is to learn and adapt your product based on customer feedback, market trends, and competitive analysis. You need to monitor and measure your product performance, customer satisfaction, and user behavior and use the data to make informed decisions. You also need to keep an eye on the changing needs and expectations of your customers and the emerging opportunities and threats in your industry. By learning and adapting your product, you can ensure its relevance and sustainability.
To illustrate how product innovation can disrupt an industry, here are some examples of companies that have done it successfully. Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry by creating a platform that connects travelers with local hosts who offer accommodation in their homes, solving a problem for both travelers and hosts. Spotify disrupted the music industry by creating a streaming service that offers unlimited access to millions of songs for a monthly fee, providing a solution for music lovers and artists alike. Uber shook up the transportation industry by creating a platform that connects riders with drivers who offer rides in their cars, addressing the needs of riders and drivers alike.
Disrupting an industry is done in various ways not just through the product only, your way of building the eco system around your product can be disruptive, how you manage your processes and operations to drive lower costs and savings for consumers like what Walmart or Amazon is doing. Your network innovation like Airbnb is another way of disrupting the industry. They way you build your internal Competitiveness and competencies in some cases is sufficient to disrupt the industry in terms of driving new meaningful innovations that are not just technological base.