On 29th November 2019, I presented an innovative way to combine the moving motivators from management 3.0 with the empathy map and the customer journey to create product which are tapping into the customers emotions.
The pitch of the workshpo is to create a cook book that a single dad father would purchase to create an unforgetable birthday experience for one of his two daughter. The cook book can contain more than cooking receipees. You can add an online experience, offer for goodies, services for animation and decoration.
The workshop takes place in 3 parts:
Evaluation of the customer motivations
Mapping the motivations to emotions on the empathy map
Address teh emotions with features sorted on the customer journey map
To categorise the intrinsic motivations of the customer I used the moving motivators cards from Management 3.0. In 10 cards it allows to create a picture of the drivers of the customer: his goals, his will to be connected to others, his desire for order and method, …
Once we have designed the customer profile, we associate the motivations with an emotion. The desire for status recognition can be expressed as Pride. The emotions are connected to a type of empthy on the empathy map to visualise how this emotions is experienced by the customer: is it an intelectual emotion, somthing the customer thinks about, something he sees in his environment and surroundings, something he is used to say, something he is used to ear, something he does or something he experience deep in his heart.
The empathy map
At this stage we still don’t have a proposal for a product. After the motivations are transformed into emotions, the workshop participant are going to brainstorm on features that would be able to address the emotions of the customer. Each feature then has to be mapped with one of the phase of marketisation of a product:
The acquisition phase corresponds to the early adopters buying product which are addressing a niche market. Teh customers are ready to take the risk to buy a product because it offers at least a unique feature they can’t find on the market.
The adoption phase requires from you to create a product which is able to compete with the market offer. In this phase you have to sell features which are the minimum expected for that category and offer a differentiator
In the retention phase you already built your customer audience, you have to create new features to either develop your customer base or retain teh existing customers with new versions of your best selling products.
The monetisation phase gathers the key market players who need to generate revenue withthere flagship products by creating variation of their best selling product and starting to address new market segments.
Each group created a set of proposal for their cook book.
As example of product proposed by the 3 groups of participants in XP Days 2019, the book of the second group proposed to add a CD of songs and lyrics to sing with the kids during the party. An other group of participant proposed an online experience to celebrate the event and share online and get recognition on social media for the great experience offered to the kids during the birthday.
In 90 minutes, each group pictured a target customer with his motivations, transformed the motivations in emotions to address with innovative product features and created the market strategy to deliver their product to their target market segments.
The workshop at XP Days 2019
I created this workshop to enable companies creating their customer value proposition to focus on the emotional and social jobs of the customer. It is far to easy to concentrate only on the customer functional jobs and disregard the 2 other jobs. Thanks to the social media, product design now often include the online sharing experience, which is par of the social job, but social design of product should not be limited to the online experience. This framework also offers a way to address any time of emotions.
Addressing the social and emotional jobs in a Value Proposition
As a workshop host, I sometimes received nice comments from happy workshop attendees. I am welcoming people with artisanal beers and homemade food vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free cooked by Aurore at Alliance Merode. This might help people to share positive comments on top of the experience of the workshop itself, but I have been positively amazed by a recent piece of feedback.
After the workshop on Innovation in August 2019, I received a wonderful comment linking leadership with the team facilitation and innovation. I prefer to leave it here in extenso:
Thanks to Board Game, I will be a better leader.
Do you play board games? Have you played when you were young? Are you still playing as an adult? I have always been bored while playing board games, even when I was young. For me the fun is in winning. But when your fate is in the hands of dice, winning requires luck which is by definition out of your control. So, I have always tried to spice it up by disrupting the flow of a party. For example, by changing the rules during the game, by annoying anyone who would dare having more luck than I had, by distracting everyone, so as to make them lose focus. And I have to say that it did work, I often won. But let’s be honest, I do not understand people excited by the idea of playing a board game. The worst of all are the ones that last for days. You remember the game “Risk”? The goal was to conquer the world and kill the opponents. That was an old version of any today’s video game. I have always asked myself, where is the fun? For me, fun means immediate gratification. If I have to wait for more than one afternoon to win, this is not fun anymore. I do not play board games very often. But what I like is all the questions about leadership. For me, good leadership can change the world. But it is missing in a lot of companies today.
«If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.» John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the United States.
In my 16 years of leadership in different organisations, all over the world, I have tried to live this statement. So, when my friend told me that she knew someone in Brussels who was organising a board games evening, my first reaction was to run away. When she told me this person is using board games to help leaders improve their leadership skills, I thought: “Really?” She piqued my curiosity.
Facilitating Ideation for Innovation (thanks to board games) – What a topic! Ideation is the process of creating ideas. As a leader, if you know how to generate ideas from your team, you win the jackpot!
So, I was very excited.
The Workshop
12 people come up to participate to this workshop. Knowing that it was end of August, that it was 35 °C outside, and that the topic was unusual; the fact that 12 people decided to stay in a room without air-con for more than 2 hours to try something new, was an achievement. Jord and Ralph were the two facilitators of this workshop.
