Innovation is so eeeeeeeeasy

Just the other day I had to get a new ISDN telephone at home, whatever big corporation makes these things, the people designing them don't seem to have kids who keep dropping the handsets all the time... (opportunity to innovate #1 - LISTEN to your customers) (and DOOOOO something about it)

Not a Big Challenge. I thought. Wrongly. Whatta mistake-a to make-a! Just try to order a handset from 3 years ago. Of course they don't make that model anymore! You have to get new ones including the base station, just a lousy 450 euros... (opportunity #2 - if something works keep providing it and don't force your customers to buy a whole new set)

Well no Big Deal for a dude like me. I shop all the time on the Net, seen it all, I'm sure every week some kind of package is delivered at the door. You should just see the neighbours in the small village where I live when the coffee is delivered. At the door. All I wanted was a non-Siemens phone because of numbers 1 and 2 above. Gimme a design kinda phone, I ended up with Philips. Nice looking handsets! Just try to pick one.... 50+ choices and all described as "DECT ISDN telephone with/without voicemail". Uhmmm.... You don't seriously believe I'm gonna click on all 50 of them just to see which one I neeeeeeed!?!?!? (opportunity #3 - put the user (=customer) in the center of your thinking --> User Centered Design).

I thought about setting up a complaints web site/blog where people with similar experiences can put their frustration to work. I found there already was one. But took me 2 days to find it and now a week later I can't find it anymore. Still an opportunity for somebody to do it right (opportunity #4)

Innovating is not difficult, start with the biggest frustrations...

Take care,

Chief

--- Still Believing ---

Comments

[daniel]

do yoouuuuuuu hhavvvvvvee aaaaaaaaaa kkeeyyybooaarrd ppppprrrroooobleeeemmm ????

[Martijn Kriens]

Djeevan,

you must be kidding. You really do not want to be seen with a phone from 4 year ago. And if you don't mind: your children will ;->

But isn't that called innovation. What kind of innovation do we expect if the phone companies still have to make all models dating back 15 years ago? Suppose IBM would still have to make the computers they made 15 years ago?

The fact that your phone is not available anymore is no problem as long as the way it communicates with the basestation in a standard protocol that at least is backwards compatible. I recently bought a cheap DECT handset for my siemens base station (10 years old) and voila: it worked.

Viva standardization :-)

Martijn Kriens

[Djeevan Schiferli]

:-)

The trick is - and you know this - in providing customers with the information they need so they can make a well informed decision in an convenient as possible way (the web) in stead of frustrating them to the bone by presenting information from a company point of view.

Of course this ties in with the user centered design opportunity I mentioned.

[Martijn Kriens]

What informed decision? If they all are compatible it comes down to the most important decision within our current economy: does the color of the phone matches the color of my eyes or, for the more technologically oriented person, is it cool...

[Jeroen van Hoof]

Djeevan,

Most of your comments are about business improvement ideas and product development ... i.e. doing things better, not different. Is that what we want to call innovation?

I had the notion that innovation is about doing things in a new and different way, possible by either combining usefull concepts from different fields or by using a usefull concept from one field in another.

And as stated before ... keeping old and outdated models active is just not good business. I am afraid you are in a minority.

Why else do maintenance costs on hardware increase over time? Because it is economically sound to do so. Your working old product is the best competitor for your new product ... so you need to make the new product win on price :-)
Or availability in the market, ie remove outdated (but still fully functional) models from the market.

So have fun with your new phone. Keep it away from the kids.

Jeroen (Do you realise that you used to remember all those phone-numbers?)