Glasgow's John Anderson. Brooklyn's Sackett-Wilhelm Lithographing. Tokyo's Busicom. They represent the unheralded and underappreciated heroes of innovation history. They make genius possible and real. Celebrate them.
Professor John Anderson provided the broken model Newcomen steam engine that led directly to James Watt's invention of the separate condenser that helped launch the industrial revolution. Sackett-Wilhelm Lithographing was the steamily humid printing plant where young Willis Carrier successfully pioneered and prototyped his first industrial air conditioning technology. Busicom, a scientific calculator company, commissioned Intel to design a chipset for its new programmable calculators. That led directly to Intel's breakthrough creation of the microprocessor.
These customers and clients were integral parts and partners in the innovation process. The selective idiocies and idiosyncrasies of history unjustly minimize their role. Don't perpetuate that mistake. Emphasizing heroic inventors and innovators like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs while glossing over and effectively anonymizing the individuals and institutions who made their innovations into markets distorts reality and cheats the truth.
The most important link in the innovation value chain is an innovative customer. That is, a customer ready, willing, and able to adopt, adapt — and maybe even pay for — an innovative offering. Just as you don't have a performance without an audience, you can't have innovation without customers.
This innovation impetus differs markedly from Eric von Hippel's "lead users" or Geoff Moore's "chasm crossers." Those concepts are important but they don't address the everyday reality and opportunity for innovation. The essential question is who are the customers that come with the problem sets and parameters that push you to rethink, or redefine, your business? Which customers and clients does your firm celebrate as innovation partners — and why?
If you asked yourself and your colleagues which three clients were most likely to come with the most provocative innovation challenges with the greatest market potential, which would they be? The serendipity of selection surely plays a distinctive role. But, as Pasteur so acutely observed, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
Certainly, James Watt effectively leveraged his model opportunity and Intel's Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin were fortunate to recognize how a programmable chipset might be reconceptualized as a microprocessor. Strategic customers trumped strategic planning. That's a historical truth, not a business truism.
Real-world customers and clients, not abstract aspirations, instigate innovation best. A good problem is a great gift. Wal-Mart's incessant and relentless demands for "everyday low prices" transformed every supplier it touched. A ruthless connoisseur of cost-driven innovation, the world's largest company has fundamentally redefined product, process, and sourcing for consumer products. China doesn't become a manufacturing superpower without Bentonville.
Procter & Gamble discovered that Japanese mothers were the most demanding in the world when it came to diapers and disposables that wouldn't mark their babies' pristine and delicate skin. Japanese moms wanted more than good price and great absorptive qualities. Their parental pickiness changed how P&G designed and developed its Pampers worldwide. The "Japanese mother" expectation became a global standard for baby bottoms.
Solving the problem doesn't go far enough. Sustainable — transformative — innovation emerges from the ability to collaboratively explore alternative approaches. Watt, Carrier, and Intel didn't achieve their breakthroughs by solving problems for their strategic clients; success came from testing approaches with their clients. Whether business historians acknowledge it or not, that's equally true for Henry Ford, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.
As the saying goes, the one thing history teaches is that we don't learn from history. Just because business history short shrifts the customer and client contribution to innovation success doesn't mean businesses should. If you want to become a more innovative organization, don't hire more innovative employees, acquire more innovative customers. Your capacity to innovate matters less than your customers' and clients' willingness and ability to exploit it.
SOURCE : Harvard Business Review
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