Finding The Source Of Product Innovation

When we find the needs of some users, we need to sum up this requirement. This action is called finding products. innovate The source. Many people have product Innovation is so mysterious that innovation requires brains, sufficient capital, sufficient manpower, material resources and financial resources. In fact, innovation is not as complex as many people think. As long as I do what I say, I believe every entrepreneur and manager can make product innovation.

For more than 20 years, most Chinese enterprises are concerned about how to copy and imitate, rather than how to innovate. Previous Finance The crisis has caused great impact on processing and manufacturing enterprises, and more and more Chinese enterprises are beginning to realize that this is no longer the case. The crisis is just the right time. It allows us to rethink the way forward. Plagiarism and imitation have come to an end. The focus of Chinese enterprises should be on product innovation. Many people dare not think that innovation is too difficult for innovation. In fact, the answer is simpler than most people think. You just need to understand "how to find the source of product innovation".

Nine opinions of consumers

How to do it? First, visit the existing consumers and ask him which three aspects are not satisfied after buying a product. How many customers are there? 20 or less will be enough. Maybe many people who engage in academic research will say: the sampling rate is too low and inaccurate. For scholars, this is true, but for entrepreneurs and managers, we must give consideration to the relationship between efficiency and cost. In my real experience, if you find 20 target customers, the accuracy of information has reached 90%. If you spend a lot of money on thousands of customers' research, the accuracy will increase a little, but the effect is not big, and the marginal cost is very large.

Secondly, visit those who have needs but have not yet consumed. Ask him why he wants to buy but not buy. What are you worried about? What are you worried about? What are you afraid of? You will find the reason why they do not buy it, so you can find their three main points. It's also a visit to 20 people.

Finally, visit people who think they do not have a need, and ask them why they do not need it. Maybe these people will say that buying this product is useless. Then you can ask them why they feel useless. You can also sort out three ideas.

Found the above nine views, and then collated them, the source of product innovation has been found. According to these opinions, developing products can naturally bring value to users, and product innovation is so simple. Even those world-class best-selling products are getting the source of innovation through this way, but some of them are revolutionary, some are innovative, and others are innovative. Now I will tell you how to do practical work through a classic case.

Classic innovation case

This is a case happened in the United States twenty or thirty years ago. It is a war between the Xerox Co of the United States and Canon Co of Japan. After the invention of a large copier, Xerox Co has applied for more than 500 patents in order to protect its intellectual property rights, which has played a great role in preventing the entry of competitors. However, the patent is a double-edged sword. The more patents you apply, the more details will be revealed, and the easier it will be for others to imitate. The patent is valid, and when the patent is about to fail, some people start to think about it: the patent is expired, and I can use it free of charge. How can I use it?

So Canon began to look for the source of product innovation. Canon Co visited Xerox customers and asked them what they were dissatisfied with after consuming Xerox products. Customers who used the product believed that the first problem was that the cost of ownership was too high. Because a large photocopier needs special people to operate. This person is a skilled worker who has been trained professionally. He hired such a worker for an annual salary of $30 thousand. The life of the photocopier is 5 years. The technical worker will spend 150 thousand dollars and the machine will cost 100 thousand dollars. So the biggest cost of owning this machine is manpower cost. Many enterprises find it easy to buy this duplicator, but hiring someone to operate is a little expensive. The second problem is insecurity. Some confidential information, such as personnel promotion, strategy, competition, finance and many other information, the boss does not want to be seen by others. With this large photocopier, the boss can not photocopy himself and hand it to the operator, which may cause information leakage. The third problem is inconvenient. A large company may have thousands of employees. If you buy a large copier, many people will go a long way to copy a page. It's very inconvenient. These are three very simple questions that any company can find.

In addition, Canon has visited some potential customers, who have demand but no consumption, to understand why they did not buy it. These people tell Canon three reasons: first, use big talents. Potential customers generally believe that although there is a demand for photocopiers, the demand is not so great. If we buy a large duplicator, there will be too much idle time and some waste. Second, the duplicating quality of the large copier is too high, the copy looks almost the same as the original, far exceeding the needs of the potential customers, and the cost of photocopying one page is too high. This problem is similar to the difference between a fool's camera and a professional camera. Most people are not professional photographers, but fool cameras are enough. Third, it costs $100 thousand to buy such a fixed asset. American enterprises are very prudent in investing in fixed assets. In their view, the more bad the fixed assets are, the more difficult they are, so they transfer the manufacturing links (heavy assets) to the world factories like China. In doing so, they can reduce their investment in fixed assets. Secondly, they can reduce their carbon emissions and improve their living environment. In turn, they can earn money by levying carbon tariffs.

After finding these reasons, Canon has designed a small fool duplicator: 1. does not need special person operation; 2. can be put in a room, the boss shut the door to photocopy itself, solve the safety problem; 3., each floor or each department can be set up to meet the convenient demand; 4., the copy speed is reduced, the idle time is reduced; 5., the copy accuracy is reduced, the cost is reduced; 6. the price has been reduced from 100 thousand US dollars to 3000~5000 dollars, and many small and medium-sized enterprises can bear it. In this way, it gives consumers enough reasons to buy a photocopier.

With such a small fool duplicator, Canon Co quickly occupied the mainstream market of photocopiers worldwide, and turned the original Xerox large duplicator into the mainstream market. In other words, Xerox is a high-end, professional photocopier, while Canon is a popular and practical photocopier. This case also illustrates the truth that enterprises should focus on how to create value for customers. Xerox used to be the "boss" in the market, with a very high profit margin, but it made a very easy mistake for the boss, that is, lack of motivation to take the initiative to find the source of innovation, replace old products with new products, and replace low profit products with high profit products. Xerox gave such a new and larger market to Canon.

Start with existing customers

Only a discerning consumer can make an excellent brand. Then, it is the most economical way to find out where the deep needs of consumers are. The best way to start is to start with existing customers. Why do you say so? He bought the product of your company and hoped that you would manage it well. No one would like to buy this brand today, and it will go bankrupt tomorrow, which will make the customer feel that he has made a wrong choice. If he knows his needs to his existing customers, he will tell you the truth. If you ask freely on the street, usually the interviewee will refuse or deal with it, because it has nothing to do with him.

How to open your heart to your questions? First, make sure that he is your existing customer. Secondly, we need to think and discuss with him in a more ingenious way. What are the ways? The way we used to do it was to go to the sales people and the after-sale service staff when we visited our customers. The after-sale service personnel go to understand the customer's feeling after using the product, even if it is just to wipe, clean up, tidy up and tidy up the customer, the customer will also think this enterprise is good - our product has been buying for so many years, the enterprise also frequently cares for us - will feel this is a kind of service. At the same time, marketers have to chat with customers: when did you buy the product, how did you feel after all these years? What was your satisfaction? What was your dissatisfaction? By gossiping, you got the answer you wanted. You can also ask him, how can we improve our product?

Market research must grasp a principle: do not rely on second-hand information, must be first-hand information. We should go to our customers in person, listen with our own ears, and see with our own eyes. And through secondary data research, basically it is very superficial, not necessarily true. (