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CUSTOMER-CENTERED INNOVATION: Improving the odds for success

By: Brian Leavy

A Journal Synthesis on Management Philosophy Topics

By: Zoe Regina C. Castro

Submitted to: Dr. Joanne J. Java, CPA

Change is the only permanent thing in business environment. Currently, the

globalization progress and market competition become more and more unpredictable and
dynamic. With this, innovation is one of the top priorities of business. The article depicts and
examine the customer-centric marketing using new perspective that can serve as a guide to
create new product and service innovation. The author highlights Christensen’s Jobs Theory
which revolves around the observation that “customers don’t buy products or services,” but
rather “pull them into their lives to make progress” in some way that is particularly valuable to
them.”
Also, the author features two books which He discussed in details - Competing Against
Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice (2016), by Christensen and co-authors Taddy
Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan and Sense & Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen
to Customers and Create New Products Continuously (2017) by design and innovation experts,
Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. These recent books offer valuable insights on how to improve
chances for innovation success in a more and more multifaceted and uncertain business setting.
The first book, Mr. Christensen and co-authors reveal how the idea of “Job to be done”
can improve a company’s track record at a new product or service introduction. Simply, this is
having a wining solution that would help the customers getting the job done and/or more
cheaply. The Job theory have five fundamentals key points: people buy products and services to
get a “job” done; jobs are functional, with emotional and social components; a Job-to-be-Done
is stable over time; success comes from making the “job”, rather than the product or the
customer, the unit of analysis; deep understanding of the customer’s “job” makes marketing
more effective and innovation far more predictable. Thus, the “Jobs to Be Done” can help you
to
bring out the underlying needs of users, identify competitors from the customer’s point of view,
especially those not visible and innovate products and services to solve problems that don’t
have a solution yet. The second book gives emphasis to digital technology which changes the
game right across the business world, not only to technology sector but as a whole. There are
five key principles suggested: create two-way conversations (business and customers); focus on
the outcomes not on output; embrace continuous change and continuous processes; create
collaboration and; create a learning culture.
Success is so hard to maintain. Both books emphasize the competitive advantage in
establishing strong business repositioning around a primary customer-benefit and the
significant challenges that comes with it. As future manager and businessman, this article gives
me the idea that the fundamental basis for identifying opportunities for growth is the same
regardless of which business model a company chooses – whether opportunities for innovation
focus on product leadership, some on operational excellence, and some on customer intimacy.
Companies understand that customers must be deal with openness of mind to adapt changes
both in the market and in workplace.

Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their mind cannot
change anything” – George BS.