New methods needed to develop innovative products

. Keith Goffin, professor of innovation at Cranfield University, told delegates at the recent Innovation conference: “If you ask customers what they want, you get direct answers. But don’t expect them to give you good information on this basis.” He said that conventional methods of discovering customer needs – such as market research, focus groups and ‘voice of the customer’ – were unlikely to lead to real innovation. “If you are not careful, you will get stuck in a ‘me too’ mentality,” he said. “Market research will tend to push you in this direction.” The trick, he said, was to find ‘hidden needs’ – which customers themselves often cannot articulate. “This is not something you can identify through direct questioning,” he said. “You can hardly ask a customer: ‘What are your hidden needs?’” He said that techniques borrowed from psychology and anthropology can help. Researchers also filmed people and studied the results. This research was always carried out ‘in situ’ – while a product was actually being used. The Innovation conference was organised by Cranfield University, Eureka and New Electronics. The Innovation and Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs), for which the conference was a prelude, will be presented in September at a ceremony in London. * A longer version of this article appears in the July issue of Eureka.