2-Customer Experience Innovation Enablers
Priorities: Which Customers?
Prioritize customer personas by evaluating the customer's view of 'good enough'.19 While customer expectations typically rise over time, some customers may be under-served, overshot, or un-served:9
- Under-served Customers:
Existing solutions in the marketplace should increase quality, features, conveniences, etc.
- Overshot Customers:
Existing solutions are more than enough; they are not willing to pay for improved quality, features, etc.
- Un-served Customers:
Existing solutions present a constraint on their ability to use them, such as affordability, accessibility, etc.
By plotting technology levels versus customer impact, resource allocation decisions are guided to innovate where it will be valued by the marketplace.
Good-Enough-Line Example.
The transistor 4 was invented by AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1947. Although it was not powerful enough at that time to replace vacuum tubes for televisions, tabletop radios, early computers, commercial telecommunications and military products, the vacuum tube makers invested heartily in applying the transistor to existing applications. Sony turned its attention to applications that valued the lower power consumption, sturdiness and compactness of the transistor.
Sony introduced the world's first battery-powered transistor radio in 1955. Teenagers were the unserved market for the transistor radio — they were delighted to have an affordable, portable way to listen to rock and roll music, even though the sound quality was inferior to a tabletop radio. In 1959 Sony introduced the 12-inch black-and-white portable television. The target market was people who lived in small apartments with insufficient floor space or budget for the vacuum tube televisions, as the alternative was no television at all.
The vacuum tube appliance makers ignored Sony's inroads, while Sony was developing retail channel relationships that proved to be a huge competitive advantage when transistor technology eventually improved to the point where it obsoleted vacuum tubes. Sony's discount store retailers had not been able to sell the vacuum tube-based products because they didn't have tube replacement capabilities. The established vacuum tube electronics retailers weren't attracted to transistor-based products, because their business model relied on vacuum tube replacement sales rather than new-product sales.
"The punishing thing about this outcome, of course, is that [the vacuum tube industry] didn't fail because they didn't invest aggressively in the new technology. They failed because they tried to cram the disruption into the largest and most obvious market, which was filled with customers whose business could only be won by selling them a product that was better in performance or cost than they already were using. Disruption causes others to be disinterested in what you are doing. This is exactly what you want with competitors: You want them to ignore you. But offering something that is disruptively unattractive to your customers — which includes all of the downstream entities that compose your channel — spells disaster. Companies in your channel are customers with a job to get done, which is to grow profitably."4
