Insight Mining – 13 Virtues of Innovation Engineering

June 30th, 2010

Purpose: The purpose of this writing series is to help instill the 13 Virtues of Innovation Engineering as a habit of everyday living. The process is inspired by Ben Franklin’s system for continuous improvement.

Insight Mining

Ideas at their most basic are sparked by making connections.

Insight Mining feeds the brain with customers based stimulus to spark fresh ideas.

At it’s simplest Insight Mining starts with simply spending time with your customers.

• Observing how they use and abuse your product or service.
• Holding a conversation about likes, dislikes and frustrations.
• Asking them simple questions such as…
• What would be such a wow that you’d be willing to pay more money for it?
• If you could wave a magic wand, other than low price. what would you wish our product or service did for you?

From these observations new ideas are inspired that can make life easier for your customers.

I’m reminded of a company that distributed parts to auto repair shops. Each month their suppliers provided special offers however few if any repair shops took advantage of the offers. By physically spending time at their customers repair shops – watching customers open the parts that their company had shipped to the shop – the idea was inspired to put at the top of each package a flyer with the hottest deals that month. A simple idea – that dramatically increased repair shop purchasing of manufacturer funded special deals.

Read the full article by Doug Hall at Brain Brew Cafe