So we got right down to work. Here are the results…

Fat, squishy wheels work the best. We found out later the BMW crew also used toy cars for testing.

First, this “Innovation Master Class” is clearly targeting business leaders who lead innovation groups, are working to encourage more innovative behavior into their organizations, or are managing incubators funded to encourage local growth. Innovation, of course, is easier to theorize about than do, and large organizations in particular can find it difficult to focus on developing innovative value for their customers.

We have helped both Whirlpool and Amway with their internal business innovation efforts. Tom’s course provided great insights into some of the organizational dynamics of setting up what he calls “Innovation Zones” – protected spaces where free thinking is encouraged and rewarded, and the status quo is constantly challenged and redefined. His recommendations certainly mirror our experience in the importance of working directly with business leaders, striving for both autonomy and transparency for innovation efforts, and focusing on customer-value creation.

Secondly, Tom reinforced our most recent work in customer experience innovation. (Who doesn’t like to hear they’re running on the right track?) Here are a five takeaways from the seminar:

Innovation is a threat to yesterday’s success.
Markets don’t always reward new ideas. This why our customer empathy work focuses on customer needs more than customer wants. Markets – people –  know what they have experienced, but innovation changes the experience.

Innovation is not a solo flight.
The vision of the lone innovator is dated – the world today is just too complex. Scientific papers, patents, and business innovation is increasingly co-authored and co-owned. The trend line is incredibly obvious toward collaborative innovation. Work in interdisciplinary teams and networks to find new paths. Remember that innovation is often about combination: There will be some chaos, but don’t try to avoid it. Fail fast, start learning, be agile. Innovation – as opposed to invention – is more process than product, and the future of innovation is about collaboration.

Budgeting can be an innovation killer.
Rather than managing costs, focus first on investing to create value. The greatest value of innovation results from a context of profound and prolonged uncertainty. So learn how to react quickly when you discern real sources of value. For us, this starts with a well-defined business position. Budgets are put in place to accommodate anticipated needs, and are necessary for many kinds of work. Innovation – finding new sources of value – needs room to explore.

Experience innovation is infinite.
Innovations in product design, price, and speed to market only go so far, but you can always better understand your customer, their needs and desires, and find ways to meet them that are ever better and differentiating. We continue to see a shift from product to service economy, and exploring this area is a great way to surface new innovation opportunities.

Design processes around your customer.
Organizations need to innovate the customer experience first and then work backwards to deliver that experience. When we make plans, we often get the future wrong because we don’t always understand customer behavior. Do all you can to understand the customer’s context before your next investment.

That’s no longer the case, of course. The exercise of connecting products – fresh produce, office furniture, design services, you name it – with customers has evolved a lot since those days.

Advances in production, distribution, and communication have globalized commerce, which means – among other things – that we can now get fresh strawberries even when they’re out of season. That’s good, especially if you love fresh strawberries. Unfortunately, it also means we don’t usually get to meet the person who grows the strawberries we buy. That’s not so good. If you can talk with your favorite strawberry growers, you can share your observation that this year’s berries are much sweeter than last year’s crop, and encourage the growers to do what it takes to ensure even sweeter berries next year. You can let them know that you’re also looking for fresh blueberries, and ask if they can recommend a good supplier. You can take a simple commercial transaction, and make it more meaningful by building a personal connection with your favorite strawberry grower while he or she is developing a loyal customer.

Social media – blogs, podcasts, video sharing, etc. – are giving companies the tools they need to bring relationships back to commerce. This new business environment encourages producers and consumers to engage one another in mutually beneficial ways. As columnist Ray Poynter points out in the International Journal of Market Research, social media has rapidly become a credible way for businesses to gather and learn from consumer insights. The broadcast model for communicating with customers has been replaced, reports Ecademy founder Penny Power. BusinessWeek predicted this change back in 2005, when the magazine ran the cover story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” The magazine posted an updated version of the piece earlier this year, and the observable changes that have sprung up in the three years since Business Week first published the report are as telling as the original research.

What’s the appropriate response to all of this? Seize the opportunity. For a particularly powerful example, consider our friends at Spout.com. The company could not have existed in the days before social media. The technology to connect with a new audience – and for like-minded audience members to connect meaningfully with one another – developed right alongside the frustration four avid film buffs felt with the Hollywood model for motion picture marketing and distribution. They knew the best recommendations for movies came from friends. They knew that social networks could allow users to share recommendations just as easily as status updates. And they realized that film fans and moviemakers wanted to connect. They put it all together. We helped them name it, brand it, and launch it. It’s been fascinating to watch this new kind of commercial community take shape.

Big and small companies alike have been dabbling with social media as a means to network with customers, with varying degrees of success…
- Don’t fault GM’s Fastlane for the troubles of the U.S. auto industry. The General Motors blog is widely held up as an example of a successful corporate blog.
- Starbucks capitalizes on its enviable customer loyalty with My Starbucks Idea, an online tool for customers to share ideas for improving product and service, and weigh in on ideas from other customers.
- Dell Ideastorm provides a similar outlet.
- Glaxo Smith Kline’s consumer healthcare innovation site places a “Submit an Idea” button front and center.
- In Japan, Adidas encourages fans of the classic sneakers to upload a photo to endorse its “celebrate originality” campaign.
- Whole Foods Market’s blog offers shopping tips, product provenance stories, etc., but they’re not just talking to customers. They’re listening, too.
- Midwest coffeehouse chain Biggby Coffee CEO and co-founder Bob Fish actively blogs, Twitters, and updates Facebook and Flickr. Customers can follow him across the chain’s territory, and if you find him, he’ll buy your coffee.

