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Q: Beat and Yann, thanks for taking the time for this interview. I’d like to understand your core process, “Customer-Focused Innovation”, as I believe it would be highly interesting to our practitioner and leader members of PDMA. Let’s begin there. What exactly is the “Customer-Focused Innovation“ approach?
Beat: The Customer-Focused Innovation (CFI) process is a systematic approach to identify and sharpen winning ideas and concepts from the customer’s view. We have designed it over the past 20 years together with dozens of our clients. A co-creation effort, if you want, to achieve actionability.
Q: How is it different than other popular methods?
Yann: As opposed to conventional innovation and strategy development methods, like design thinking or strategy processes, CFI quantitatively measures customer needs early in the process on a very granular and concrete level, not just on an abstract level. That way, it gives companies a validated fact base with maximal decision comfort when developing innovation strategies or selecting and sharpening solution ideas. Moreover, CFI consciously manages the transition from customer findings to the development work with specific tools. We call that “spinning”.
Q: What are the major phases of CFI?
Beat: There are four steps: Frame, Discover, Spin and Develop. In Frame we scope the project from the customer perspective. Discover is a combination of qualitative and quantitative customer exploration methods to uncover pain points and opportunities. In Spin we spin solutions and ideas towards those pain points and create compelling Value Propositions that deeply resonate both internally as well as with the customers. Lastly, in Develop, we do customer advocacy, i.e. we accompany keep the teams on the customer track. Because during development, there are a lot of critical moments where the customer focus again can get lost.
We frame the business challenge from the Jobs-to-be-done angle to discover and quantify the unmet needs when customers are trying to get the Job done. This initial switch is facilitated by our Jobs-to-be-done hierarchy tool. This phase is solution-agnostic. The outcome of the Discover phase is a quantitatively measured understanding of the unmet need opportunities. Pain points are ranked from most to least relevant with the Value Map or analyzed along the journey with the Job Journey Navigator.
Yann: To make the idea selection in the Spin phase we use our tool called "Pain Matching". The tool matches unmet needs with solution ideas to determine the winners. In one of our more recent projects – about a new software for teachers to prepare and manage lessons – we prioritized more than 100 feature ideas and functionalities. The development roadmap prioritized the five most promising features that teachers would pay for. Another tool is our Value Proposition Canvas to compose compelling Value Propositions
Q: Can CFI help with market segmentation?
Beat: Market segmentation can be a tough challenge, but is of great benefit. If companies segment a market the right way, they can focus their efforts and come up with solutions and messages that resonate much better with the target groups.
Q: Great segmentation is the dream of many JTBD projects. But in practice, it often seems that it doesn’t live up to the promise. What’s the key to getting it right?
Yann: The key is to use the right segmentation criteria. Socio-demographic criteria, such as age or income, or behavioral criteria alone, such as purchasing patterns, often fall short. Customer segments must be formed on the basis of unmet needs. A customer segment groups people with the same unmet needs, which are different from the unmet needs of another segment.
Q: In practice, how do you move this forward?
Yann: We have developed an index called Cut Difference Index (CDI) to quickly calculate and compare segments based on need patterns. We find for example two segments with totally different needs and look at the respective behavioral patterns, attitudes, values, but also socio-demographics. and also people’s attitudes and values form a segment with the same unmet needs. So you see, we strongly believe in needs-based segmentation. These segments can then be translated into personas which are truly actionable because the unmet needs are known and quantitatively validated. Find a case here.
Q: One thing that is unique about Vendbridge is that you encourage your clients to participate in customer interviewers as moderators. How does this work?
Beat: This often happens in a coaching setting or when a project has a coaching element. Generally, we encourage as many people as possible to observe or participate in customers interviews conducted in a Jobs-to-be-done way. It can be eye opening and has much greater impact than slides or reports. We want our clients not only get the results, but also embrace the Jobs-to-be-done logic. The best way to learn is by doing. I remember in a project for a car manufacturer, about designing the seats, the engineers were in the meeting and in real-time sketched solution ideas which were then tested in the next round. That was funny and efficient.
