User-driven technological innovation and idea evaluation process

The process of innovation includes evaluation of the idea/concept at some point. We can also agree that the best understanding of customer needs is the source and the driver of the innovation process. And, that in order to obtain a higher user value, innovation should somehow involve the user.

“The customer is at the centre of user-driven innovation, and it is the expectation and the desire to fulfill a customer need in an improved fashion that drives innovation. On the other hand, research remains the focal point of technology-driven innovation. Here, the researcher’s desire to develop groundbreaking technologies that outperform existing technologies remains the key driver in the innovation process. Companies will of course expect the new technology to have a commercial potential, but it is only later that such a potential is realized.” – Jørgen  Rosted , User-driven innovation. Results and recommendations, #13, October 2005

Evaluation of commercial potential of the idea is a rather complicated process. Here it is usually where the needs of user-driven and technology-driven approaches of innovative productive process meet.

Many companies use tools to involve potential end users in this process. The evaluation of the idea, that is made by real potential end users  can provide understandings of user future behavior, prove the innovation to be practicable, that it has a real opportunity to create or serve the real need, that it has unique qualities, and offer the potential consumers some valuable benefits which they will be ready to pay for.

Charles Leadbeater mentions that companies that don’t involve future consumers in the process of innovation are “missing the opportunity that some consumers have some important things to say not about existing products, but about their future products.”

He adds, that “if you can embrace critical and creative consumers as part of your innovative process your consumers will know a lot about your product, what they can do, how they can be improved, what features could be added.”

The authors of the book  “User Involvement in Innovation Processes. Strategies and Limitations from a Socio-Technical Perspective”, edited by Harald Rohracher, Profil Verlag München, 2005, do not uncritically embrace the perspective of increased user participation, but suggest, that there are also limitations and barriers for participation strategies.

They argue, that there are more than one straightforward answer the question :”What role do users have to play in technical innovation processes?”

Someone by accident or deliberately may disclose the idea and the innovation may cease to be the property of the entrepreneur/company that invented it.

Someone may be forced to give his or her opinion of the innovation not deliberately.

Potential end users who will be chosen to take part in innovation process and then will evaluate the idea must thus be very reliable.