The festivities started with the ice breaker. One of us received a chart containing some graph relating a measurable to a variable, while the other received 4 cards with a statement on it. The goal was to find the funniest statement which could be linked to the chart that the central participant had. Knowing that we have all known each other for 5 min, I thought that was quite awkward. According to me, to know what will make someone laugh on a specific topic, you need to know him/her, because you need a minimum connection with that person. How was I supposed to know what would make a third-party laugh? That was a mystery to me. And it’s true, I have got a peculiar sense of humour. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the facilitators, helped to make all things go smoothly and some people even did laugh in the end.
The interesting part for me was to come now. They split us into 3 teams. Each team was supposed to be a marketing team, working on the launch of a new cereal product. We had to find an original product, its name, its characteristics, its target group, and at the end design the box of cereals. To do so, we had to follow 6 rounds: 1st round: each person individually had to come up with an innovative cereal product and keep it secret For the less imaginative of us, a box of ideas was available, where we could pick up some deranged concepts, adapt it to ours and come up with a brand-new mad idea. 2nd round: the board game. Each participant places some token on the board, to describe his idea, and his teammates tried to describe what this new product is using only the tokens on the board. Of course, the teammates always came up with something lightly or completely different from the initial ideas, which allowed the author of the original concept to enrich his original ideas with what his teammate brought to the table. This is genius! Thanks to the setting, people allowed themselves to think out of the box, to come up with the craziest things ever, without feeling ashamed, and at the end, your original ideas are enriched and more rounded than what you thought of. 3rd round: The captain’s round One person in each team is elected to go to other’s team board, guess their ideas, and come to its original team to enrich the initial ideas. 4th round: A single idea per team At this stage, each team has 3 ideas. The point here was to combine these 3 ideas into one, and end up with one great idea per team. 5th round: Design of the cereal boxes. One box per team. 6th round: Presentation of your product to the audience. The results and in particular the way in which they were spawned were quite enlightening. Using board games seems to be the perfect way to stimulate imagination and allow everyone to express himself without bias. This is a perfect way to be sure that everyone is engaged, however, the talent of the facilitators is essential. Jord and Ralph were perfect to this role. Listening to the people, and motivating them as well as adapting the rules to what was happening around the tables.
If you are au fait with Lean techniques; if you are looking for new original ideas to motivate your teams, meet Jord and Ralph, they are the men for you.
Audrey – Strategy & operational excellence That was perfectly well done. If you are looking for a new way to engage your teams, consider this!
Qepler invited 15 speakers to present their experience with Product development and Innovation in various industries. Companies influencing today’s market landscape were present: Qualcomm, Henkel, Clariant, Siemens, Orange, Vodafone, Konica Minolta with people of fine quality including Vice-Presidents in engineering and Heads of Innovation departments.
The two days of the conference were articulated around three themes: 1. Product and process innovation 2. Customer-centricity and product experience 3. Digital and Technological transformation
Chairman introduction – Why ? Passionate stories
Golden circle – Simon Sinek
As a chairman, I launched the 2 days by questioning what is the definition of the Innovation. Following Simon Sinek golden circle, “People don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it”. I proposed to discover the story of the speakers in the definition of a collective story which would define Innovation. According to Carmine Gallo, author the book of Talk like TED, stories have to be told with passion. It is then the passions of 15 participants that we were about to discover.
VP Engineering Qualcomm – Dr Eng. Grzegorz Ombach
Dr Grzegorz Ombach opened the first speech presenting the invention of wireless chargers for phone and how it lead to inventing wireless charger for cars. He explained how he managed the innovation teams in the creation of an international think tank. In particular, he highlighted the challenges and extreme benefits of mixing Cultures in an innovation team.
Thomas Förster, Corporate Vice-President of R&D Beauty Care at Henkel
Thomas Förster, Corporate Vice-President of R&D Beauty Care at Henkel, explained to the audience the necessity of sustainability in the product development. Product carbon footprint reduction at Henkel includes a 360 degrees approach to deliver an impact. 90% of the carbon footprint of a product is associated with the end user, Henkel is addressing directly the end user to reduce his footprint, for instance deploying Plastic Bank.
Lucia Chierchia, Managing Partner @Gellify
Lucia Chierchia, a Managing partner at Gellify, explained what is the importance of creating a trusted network of business partners to implement Open Innovation. Lucia presented some of the means of implementation of the Innovation put in place at Gellify to transform liquid ideas into solid products.
Asli Salmaz-Kaiser, VP R&D Innovation Tüv-Süd
Asli Solmaz-Kaiser enlightened the audience with 5 tips to success: 1. Design thinking 2. Focus on numbers 3. Ecosystem 4. Team Cooperation 5.Continuous Improvement. She illustrated her point with the success story of Ideo, the think tank responsible for a large number of innovations we are familiar using.
