The following excerpt is transcribed from The Future Of Now event that took place on 9 September 2021.

Speaker

Nathan Baird

Nathan is an internationally experienced author, speaker and innovation consultant living in Sydney, Australia. He is one of the world’s most experienced Design Thinking practitioners, a former Partner of Design Thinking for global management consultancy KPMG, where he established and led KPMG’s Human Centred Design practice. He is the founder of customer-driven innovation and growth firm Methodry.

 

Key Points

On why many innovation projects aren’t successful 

“Design Thinking is becoming very mainstream depending where you are in the world […]

Whilst it’s mainstream, it hasn’t really improved our innovation success rates. So no matter who you talk to, we’re not that successful at innovating. So why is that? We’ve got all these new methodologies, like Design Thinking – why are we still not improving those rates?

The main reason is because more ideas fail from a lack of customers than actually a failure of the product or technology. So we need to focus more on the ‘Who?’- being the customer – and the ‘Why?’ – [which is] their needs rather than the ‘What?’. 

 

On what insights are and why they are so important

“A study of 2000 innovation projects by Robert Cooper found [in his book Winning New Products] the number one reason was a lack of thoroughness and identifying real needs (and insights) in the marketplace, with innovation teams often making assumptions to justify the project.”

“[Insights are] the underlying, ‘Why?’ behind the customer’s need and it’s inspiration for innovation. So, you’ve got functional needs, you’ve got emotional and social needs and you’ve got insight. Functional needs [are people’s] basic needs rooted in logic, emotional and social needs are more feelings and conditions, and [then there’s] insights – the underlying “Why?’. 

[…] The really interesting thing is if you go out and talk to, or observe some customers, they’ll tell you what their functional needs are. They know them and they’ll talk about them. Getting to the emotional and social needs [is] really interesting because [customers] know them, but they don’t often share them.

And then in terms of insight, [customers] don’t go “here’s a platter of insights.” You’ve really got to dig down to those because they’re unknown to them, and that requires some interpretation from yourself.

On why brainstorming doesn’t equate to empathy

“Brainstorming customer needs doesn’t make empathy, and I’ve seen so many video blogs, et cetera, [saying], “This is how you use an empathy map. Now we just go and make up what [the customers’] needs, pains and gains are.” So, let’s hold off on using the empathy map […] until we get out of the building and actually spend time with our customers.

 So how do we do that?

There’s three [techniques] we like – using multiple sources of insight; talking to extreme users; and a little bit of deprivation and disruption.

One [technique] we love is the Multiple Sources Framework. So, if you’re going to go and do empathetic research, you can go and actually be the customer. You can go and experience the customer experience from their viewpoint […]. You can go and be with the customer. So you can observe them and then go and talk to them. And you can learn about the customer by talking to people around them.”

On distilling the customer insight

“What I want to highlight here is, […] the insight shouldn’t simply be a reason for the need, but why the need is so important to the customer or so hard to solve.

You can ask ‘Why?’ to get an insight and you can use words like – Surprisingly; Because; But; So That – to force that interpretation.”

For people who are new/unfamiliar with working with customer insights, where is a good place to start?

NB: Work out the business challenge […] then identify who your customers are and get out and talk to them. This is the best place to start.

[…] One of the things we do first is use what we call a resight tool and that captures everything we already know about this problem and opportunity space. But then [we think about] what questions we want to ask and what early ideas and hypothesis hypotheses we have.

The questions and hypotheses then go into your discussion guide. So you write a bit of a discussion guide that you’re going to use in your observations and interviews […] so I find that quite useful.

What are the top mistakes people make when it comes to putting together customer insight statements, even at a pro level?

NB: In those actual statements we often put a solution in the need. 

So we might go “Here’s the problem, and the customer needs Wi-Fi.” –Wi-Fi being a solution. So the need is to connect or communicate or something like that. That’s probably one of the biggest [mistakes]. 

Also what can happen is in the insight, they’ve got the need. So we often go into workshops and say, “Move that insight into your needs. Now what’s the insight? So that makes you go [a level] deeper. And that’s the great thing with sticky notes and using MURAL, because you can move it all around.

What methods and techniques do you use when introducing the workshopping process to audiences who are completely new at it?

NB: Some of the techniques we used today are exactly what we use. 

And then in terms of platforms, MURAL is great. I mean, if someone had asked me two years ago to run a workshop virtually I would’ve been so impressed. 

So we need to prep people because [online platforms like] MURAL can be new to people. Also if we don’t have a facilitator in each breakout room, which we often don’t, we then have a designated mural expert from the clients in each team. We give them a bit of extra training upfront, so they can troubleshoot from the breakout.

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About The Future Of Now series

Our goal at More Space For Light with The Future of Now (FON) series is to build a community of like-minded passionate professionals. We intend to bring together like-minded professionals to share, inspire, and explore new opportunities for growth. So you can discover new ways of working to bring back into your organisation.
     

   

More about the organisations connected to this event

• morespaceforlight.com.au – A strategy and innovation consultancy specialising in both in-person and/or remote workshops, design programs and Design Sprints.
• MURAL.CO – a remote collaboration whiteboard. With this platform you will supercharge your remote and in-person meetings and workshops.
• hacker.exchange – a global education company that is supercharging the next generation of startups & leaders.