Following on from my last two posts on the subject, I’ve continued to give the subject some considerable thought; a longer post will follow in a few days times.
But in the meantime.
I was at dinner with my namesake MR Rangaswami (at a wonderful restaurant called Coi), and the subject of customer-driven innovation came up. MR reminded me of something Peter Drucker had said to him, which went along the lines of:
When you’re listening to your customers, remember to listen to the customers you don’t have, not just the ones you have. There are a lot more of them.
Listen to the customers you don’t have. I think that a lot of the focus of open innovation is about providing those customers a voice; that the tools of open innovation give them the ability to articulate what it would take to make them customers of yours; that the potential of open innovation is to attract and retain those customers.
Something to ponder about.
[Incidentally, today would have been Peter Drucker’s 99th birthday.]