Focus Groups Take on New Format
Focus groups 2.0 have arrived. One of the first, and arguably foremost, is based at 3M Company's St Paul headquarters and is known as a "World of Innovation" showroom.
Referred to as a "customer innovation center," the idea is to "provide a forum for meeting with corporate customers and engaging them directly in the innovation process." According to a New York Times' piece written by Mary Tripsas, an associate professor in the entrepreneurial management unit at Harvard Business School, hands-on exhibits encourage visitors to consider the future of technology.
John Horn, vice president for research and development at 3M's industrial and transportation business, explained that the goal is to understand "what our customers are trying to accomplish, not what they say they need."
Face-to-face sessions involve teams from visiting companies making presentations about their own businesses to 3M's experts who then take them on a tour of the showroom and its technology platforms. These cover everything from optical films to reflective materials, abrasives and adhesives. In other words, applications that can be combined in innovative ways and establish what Dr Horn described as "productive, long-term customer relationships."
Other proponents of innovation centers include Hershey, which uses both a tasting room to discuss trends and get reaction to new products and a retail room for reaction to merchandising.
Pitney Bowes recently opened its first innovation center so that customers could experiment with a color printing system designed for increasingly sophisticated print and mail applications. Executive vice president Leslie Abi-Karam hopes that "working with customers in our innovation center will alter our development trajectory."
Ranjay Gulati, professor at Harvard Business School, is the author of (Re) (Organize) for Resilience, a book about how to make customers the center of a business. He believes in the importance of "building a deep awareness of how the customer uses your product ... Being customer-driven doesn't mean asking customers what they want and then giving it to them."
Discussion Questions: What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of innovation centers versus other research techniques? Do you see them becoming more prevalent?