Why product optimization is often not enough

If you look at innovations and analyze what these innovations consist of, you often find improvements to existing products in established companies - but hardly any disruptive innovations.

Disruptive or evolutionary - which is more effective?

In his book 'Innovator's Dilemma', first published in 1997, Clayton Christensen noted that established companies got into massive trouble with radical innovations because they either did not recognize the disruption, did not take it seriously and did not take it into account. There are plenty of examples of this: electric mobility with Tesla as a trendsetter, the airline industry with Ryan Air, Nokia in the mobile phone sector, which was swept off the market by Apple, and many others.

The reason for the failure of innovations by established providers is the ongoing optimization of services and product offerings, which can go so far that consumers do not demand them - or even notice them (overkilling).

Why do 95% of 30,000 products fail?

Christensen cites the very rigid approach of established companies as the cause of the failure of the overwhelming number of newly introduced products. For example, markets are segmented at the start of the innovation process, products are divided into categories, customers are assigned sociodemographic categories, etc.

The difficulty is that consumers generally do not select their products according to the predefined segments of suppliers. Even if this was or may still be the case, these segments are becoming smaller and more fragmented, the imitators more and more. The way forward should be different. Instead of setting guidelines for innovations from the ivory tower of one's own company, it is often more effective to put oneself in the situation of one's consumers and see why consumers buy some things and not others, what they value and - very importantly - what goal they pursue when they use a particular product or service.

While newcomers think of new business models or take up emerging trends at an early stage, established companies concentrate on thinking - and also acting - in existing categories. If one were to ask oneself more frequently what someone wants to achieve for him/herself with the use of a product or service, one would be closer to the consumers and ultimately customers.

But how can I achieve customer centricity?

With deeptrue, product managers, product developers, communication specialists and many more can check their ideas and concepts at a very early stage.

The following questions can thus be answered quickly, easily and inexpensively:

Will the idea bring real benefits to future customers once it has been fully developed?

Which people will probably never be part of my target audience because they simply don't (can't) see the added value of my idea or think they won't get enough benefit from it?

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