Ethnography

ideas-innovation.blogspot.com/

Theodre Levitt said “ The purpose of business is to create & keep a customer”

So how can a company Create & Keep a customer. One way to do is to understand the people its is catering to, inorder to draw insights which can be converted into Business ideas leading to growth & creation of markets.

Now Understanding & capturing insight is done using Quantitative Studies like Focus Group Interviews. Although these methods are fruitful to some extent, some of the limitations of these methods are that they provide limited insights from the user, their inadequacy to provide any information about user’s behavior, emotions, feelings, pain points etc. The tools acted as evaluation tools rather than insight capture tools.

Qualitative Studies like Ethnography are being increasing used to capture Insights from Customers/Users/Staff inorder to understand their satisfactions, limitations, pain points, etc which can be used to determine the next big Idea.

In the last post I had mentioned about the book Ethnography for Marketers. I have been reading on this subject .Through this post, I would like to demystify the Ethnography – what is it, why & where it is Used, How it is used, when it is used

So what is Ethnography

Ethnography is observing customers/ Users in their natural environment to find their frustrations, limitations, satisfactions, pain points etc with the objective to acquire insights into the users needs & wants. The field is drawn from anthropology & sociology.

Why & Where it is Used

Ethnography is used to complement Focus Groups Interviews inorder to gain insights. The main objective of Ethnographic studies is to understand customers in their natural context (home/office/retail store, etc). It is mainly used when little is known about the target market or when fresh insights are desired from a segment. In the present scenario when customer’s taste & preferences are constantly changing, it help companies to maintain an understanding of their customers & keep a track of their constant changing needs, issues & wants. Ethnographic studies can be used to understand the interaction of customer with product /service (for eg: ATM, website, retail). It can be used to assess the corporate cultures. It can also be used to understand how the user interacts with the processes of a product/ service (using a remote/operating a machine). The tools are used for discovering latent needs of customer for new product discovery, new service discovery, etc.

How It is Used

There are various Ethnographic tools which are available. They are used in the natural context of a user/customer/employee. Some of the tools are:

a. Observing the Product/Service Usage

b. Day In life

c. Mystery Shopping

d. Guerrilla Ethnography: Researcher not disclosing that he is researching

How is it Different from Market Research

Ethnography seeks to understand the behavior of people in their natural environment & their interaction with the product/service. The study seek to draw out emotions, perceptions, pain points, aspirations & beliefs that users may have with respect to products/services. It complements Market Research.

Guidelines for Ethnographers

a. Being in the Users Context: The main Objective is to be in the user’s context inorder to view & understand how the product is being used. What are the pain points, limitations of products, what workaround the customer has created, what is the role of product in the life of customer, etc.

b. Being Subject Oriented: The ethnographer has to be subject/user oriented suspending his own assumptions. The focus should be on learning & observing rather than evaluation of concepts.

c. Flexible: The other objective is to be flexible & not restrict to a pre planned questionnaire.

Here is a Video I found on Vimeo explaining what is Ethnography.

What is Ethnography? from Steve Inskeep on Vimeo.

Now ,Jan Chip Chase is a Principal researcher from Nokia who travels around the world and inside our pockets in search of behavioral patterns that will inform the design of products we don't even know. Here is a presentation he made at TED. Following the video is the Slideshow featuring some of the techniques being used.

Insight & Innovation

View more documents from whatidiscover.

But the question remains How we can organise observations to draw insights patterns.

Lets see...will be exploring this week.

Thanks

Neeraj

Sources: Article Inspiration: Ehtnography For Marketers, Hy Mariampolski

Video & Slide Source: TED.com , Slideshare.com

Ethnography for Marketers

Hi Everyone

One of the questions I keep reading is that what is the difference between Market Research & Enthnographic research.

A lot has been written about Ethnographic Research & how it is different from Market Research but still there was still a need to understand Ethnographic Research Techniques from a Practical Marketers perspective.

Just got this book Titled Ethnography for Marketers: A guide to consumer immersion by Hy Mariampolski.

The book provides a practical guide to what ethnographic research is, how is it different from market research, why marketers should use ethnographic research techniques,etc .

