A step ahead of the customer's desires
A few months ago, I bought an iPhone. It is amazing what a user interface and product design can do – just take a look at the iPod to figure out what a basic me-too product like the mp3 player can be turned into, if the company that wants to market it really sets its mind to create a product people just want to have.
iPhone is turning into the classic example of Open Innovation, and also of the perhaps unconventional wisdom that consumers do not know what they want until you show them what they could ask for. It is clear that the iPhone has disrupted the mobile phone market, gaining more than 20% market share in the mobile phones market in the US with just one model (!). Through the Webapps that run on iPhone, Apple has created its own universe of software developers and tens of millions of online shoppers across the world, making money on each transaction that takes place, without the need to develop all these webapps themselves.
You’ll increasingly find that even the most hard-core, R&D fundamental technologies need to be packaged into attractive solutions for the final end-user. One key example of that in our daily practice is the Smart Energy Home concept, which we are developing at the order of a range of global players in sustainability in the home. You might not imagine a chemical company like BASF, who is selling polymers that go into insulation foam, to work on a nice home concept that people want to get home to, but they do. And they understand that their polymers must be ‘packaged’ into a nice home if they want to sell them in the volumes they have set their ambition levels at.
Perhaps next time you (B2B industrial player) think about selling more, selling at a better price, or seller different stuff, you should think a bit further down the value chain: not your customers, not your customers’ customers, but the final user. We could help you create the alliance across the value chain you might need to turn that dialogue with the final user into improved business….
