One simple trick for reducing the cost of innovation

Innovation is all about creating value for the customer and the organisation.

Collecting and understanding feedback reduces the cost of innovation because it allows companies to create precise experiences—that their customers will appreciate and reward.

It's critical that those who will be using the customer feedback are also involved in defining and selecting customer metrics. Further, they must be regularly exposed to direct customer feedback, or they will be less likely to act on it.

Even a simple exercise like getting your engineers to sit in with a customer support representatives for few hours every month is better than nothing. The best would be to have those responsible for value development in constant touch with customers.

Oh yes, the above doesn't obviate the need for executives to experience customer feedback first hand as well. If they become too removed from customers they'll be more inclined to fund what they believe is right, but based on past data. That significantly increases the cost of innovation.

P.S. I wrote about nine costly innovation mistakes and how to avoid them. You can get the ebook here.

P.P.S. Customer experience data is one of the four pillars of augmented strategy. Learn more here and here.