Am presently reading it. One can find a preview of the book at

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=O88vfGNiH_8C&dq=Ethnography+for+Marketers:+A+Guide+to+Consumer+Immersion.&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=v5tlSravEcmIkAXQuqTNDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

Thanks

Neeraj

Design Thinking & Innovation Update

http://ideas-innovation.blogspot.com/

Hi Everyone

It’s been a great Design & Innovation week. Here are couple of Interesting Information from the field of Innovation & Design.

1. A fine line - Hartmut Esslinger's (founder of Frog Design) book a fine line is out. The book offers a step-by-step overview of the innovation process from targeting goals to shepherding new products and services to the marketplace in order to reveal how to arrive at an authentic human design that connects strongly with consumers. One of the chapter is available on the site (http://www.afinelinebook.com/). Having gone through it, the book seems to highlight the changing role Design is playing in not only designing products or services but being increasingly used by companies to Innovate & earn profits.

Check out the video of Hartmut Esslinger.

2. Guy Kawasaki explains the Art of Innovation in 10 steps at Cisco Live. Check it out.

3. DMI Rebranding - Design Management Institute has undergone rebranding. Check it out how they did it (http://www.dmi.org/dmi/html/aboutdmi/press/DMI_Identity_Relaunch_Presentation.pdf).

A Great Article was published by DMI on Business week talking about how Innovation strategy, brand strategy & design strategy being practiced together makes design as one of the primary idea generators for the creation of viable business platforms.

Check the article at (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2009/id20090629_681162.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_top+stories)

4. Building Innovation radar – MIT Sloan School of Management visiting professor Alan MacCormack explains about how to create Innovation Radar for companies to innovate constantly. Check out the Podcast at

http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/innovation/innovation_07_08_09.htmin which he give examples of Intel & organization resorting to student competitions to create Innovation radars.

5. D.Light- In Pune we spotted Dlight's all purpose portable lamp at a local Super market. D light is a solar powered lighting company that came out of Stanford D School. The company adopts design thinking philosphy & has the purpose of providing light for 100 million products by 2020. The company operates in India, China & East Africa.

6. Created Indian Design & Innovation Group at wenovski. Wenovski is a global network of Design & Innovation Thinkers.

Check it out at http://wenovski.ning.com/. Would appreciate if you would join.

Thanks

Neeraj

Sources: Businessweek.com, afineline.com, youtube.com, Dmi.org, Dlightdesign.com, blogs.cisco.com.

Solving Problems Visually

Hi Everybody 

Recently we mentioned about the book THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN (article below) which is based on the concept of using pictures to solve any type of problem.

If you look,it is easy to interpret & understand visuals as compared to reading. Think of it like this way, if you are able to present problems Visually, not only it helps in bringing clarity & deriving at possible solutions, but it also makes your audience understand & participate better. 

Now I got this video of the author of the book explaining how to solve problems using pictures while he was at Google. Have a look. The video is followed by another video showcasing reasons behind sub prime crisis using pictures. 

First video is about 55 mins and video after that is around  6 mins.

Have a look.

Neeraj  

Do you know how to Change

In the last article I wrote about IBM's report on enterprise of future. One of the point that was mentioned is that Organizations of future will be more flexible & will be more adaptable to change frequently.

Now keeping this point in mind I wanted to know what percentage of companies presently are good at changing.

In a recent survey(July 2008) by Mckinsey Quarterly of executives around the world, only a third said  that their organizations succeeded in transformation activities!!

So what we are seeing is that Change is important FOR companies and ability to change as well as managing change will be important in the upcoming years.

  

But the question still remains: How to Change succuessfully.....

I got this book...Change Management by V.Nilakant & S. Ramnarayan.

The book highlights that Change is all about Altering the mindsets of people. 

The book provides a new model for organizational change & lists four tasks that are crucial for success of any change initiative.

   The four tasks of change as described by authors that companies can utilize to change effectively are:

1. Appreciating Change

2. Mobilizing support

3. Executing Change

4. Building Change Capability

 

Appreciating Change: This step  is useful for planning for change. It aims at understanding the present mindsets of people within the organization. Appreciating change involves making people(stakeholders) mentally ready to change. It involves describing why one needs to change, consequences of changing & not changing and what are the options one has for undertaking change in the organization.

 Very often it has been noticed that change efforts are not successfully carried out, one of the main problems noticed is that there is too much resistance within the organization. So therefore it is advisable that managers should understand the mindsets of employees and other stakeholders and make efforts to make them ready for change so that they will appreciate change.

