Posted: March 2nd, 2011 | Author: Joseph Wesley Putnam | No Comments »
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At the end of October of last year I wrote about “Why Listening to Your Customers is Not an Innovation Strategy.” It was published at Entrepreneurdex as a feature article (thanks guys!), and it’s been one of the most successful posts on this blog.
It also happens to be my favorite post I’ve written so far. The follow-up post was about how “Listening to Your Customers is Important for Incremental Improvements, But Not for Innovation.”
Since then, I’ve received a CR-48 Chrome notebook as a gift from Google (more about that here). Interestingly, Google’s approach to innovation matches both of these posts. Here’s how:
First of all, Google wasn’t listening to customers when they came up with the Chrome notebook. People weren’t clamoring for a notebook that only used the Chrome browser as an OS and was 100% internet dependent. Nobody was even dreaming about that. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 23rd, 2011 | Author: Joseph Wesley Putnam | 3 Comments »
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I’ve been really busy lately, and it’s been several weeks since I’ve been able to write here (sorry about that). During that time, I received a gift from Google that I’m typing on right now-a Google Chrome CR48 notebook.
WHAT IT IS
The CR48 is a radical new notebook from Google that runs on a Google Chrome Operating System. This means that instead of a typical operating system, everything is controlled through the Google Chrome browser. Everything.
Instead of editing and storing files on a hard-drive, everything is stored and done within “the cloud.” E-mail and document editing is web-based, etc.
It’s radical. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 1st, 2010 | Author: Joseph Wesley Putnam | 5 Comments »
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In my last post I mentioned that listening to your customers is not a good innovation strategy. This may lead you to think that listening to your customers is a bad idea. Actually, that’s not the case.
Listening to your customers is very important, especially for incremental improvements. If you’ve already decided on a product, and you’re trying to improve it, getting feedback from customers is a good idea.
You can ask customers what they would improve about your product, or if there are any problems. For example, if you release a software product, you can ask if there are any bugs. If there are, you’ll want to fix those bugs as fast as you can. The best way to do that is to get feedback from your customers. You can do that by posting a big “FEEDBACK HERE” button on your website.
This is how you make incremental product improvements. In other words, this is how you tweak a product.
But if you want to make a leap in product innovation, listening to your customers is not the way to go. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 28th, 2010 | Author: Joseph Wesley Putnam | 9 Comments »
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The first thing a marketer should do is listen to customers, right? If the goal is innovation, Mark Cuban says the answer is no.
In an April 2010 blog entry, Mr. Cuban wrote a post titled “Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers.” He quoted Alan Kay who said that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
This is consistent with two other innovative thinkers – Steve Jobs and Paul Graham. Here’s what they had to say: Read the rest of this entry »
