Innovations through qualitative end-user research are more common than you think

Random Thoughts

April 25, 2023

Last week I joined a webinar lecture hosted by the University of Chic ago Booth School of Business, of which, the topic was on whether rewards drive creative ideas/innovation or not. This lecture inspired me to think about how much innovation is created through end-user research, whether directly or indirectly.

During the lecture, Professor Michael Gibbs mentioned two types of innovation within an organization—exploitation vs. exploration. Exploitation innovation is one that improves upon the existing products/services the organization already provides, whereas exploration innovation comes from the ground up when the organization creates a brand new product/service from thin air.

From my experience, exploitative innovation is quite common and relatively easy to create through end-user research. As many of my past projects have some elements of gauging customer satisfaction of existing products/services to it, exploitation innovation comes quite naturally. As soon as you uncover what customers are dissatisfied with, all you need to do is to come up with some solutions to rectify them. And those solutions are precisely exploitative innovations.

On the other hand, explorative innovations are a lot more difficult to come up with since it requires organizations to come up with creative ideas from scratch. But this is where qualitative end-user research provides a perfect springboard—a great head start. Which, a thorough exploratory qualitative end-user research is called for that gives you the necessary understanding of the market/sector or customer group you are trying to penetrate. And it is with this detailed understanding that the product/service ideation and creation process can commence:

1. Project team to come up with different product/service concepts based on the researched market understanding;

2. The concepts can then be filtered, with the winning concepts further optimized through few rounds of qualitative end-user testing;

3. Once a single winning concept is identified and optimized, the actual product/service can be created based on the concept, of which, if budget allows, further qualitative end-user testing is recommended to ensure the tangible product/service delivers the actual concept;

4. Once the product/service is launched, it is also beneficial to conduct periodic customer satisfaction research to not only ensure the product is performing as well as it could, but to continue to optimize it as the market changes, and as importantly, to get ahead of any potential issues that might arise.

Well, that’s all I have to share this week. As usual, I hope this helps you in some way. But feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts. As always, follow us on our LinkedIn page for more!