Unmet Needs holds the key to Innovation

To design the best innovation strategies, the unmet needs of the target audience are the first thing to be considered and new strategies and products need to be designed to address these unmet needs. There are 3 basic sets of needs that a typical consumer needs that a founder needs to consider:

The first set of needs is called basic needs, which are assumed and not expressed eg: a cell phone to be used for a call.

The second set of needs that a product or service addresses are called performance needs. These needs are explicitly expressed like announcing that a car consumes less gasoline, this would catch customer’s attention.

The third set of needs are excitement needs, which are the needs customers are unaware of but subconsciously desire them. A designer bag or an adventure vacation may be considered one of these.

Customers have different needs and there is a generous reward for those firms who fulfill excitement needs. Secondly, customers don’t always voice up their needs. Instead of directly asking what they want, firms should observe the problems of customers and then design innovation in such a way to overcome those problems. Thirdly, Firms should not dwell in the past as customer needs and preferences are constantly changing. Therefore, constant environment scanning is one of the major responsibilities of the management team.