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What Neuroscience Tells Us About Consumer Desire. In the early 1950s, two scientists at McGill University inadvertently discovered an area of the rodent brain dubbed "the pleasure center," located deep in the nucleus accumbens.

What Neuroscience Tells Us About Consumer Desire

When a group of lab rats had the opportunity to stimulate their own pleasure centers via a lever-activated electrical current, they pressed the lever over and over again, hundreds of times per hour, foregoing food or sleep, until many of them dropped dead from exhaustion. Further research found pleasure centers exist in human brains, too. “People are fairly good at expressing what they want, what they like, or even how much they will pay for an item. But they aren't very good at accessing where that value comes from, or how and when it is influenced by factors like store displays or brands.” Most humans are a little more complicated than rats, of course. 3 Ways To Predict What Consumers Want Before They Know It. The insight that sparks innovation appears to occur randomly.

3 Ways To Predict What Consumers Want Before They Know It

Needs + Solutions = Innovation. Here's a simple equation that leads to new thinking and novel products. But it's a formula that too few companies have grasped Over the next few weeks, colleges across the country will open their doors to welcome a new batch of freshmen. Some will find their way into an introductory economics class, where they'll begin to grapple with the fundamental concepts that underpin that discipline: namely, supply and demand. Most disciplines rely on a handful of basic precepts that serve as the building blocks of larger theories and more complex arguments.

What, then, are the fundamental concepts of innovation? One fundamental concept is the difference between needs and solutions. Understanding this distinction can affect how you listen to your customers, how you conceptualize new products and services, even how you analyze existing markets to create new strategic platforms. At the same time, Nike has explored the needs of its customers, providing an expanding pallet of products for them. Innovation – A New Match Between Need and Solution. Guest Post: by Ralph-Christian Ohr While revisiting some collected innovation readings, I recognized that it might be important to briefly emphasize again one “fundamental”: the distinction between needs and solutions.

Innovation – A New Match Between Need and Solution

According to Christian Terwiesch, co-author of “Innovation Tournaments”, innovation is defined as “… a new match between a need and a solution so that value is created.” The novelty can be in the solution, in the need or in the match. In all cases, this new match results in a specific market, leading to a demand for the solution. Customers hire solutions they perceive to serve their particular needs best.

It’s the innovator’s job to come up with solutions capable of meeting those needs. Don Norman at IIT Design Research Conference 2010 from IIT Institute of Design on Vimeo. Innovation Means Really Being There. Here's an intriguing interview with Gary Flint, chief engineer for the innovative new Honda Ridgeline.

Innovation Means Really Being There

This new vehicle redefines what a pickup can and should be. How did Honda get there? By getting out and observing real people. Says Flint: We didn't look at what people were buying. What Customers Want from Your Products. By Clayton M.

What Customers Want from Your Products

Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall Editor's Note— Marketers have lost the forest for the trees, focusing too much on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs. Customers want to "hire" a product to do a job, or, as legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole! " With Levitt's words as a rallying cry, a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," argues that the marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need.

Hiring Milkshakes (and other secrets to product development) » Derek Christensen. “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” - Theodore Levitt, Professor of Marketing, Harvard Business School Stop thinking of your product as something customers buy. Think of it as something customers hire.

Imagine you own a fast food restaurant. Harvard Business School professor Clayton M Christensen, along with Intuit founder Scott Cook and Taddy Hall, published a phenomenal Harvard Business Review article about jobs-to-be-done. A Product Canvas for Agile Product Management. A Sample Canvas The best way to understand the Product Canvas is to look at an example.

A Product Canvas for Agile Product Management

Image that we want to develop a game that helps children enjoy music and dancing. A canvas for such a game could look like the one below. The sample Product Canvas above contains the product name, the product (or release) goal and the metrics to measure if the goal has been met. The first bigger section states two personas characterising the target users and customers with their needs. The Sections Explained As you have probably noticed, the Product Canvas combines form and function, a structure together with suggested techniques. Name simply states the name or version of the product.