Q: It’s common for a product manager to have not enough budget to hire a company like yours. And yet they’re working on a new concept that requires customer insights. What advice would you give these folks?
Yann: Being better than yesterday is better than trying to be perfect. CFI is modular and scalable to different levels. Of course, it would be ideal to talk to 24 customers or do a survey with 1000 customers. Maybe you can't do that. But talking to 8 and surveying 50 is better than having no data at all. It's about taking the steps that are possible and make sense. Sometimes we tell our clients that the full-fledged CFI process also would be an overshoot for the challenge at hand. So we customize it.
Another thing we regularly do is what we call "Harvesting". That means we look at existing research and knowledge in a company and harvest it from a Jobs-to-be-done perspective. This can reduce the resources required immensely.
Beat: And let’s be clear. Development or marketing and sales costs are higher than what a proper need discovery early on costs by many factors. But a failed innovation costs even more than that.
Q: Product managers sometimes feel sidelined when engineers develop things themselves. Especially when it comes to new products. How can a product manager get engineers to focus on the customer needs instead of just relying on their own ideas?
Beat: Sidelining engineers is not a good idea. Our experience has been that engineers and product managers must shape the process together to get buy-in and alignment. That’s why we encourage involving engineers, but also sales or management or anyone else that will work with the outcomes of the project. They need to shape and influence the approach to meet their needs.
The Spin modules in our approach, as well as the CFI process in general, are designed to bring teams together and remove all the biases which the different people in an organization have. We encourage the teams to work jointly with the results and findings and focus all energy on helping customers get the Job done. In our experience, a slide deck just won't do it. You need to bridge the gap between insights and implementation. That’s what Spin is all about.
Q: For folks who are interested in learning more about CFI approach or Vendbridge, how can they find you?
Yann: The website www.vendbridge.com is a good place to start. We regularly host events and publish white papers and thought pieces. There you can sign up for our newsletter so you won't miss anything. Alternatively, you can connect with Beat Walther (Managing Partner) or Yann Wermuth (Partner) on LinkedIn. Then there's the @Vendbridge Twitter profile or just drop us an email at hello@vendbridge.com!
About Beat
Beat Walther is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Vendbridge AG. Beat has more than 25 years of experience in business strategy, innovation and marketing & sales. He is an ex-McKinsey and ex-P&G.
About Yann
Yann Wermuth is a partner at Vendbridge AG. Yann has more than 10 years of experience working and developing the CFI approach and JTBD thinking. He has an MA in philosophy and is currently writing his PhD.
About Vendbridge
Vendbridge supports companies to turn innovation initiatives into market success. As the leading customer insights expert, Vendbridge translates business objectives into the user perspective, uncover actionable customer insights and focus growth initiatives on unmet customer needs. Our Customer-Focused Innovation approach is based on Jobs-to-be-done and identifies what customers really want. Specific, un-biased and measurable.
www.vendbridge.com
About the Author
William “Scott” Burleson is the author of The Statue in the Stone: Decoding Customer Motivation with the 48 Laws of Jobs-to-be-Done Philosophy.
He has a diverse professional background within manufacturing engineering, product management, voice-of-the-customer training and SaaS development. Notable career stops include product manager for John Deere’s compact tractors, innovation leader for Actuant corporation, and Director of the Strategyn Institute. At Strategyn, he worked alongside the world's best jobs-to-be-done practitioners. Strategyn, founded by pioneer Tony Ulwick, is ground zero for Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI).
Today, as Senior Vice President for The AIM Institute, Burleson leads product development for Blueprinter® software, teaches workshops on innovation using the New Product Blueprinting process, and advises corporate leaders and practitioners on growth via JTBD principles.
He has a MS in Management and a BS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
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