What’s your view on customers’ value to innovation?
More and more, customer-centricity is becoming a thing. As in, an increasingly important philosophy to companies in managing day-to-day and even longer term planning. In comes in different forms: design thinking, social CRM, service-dominant logic, value co-creation. But it’s not pervasive at this point. Companies still are spotty on how much they integrate customers into their processes. […]
It’s the Jobs-to-Be-Done, Stupid!
I do product management for Spigit. I’ve done product management for other companies as well. And let me tell you, the easiest thing in the world is to fall into the trap of focusing on how customers are using your product. Product forms your relationship with customers. It’s how you know them. They will tell […]

Four Innovation Insights Customers Provide
Customers, properly, have been having a renaissance of sorts in terms of business thinking. Peter Drucker famously espoused a very customer-centric business philosophy. Nowadays, social CRM represents the return of a customer-first orientation. Last year, Altimeter published the 18 use cases of social CRM. Included in those use cases were several that relate to innovation. […]

Innovation Culture Eats R&D for Breakfast
Research and development is a mainstay of the innovation strategy for companies. And with good reason. R&D can invent new products and technologies that redefine markets. Think electricity, telephones, airplanes, semiconductors, the Internet. R&D can pave the way for whole new industries. Exciting, for sure! But there’s a problem. Too many companies treat R&D as […]
Imitation May be the Sincerest Form of Flattery, But All You Need Is Love
The other day I noticed a number of comments on different CloudAve posts from someone purporting to be a user of a new invoicing web application. Upon further inspection I discovered that in fact the purported “independent user” was in fact an employee of the company. Suffice it to say that I’ll not be spending […]