Richard Burton, Innovation and Transformation Consultant
Richard Burton, Innovation and Transformation consultant at Inovatia. Richard illustrated some of the innovation strategy successes and failures. Blackberry and Sony examples illustrated how customer advice in selecting innovation can be overrated. He concluded by presenting the “Polymath”, the ideal profile of the innovator that large companies need to find to secure their future in innovation.
Dr Stefan Schaper, head of Lean Innovation, Schaper Tech
Dr Stefan Schaper introduced TRIZ a structured alternative to Design Thinking. TRIZ was invented by the Russian Genrich Altshuller in 1946, nothing less than the ” theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks”. TRIZ contains technics for innovators to trim problems, combine solutions, develop visions, and defined the next generations of products.
Dr Filippo Larceri, Global Implementation leader, Clariant Excellence
Dr Filippo Larceri presented the magic blend leading to Innovation in 3 dimensions (1. Business configuration 2, Product Perfection 3. Customer Experience) and 3 levels of intensity (1. Continuous Improvement 2. Evolution 3. Breakthrough). He pictured the profile of the excellence leader: a polyglot with broad horizons and unusual experience, multi-skilled, speaking each business language.
Alain Mavon, Senior Director of Science and Innovation, Oriflame Cosmetics
Alain Mavon explained that “similar to a parachute, the innovation works best when it’s open”. Anti-ageing cosmetics innovation are facing a growing demand not anymore to stop skin ageing but to age better. Ageing is influenced at 80% by the lifestyle of people and 20% by their genes. Introducing new cosmetics addressing lifestyle becomes necessary, this requires agility.
Rajkumar Ragupathy, Innovation manager, HarmanLifestyle Audio enlighted the audience at the end of the first day, with a story of the impossible customer experience, following the user till inside the car to understand how he uses his sound on the trip to work. Raj explained that Innovation requires to understand the mindset and the culture of customers.
The first day was closed with a panel discussion. As a chairman, I summarised the first day ending with few drawings recording the essential learnings of the day.
The magic formula of innovation
Keys for successful innovation
Ana Esteban, Team manager customer research, Digital workplace R&D, Konica Minolta
The second day started with 2 speeches about customer-centricity. Ana Esteban is Team manager customer research, Digital workplace R&D at Konica Minolta. She explained how her team is collecting feedback of customers on an online platform rather than asking customers what they want. She explained the components of the interaction with the customer: 1. blogs and diary 2. forum 3. surveys 4. Creative sets (life collage inspired from journaling) 5. interactive playful tools using gamification. She explained how she convinced the business departments to move from a quantitative evaluation to a qualitative approach based on value creation.
Adi Chhabra, Head of Product Innovation, Vodafone
Adi Chhabra, Head of Product Innovation at Vodafone in the UK, enlightened the audience with a futuristic view of innovation. he explained that the future is about reducing the number of interactions. From the currently limited intelligence of the chatbots, he spined-off with the introduction of object recognition and Generated Adverse networks, in a baffling demonstration of future capabilities of computers. For Adi, the future is in the web 3.0: Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, 3D printers, semantic web and decentralised with blockchain.
Nicolas Bry, Orange Studio COO, Orange
Nicolas Bry, Orange Studio COO, opened the last block of the conference: Digital and technological transformation. He presented the open innovation initiative. Orange Studio creates interfaces and a framework for intrapreneurs. Its hackathons and crowd-sourcing platform Imagine at Orange are gathering 22.000 users. With Oranges Partners, Orange is creating innovation initiatives with the external partnership. Orange redefined the way Salomon users are perceiving the sports brand to refocus on social media allowing to share your sports experience with friends.
Joerg Hassmann, Head of Innovation and Portfolio Management, Siemens
Joerg Hassmann, Head of Innovation and Portfolio Management, Siemens, explained the latest trend in engine innovation (1.service offer 2. digital twins 3. Industry Apps 4. Connectivity 5. Simulation 6. Configuration ). He described how his team is reaching innovation in their “war room of war room” ( OoO, Obeya of Obeya, in Japanese). An Obeya is a control room where all the ideas are connected physically speaking on wall boards and giant canvas.
Jord Rengerve, Agile Coach, PeopleBlendIT
The day ended with the 2 last presentations: I presented Agile Story mapping, a tool and technic to reconcile the business and the development by using a single language and support for the conversation. This closed the loop of the questioning of the introduction of the first day about what is Innovation and the “Why?”. The Why is the conversation we need to build 360 degrees with customers, business and development teams.
Michal Dunaj, R&D director EU research Operations, Telekom Innovation Laboratories
Michal Dunaj, R&D director EU research Operations, T-Labs – Telekom Innovation Laboratories, reflected on the topic of creativity in Innovation. He related the project T-Labs is delivering to support Magenta to shape the future using “Extreme Exploration”, the research of unconventional ideas, using de-focusing, bi-association, error and art to enable creativity.
