Organizing the Innovation Ideas

We have organized the innovation ideas around each of the three types of customer/supplier relationship: an Intermediary customer buying from a producer, a Final customer buying from a producer and a Final customer buying from an Intermediary. Within each of these types of customer/supplier relationship, we provide many innovation ideas around the four typical customer costs. We use the main types of customer characteristics and several subsidiary characteristics to provide the detail of the outline for the innovation ideas.

For example:

  • Customer interaction: Final customer buying from the producer of the product

  • Customer cost step: Use product

  • Main customer characteristic: Emotional

  • First level subsidiary characteristic: Needs to avoid sources of anxiety

  • Second level subsidiary characteristic: Limitations set by time

  • Third level subsidiary characteristic: Delay related to purchase and installation of the product

  • Fourth level subsidiary characteristic: Segments where delays cause customers to be inactive

  • Fifth level subsidiary characteristic: Delay related to product preparation

We support each item on the outline with numerous examples. These examples illustrate product and service innovations companies use to meet the particular customer need. The examples we offer come from the experiences of many other companies in other industries. Each example lists the SIC of the industry, the year of the example and a short write-up describing a situation where the segment would be the purchaser of the innovation.

For example, using the levels of the outline above, one of the innovation examples would be:

INDUSTRY SIC

YEAR

EXAMPLE
3861 2005 The Canon Pixma iP4000 photo printer takes 60 seconds to print. The Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 375 photo printer takes 105 seconds to print. The Epson PictureMate photo printer takes 144 seconds to print. The Dell Photo Printer 540 takes 174 seconds to print.

The objective of these examples is to help you create many new ideas for your individual situation. Each characteristic may have up to 20 illustrative examples to assist you in your brainstorming. These examples are not intended to be either mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive. You may use an idea for more than one purpose. You may also add your own ideas during your innovation sessions.

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