 

Mobilizing Support: After the people are mentally ready for change/innovative programs, the next step is to mobilize support for change. It has been noticed that change efforts are not successful because people do not support the change efforts. It has been mentioned that in large organizations one can expect 20% of people enthusiastic about change, another 20% are opposed to change & rest are indifferent. Now in such a scenario what should managers do in order to gather support for change. The authors have listed some issues, lessons & techniques along with relevant case studies which managers can utilize for gathering support for change.

 

Executing Change : It is very important that resources are made available for change/implementation of Innovative programs within the organization. This step deals with creating & putting structures in place for change to happen. Even if the above mentioned tasks are carefully thought through, it has been mentioned that execution task can pose various hurdles in change efforts of the organization. The authors lists that managers need to decide the type of change they wish to bring into the organization which will lead to how the change is to be executed (style of change) and also whether to have a ready made change program or design their own.

 

Building Change Capability: It has been mentioned that in order to successfully implement change efforts, people needs to be infused with certain qualities which will improve their capability for changing the organization successfully. The authors have listed three qualities which are Self Efficacy (people having the confidence in their ability to achieve challenging goals), Focus (clarity of goals to be attained among people), & energy (employees should be energized & fueled by personal commitment to change).

 

In addition to phases mentioned above, the authors support the above mentioned points with the roles that senior management & leaders needs to play in each of the phase  while initiating & implementing change.

Overall though it is difficult to change but organizations today & in future will have no choice but to change rapidly & be successful in implementing innovative efforts or perish.

Neeraj

 

FREE PRIZE INSIDE

Hi  Guys

Its been long since I have not posted anything. So what i was busy doing .Well just got my hands on SETH GODIN"S FREE PRIZE INSIDE.

To start with, this is based on Soft INNOVATION.

 

SOFT INNOVATION --- WHAT'S THAT (come on don’t throw another JARGON??)

 

Well if you look at Innovation people normally think innovation to be a process which includes huge planning, massive investment, huge R&D efforts to find that unique IDEA that your competitors cannot even dream of……………

 

Well One thing is that in this fast (& i really mean fast) changing world, do we the time to invest, if not billion but millions  into ideas, have years of R&D efforts & still not sure about the probability of getting success. Don’t get me wrong---- companies like heavy engineering, IT, etc employing great scientists & professionals do need that kind of effort for national prosperity but other companies specially those which are in service areas....how can they innovate FAST & with little money to spend.

 

WELL, they can do that by giving FREE PRIZES as mentioned by SETH GODIN in this book.

Free Prize according to book refers to thing which makes the product remarkable & induces the customers to buy your product. Why do you think calcium Sandoz comes in bottle that looks like dog, why do u think kellogs has choclate cornflakes in shapes of PLANET & STARS

or even better why do you think Mc.D happy meal offers toys. The reason is that these soft innovation make these products remarkable, they induce their Target customers to buy them and more importantly they make these products stand out from rest & create a buzz.

The book discusses that we should make efforts to make our products, services, our careers remarkable by offering many of these free prizes.

The book also has sections on how to SELL your Ideas & has tricks that can be used that can be used to sell the ideas. After all many people may have great ideas but normally when they tell these to their managers they are turned down and thus the whole creativity goes down the drain and the individual looses hope.

The book also has a motivational element to it by forcing the reader to take initiatives.

 

Book also give some Ideas on creating these free prizes.

 

Overall enjoyed reading this book. Teaches you a lot and takes a different perspective on Innovation which is worth noticing.

 

Till next time

Post in how you are making your Job, product, service or Yourself Remarkable

Bye

Neeraj

(image source: images.barnesandnoble.com)

Solving Problems, Discovering & Selling Ideas Using Pictures

The Back Of the Napkin

Excellent book for learning how to Solve problems, discover & Sell Ideas using Pictures

