When a client tasked Mark Schwartz with developing a new folder, he went back to school. He handed students disposable cameras to document how they used similar products.
From that, Product Development Technologies Inc. ideated a folder that opened from the top, not the side, so students could retrieve papers out of their backpacks without emptying the contents.
“Having products that are not me-too but really exciting things people want to buy means those customers come back year after year,” says Schwartz, the company’s CEO. “If you don’t constantly come up with new and unique products, eventually you’ll die.”
Smart Business spoke with Schwartz about the innovation process.
Q. What’s the first step of innovation?
The first part is research and strategy, and that’s really at the core of innovation. [It’s] all about: Who’s your target market? What’s your price point? What are the trends? What do users want?
The real key to innovation is getting informed first with all the stakeholders and what the competitors are doing. For example, our employees go to lots of different shows. We really don’t (make) a lot of appliances, but we still go to the appliance show, because it helps us get acclimated with what the latest trends are, what the latest forms are, the latest colors, the latest features. Those innovations can get cross-pollinated into something like a medical device.
By far, the biggest thing is customer research, understanding the needs of the customer.
There’s two ways you do that: There’s the articulated needs and then there’s what we call the unarticulated needs. Articulated is doing research and going out in the field and talking to users about what they like or don’t like about products, bringing in prototypes, getting their reaction. The second part of that is using ethnography tools to spy on them, essentially, and watch people using things. They drive innovation without even knowing it. Someone may fiddle around with a tool, for example, and you’ll realize, ‘Wow, if that had a light on it, that would be really helpful for them.’
In the old days, people did a lot of market research, quantitative stuff, and I really think the trend is going away from that to more direct voice of the customer and ethnography.
