46 Questions to Help Innovators Know What Customers Want

46 Questions to Help Innovators Know What Customers Want


Every innovator should read Anthony Ulwick's book, What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services, because he makes it very easy to questionate-to-innovate. SolutionPeople purchased 50 copies of the book and made it required reading before an innovation facilitation for a consumer products company. The facilitation agenda was simple; we used innovative techniques and tools to answer the 46 questions addressed in the book! The facilitation was a huge success as we produced an Idea Bank with thousands of ideas and over 100 useful solutions.

Question Bank

(created from the Table of Contents in Ulwick's Book)

Formulating Innovation Strategy

1. Who Is the Target of Value Creation and How Should It Be Achieved?

2. What Types of Innovation Are Possible?

3. What Growth Options Should Be Considered?

4. Where in the Value Chain Should We Focus to Maximize Value Creation?

5. How Do We Handle Multiple Constituents with Potentially Conflicting Outcomes?


Capture Customer Inputs

6. Why Should Companies Gather Customer Requirements?

7. What Three Issues Plague the Requirements-Gathering Process?

8. What Types of Data Do Companies Commonly Collect from Customers?

9. What Customer Inputs Are Needed to Master the Innovation Process?

10. What Methods Should Companies Use to Obtain the Necessary Information?

11. How Do You Know Which of the Three Types of Inputs You Should Capture?



Identifying Opportunities

12. What Is an Opportunity?

13. What Three Common Mistakes Are Made in Prioritizing Opportunities?

14. How Should Companies Prioritize Opportunities?

15. How Do You Identify Underserved and Overserved Markets?

16. How Dos Value Migrate Over Time?

17. What Implications Does the Outcome-Driven Paradigm Have for Competitive Analysis?



Segmenting the Market

18. What Is the Purpose of Segmentation?

19. How Has the Practice of Segmentation Evolved?

20. Why Are Traditional Segmentation Methods Ineffective for Purposes of Innovation?

21. What Is Different About Outcome-Based Segmentation?

22. How Is Outcome-Based Segmentation Performed?

23. How Does Outcome-Based Segmentation Address Development and Marketing Challenges?

24. How Is Job-Based Segmentation Different, and When Should it Be Used?



Targeting Opportunities for Growth

25. What Is Different About Targeting for Innovation?

26. What Types of Broad-Market Opportunities Are Likely to Be Attractive?

27. What Segment-Specific Targeting Strategies Are Effective?

28. How Does a Targeting Strategy Result in a Unique and Valued Competitive Position?

29. Why Do Companies Fail to Target Key Opportunities?



Positioning Current Products

30. Why Does Messaging Often Fail to Tout a Product's True Value?

31. What Are the Prerequisites for an Effective Messaging Strategy?

32. What Messaging Will Be Most Effective?

33. Should a Company Message Along an Emotional or Functional Dimension?

34. How Does the Sales Force Have Immediate Impact on Revenue Generation?

35. What Is the Advantage of an Outcome-Based brand?



Prioritizing Projects in the Development Pipeline

36. What Issues Do Companies Face When Prioritizing Projects?

37. What Method Is Used to Identify the Winners and the Losers?

38. Which Efforts Should Get Top Priority?

39. What Other Factors Affect Project Prioritization?



Devising Breakthrough Concepts

40. Why Does Traditional Brainstorming Often Fail to Produce Breakthrough Ideas?

41. How Are Breakthrough Concepts Successfully Generated?

42. What Are the Mechanics Behind Focused Brainstorming?

43. Why Do Traditional Concept-Evaluation Methods Fail?

44. How Is the Customer Scorecard Used to Evaluate Product and Service Concepts?

45. How Are These Methods Applied in Practice?

46. What Is the Role of R&D in the Innovation Process?