They Say a Picture is worth Thousand words. After reading this book(The Back of the Napkin- by Dan Roam), I truly believe a picture is worth thousand words and should be extensively used in corporate boardrooms for explaining everything instead of those boring bulleted power point presentations.
The book gives a methodology regarding how we can solve problems, discover new ideas & sell these using just pictures.
To give you a Jist of the book, the book starts with describing four steps of visual thinking process which are LOOK, SEE, IMAGINE & SHOW.
LOOK means collecting & screening of Information, SEEING means analyzing the information, IMAGINING means imagining ways in which information/ideas to be shared can be, SHOW means displaying the information.
Inorder to analyze/solve the problem efficiently, The author has given Important tool- the 6W's of seeing which include Who/what, How much, Where, when, how & why. Using this tool one looks at any problem from WHO/WHAT, HOW, WHEN, HOW MUCH, WHERE & WHY angle and thus can solve any problem.The author has given examples of how to use this tool efficiently using pictures.
After look & see section, the next section is Imagine which includes one more tool, SQVID which stands for Simplicity, Quality, Visual, Individual & Delta. With the help of this tool one learns to imagine ways to represent ideas depending upon the Target audience he/she is dealing with. This tool works as a graphic equalizer to help visually displaying ideas based on TG which may be number crunchers MBA's or imaginative designers.
But whenever one is solving problem or giving Idea, how much detail pictures should be used and whether they should be give qualitative or quantitative information. Well Combining both tools mentioned above the author gives a codex which helps to know what kind of pictures to select and what is the nature of information to be shown using pictures (Simple/elaborate, Qualitative/Quantitative, Vision/Execution, etc)
In the last section, the author informs about selling ideas using pictures.
By solving real life business problem and dozens of example along with which pictures to be used, this is an excellent book for managers as well as designers who wants to Simplify the whole process of solving problems, discovering & selling Ideas using Pictures.

Till next time

Keep Imagining

NeErAj

image source: www.idea-sandbox.com/.../back_of_napkin_book.jpg

Outside Innovation - Best Mantra for Innovation

“Creating a customer” is the sole purpose of any business that exists globally. Customer and technology are evolving fast and companies are facing an environment of accelerated consolidation in current competitive landscape. Given, rising customer expectation, high pace of innovation, and emergence of new business models, main challenge for companies is strengthening their core business while rapidly scaling their new growth platforms, and developing new operational and organizational strengths for future success. The battle to stay alive in the attention of customers is becoming brutal with every passing day. In this process of evolution, companies need to assess what elements of their current offering need to strengthen and which need to depart. Their have been several ways but the latest addition to it is “Outside Innovation”; a book by Patricia Seybold, who defines outside Innovation as the process of co-designing with involvement of customer.

Though innovation has been always customer centric but today it is “Customer-Made” as well.

Today companies are leaving the whole idea of innovating there businesses to customer directly. Companies are looking forward to create Customer –centric culture that leads to Customer-Led innovation, Customer –Experience transformation and most importantly Customer prioritized Business/IT roadmaps, explains Patricia in her book. So, for instance the Harley Davidson example given below in an article on this blog is an example of Customer – Experience Transformation. The example shows how company is using customer liking of visiting museums to understand their liking and behaviour.

The Indian example of mobile banking is another good example where a bank is involving customer s in an area to define a new business road map for them. If the model of mobile banking tried by EKO India financial services succeeds with their smaller test group, they can then implement it nationally else drop it.

Retail industry is one of the booming industries in India and driving a lot on innovation driven by customer. Retail industry especially Pantaloon retail India Limited effectively benefits by understanding roles taken by customer. Pantaloon is testing a prototype of a convenience store called Big Bazaar Best Deals in Mumbai’s Kandivali suburb. If the pilot programme succeeds, it plans to open such stores nationwide. The store is based on customer insight that ‘people run for best deals’ available in stores. Thus the store will offer only best deals to the customers. If they effectively play around with five customer roles defined by Patricia Seybold in her book then the store can really succeed in very short span.

The idea is to engage so well with lead customers i.e. those who shop at the store that they become ‘Consultants’ to the store, ‘Guide’ people to benefit most from the store and thus act as ‘Contributor’ to sales and work as ‘Promoter’ of the store. Retailers have now started engaging with lead customers and they even reward them for providing these insights.

The diagram, by Patricia in her book, below defines exactly where to capture customer insights in the whole process of customer innovation.

The idea of Co-creation with customers has been very effectively used by internet websites and open source softwares. A classic example is Mozilla Fire fox which keeps updating their product with the help of plugins and add ons designed not only by customer feedback but designed by customer themselves.

There are many such success stories and the scope of creating such success stories is infinite; if Indian companies work with customers they can definitely succeed in this highly competitive environment with very dynamic Indian customer.