We’re on board, too. When People Design overhauled our website last year in conjunction with our 10th anniversary and name change, we put a blog right up front. This blog is our very own open-air market where we share the things we’re thinking about and invite your feedback. Plus, Google likes the fresh content, which certainly doesn’t hurt our chances whenever potential clients go searching for a design firm. We’re currently both a group and a page on Facebook (there is a difference). You can link up with us on LinkedIn. And we’re tweeting away on Twitter.

All of these communications – this post included – give us the chance to share with our best customers all the things we’re learning about and exploring. Quite often, the very act of sharing all of this sparks conversations that generate ideas to make our products and services better. Collaboration is buzz-worthy for a reason: It works.

I’ve got a fairly mechanical glitch, am not feeling unwell, so I have lots of energy to think about the patient experience, noting the signs and handouts, the many message deliveries in all their media and formats. When we are patients, or serving as patient advocates, dozens and dozens of messages and media give plenty of ways to study communications (and their breakdowns) in the hospital environment.

I also know, having relatives in the medical biz, and having facilitated interviewed a fair manyhealth care professionals, that the challenges of keeping up to date on health care information are great and getting greater every day. I have great sympathy for the people who care for us, certainly. Communicating among themselves is hard and communicating clearly with patients is harder.

In this one “use case,”  in a 24-hour stay at my local hospital and a week of followup care, and another week at a research hospital, I have received four slightly different versions of my prognosis and differing care plans from six physicians. I tripped over cracks in the floor formed by varied motives of entities I didn’t know were competing (this lab vs. that lab, hospital vs. doctor’s office, for-profit vs not-for). Overall, I was able to unravel it, and none of the communication glitches put me in any grave danger. Unnecessary discomfort, bruising, hours wasted, yes, but no real danger.

Add to that the usual hassles, the records not quite able yet to transfer digitally from office to office, hospital to hospital, the missed queues, wrongly routed prescriptions, fuzzy or out-of-date and incorrect instructions. And always that cruel law presiding over the pursuit of health care — that the most frustrating events will happen when you are at the end of your physical or emotional rope.

Relatively speaking (in relation to past experiences, I mean), it wasn’t a bad patient experience. But these wee frustrations did remind me of the experience of looking after my mother during her unsuccessful fight with cancer, and trying to carry messages from hospital to hospital, surgeon to radiologist, radiologist to chemotherapist, practice to practice. We learned it takes three trips or three tries before a message can be delivered or received without distortion. As long as my mom and I expected that, we were able to be a little less afraid.

In health care, though a sincere desire to help people is the calling for most people who work in the field (many of whom break rules daily to fulfill that calling), the experience that has been created is not customer-focused. The experience suggests that the patient is not the customer. Insurance companies and employers, health care laws and protocol compliance, administrative goals, regulations, standards, and the current day’s workload appear to be the customers.

Patients feel like raw material for medical assembly, dropped off at the front of the plant, and rolled out the back, transformed by the medical process into the medical product. We often complain, because we have no idea what is happening to us, no idea who will tell us what we need to know, or when. Confusing messages confuse us. And we are afraid.

One of the last things my nurse handed me as I was wheeled out of the back of the hospital was a post card.  “How are we doing?” read the headline of the tiny little survey.  I was asked to check one of three boxes to report whether my stay Exceeded? Met? Did not meet Expectations?  That one data point will be recorded by an administrator who includes patient satisfaction among the scores used to measure the performance of… Whom? What? The facility? The doctors? Nursing staff? Housekeeping? Food services? What reliable data can these wee cards offer, I wonder…

There is a groundswell of caregivers who want to provide better patient experiences. I cannot imagine how the patient experience can be improved when the patient is, and is neccesarily, so far from being the customer. When caregivers themselves are not rewarded for improving the experience of patient care. Outcome, yes. Experience, no.

And so there is a great deal of competitive window-dressing among medical product plants. New drapes and imitation wood floors won’t help a patient who is afraid for his life.

The patient-as-customer problem won’t be fixed soon. But I did learn something about my stay at a research hospital. There the patient is still not the customer, but is certainly considered to be a full partner in the work. We may not be able to create a good customer experience, but it doesn’t seem beyond our current reach to create a better partnership between caregivers and their patients.

And good partnerships begin with communication. We need clear and consistent communication about our condition and treatment, respect for and the means to do our own research so we can bring intelligent questions to the care consult, and the simple confidence that the diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment plans are clearly communicated among all of the partner caregivers we will encounter in the course of our treatment. I’m a hopeless technoptimist, and believe we can digitally (I know that word means something else in the medical field) close the gap on this patient partnership problem.

Our health care providers do not need new marble floors nearly so much as they need a good patient communications system, one system that everyone refers to and uses, that gives the patient instant access to their information, a means to read up on the latest literature, or to find a researcher who can help them understand their options, and follows the patient from caregiver to caregiver and home again. How close are we, anyway? I wish I knew. We must be close. I have faith that we’re really very close.

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