Raw book notes: Outside INnovation by Patricia B. Seybold: 15:56

Posted: - Modified: | book

I borrowed this book from the library and finished it the same day.
It’s a great read for customer evangelists and other people who talk to
customers to get awesome ideas for innovation. I’ll post a better book
summary sometime, but for now, here are my raw book notes.

4 The
“outside in” approach is to flip the innovation process around and
assume that customers have outcomes they want to achieve, they have
deep knowledge about their own circumstances and contexts, and they are
not happy with the way they have to do things today.
7 You win by finding the lead users in your industry and commercializing their inventions.
7 You win by engaging with your most visionary customers to co-design new products and new processes
7 You
win by enabling customers to troubleshoot each others’ problems, hack
your solutions, and modify and extend your product to meet their needs.
8 Winning
formula: customers/users who are passionate about something they’re
trying to accomplish or something they want; a deep understanding and
appreciation by those customers/users of their current reality: their
context, their situation, their constraints, how things are currently
doing.; A clear vision by those customers of their ideal outcome
9 Lead users – not necessarily customers, but have explored innovative ways to get things done and are usually willing to share
10 What are the characteristics of lead customers/lead users?

  • Their self-image is deeply connected to the problem domain at hand.
  • They
    are passionate (positively or negatively) about the outcomes they want
    and frustrated about the issues that get in the way of achieving those
    outcomes.
  • They are influential in their organizations and/or in their circle of family and friends.
  • They have thought deeply about their problem space/domain of expertise
  • They are insightful about their own context and they can easily articulate their conditions of satisfaction
  • They are imaginative and visionary
  • They are pragmatic and realistic about the need for viable business models and win/win situations
  • If they are true “lead users,” they have already invented their own
    solution and often are happy to share their solution with other
    insightful users.

Roles customers play in outside innovation

  • Lead
    customers are a special breed of innovators. Not finding what they
    need, they invent new solutions themselves, without being asked. Watch
    them, support them, and commercialize their inventions. Engage them in
    co-design activities. Give them innovation toolkits that enable them to
    extend, modify, and/or redesign your products and services. Then watch
    what they do and profit from it.
  • Contributors – encourage and acknowledge contributors. Make sure their contributions are recognized and appreciated.
  • Consultants – deep subject matter expertise. Invite them to become part of your company.
  • Guides – they add value by creating new knowledge
  • Promoters
38 For
example, in one rapid exchange that lasted two days, two members of
this community of innovative hackers designed a version of the brick
that was four times as fast as the original.
39 Lego:
“What if customers say bad things about our products?” the executives
wondered. “We knew from prior experience that if one customer
bad-mouths your product, another customer will usually defend it,”
Soren recalls. (Soren Lund, now director of Mindstorms product line)
39 Hosting your own online forums seems to be a critical ingredient to success in supporting customer-led innovation.
66 Formal
lead user program at National Instruments. Hall Martin, product
strategist: “Technologists help us to define new products; early
adopters help with marketing, positioning and in providing beachhead
applications; existing customers help us define and prioritize what
should be in the next version of a product; and pragmatists keep us
from going too far afield.”
132 Many freeformers aren’t employed full-time & don’t pass credit tests, even if they have assets and the ability to repay.
133 “But
now there are also young people coming into the workforce who don’t
want to follow in their parents’ footsteps and join a firm with the
idea of working their way up from the bottom to the top. They realize
that there probably won’t be a ‘top’ for them. They prefer to design
their own lifestyles and incomes around the things they care about.”
231 1. Industry-specific solutions, 2. Support services, 3. Custom development – smartest guys in the room, 4. Software as a service
239 Designing
the right mix of open source business models: identify a market,
certify an open source software for specialized market, add value,
identify customer-critical scenario and offer as a service
312 Deck of cards with goals and concerns – priorities
313 want to / have to, now / later

There’s a blog at http://outsideinnovation.blogs.com .

Random Emacs symbol: gnus-article-treat-dumbquotes – Command:
Translate M****s*** sm*rtq**t*s and other symbols into proper text.

You can comment with Disqus or you can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.