Category Archives: Customer Research Methods

Interview with Eric von Hippel (2007)

Posted on April 27, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

von Hippel talks about his insight into user-driven innovation for services and goods in this 2007 interview: http://www.gartner.com/research/fellows/asset_172822_1176.jsp The PDMA blog points out some of the high points in the interview, so I can be lazy: http://blog.pdma.org/ von Hippel was … Continue reading →

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“Many crummy trials BEAT deep thinking”

Posted on April 20, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

Just do it Last week I noted Clay Shirky’s comment that for internet innovation “the cost of trying is lower than the cost of analyzing.” I noted that this was an affirmation of the “Probe and Learn” process advocated by … Continue reading →

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Beta Culture

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

New Service Development and Agile Programming Several people have emailed me for a definition of Beta Culture as mentioned in the posting yesterday. [Please consider posting a comment: WordPress makes it easy and then everyone can see it.] Beta Culture … Continue reading →

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“A Fair Hearing” for customers

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

A proposed procedure for uncovering customer needs The press release from Strategyn breathlessly announces that an article by two of its principals in the Sloan Managment Review “renders… traditional Voice-of-the-Customer research obsolete…” http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi-content=NEWS_VIEW_POPUP_TYPE&newsId=20080410005089&newsLang=en&beanID=1791428325&viewID=news_view_popup In reality their proposed procedure makes extensive use of VOC … Continue reading →

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More ethnography — Nokia

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

NY Times article on ethnographic research by Nokia One of the readers of this blog, who is involved in ethnographic research, made an interesting comment on the last post — give it a read. He also suggested a NY Times … Continue reading →

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Should you hire an anthropologist?

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

Ethnography stands out in a survey The principals of the Product Development Group, owners of the Stage-Gate registration, published the lead article in Visions (a PDMA publication) this month. It was a survey of firms about their most used and … Continue reading →

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Try and Fail (and try again)

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Gary R Schirr

 The Cost of Trying is lower than the Cost of Analyzing! In a classic CMR article, Lynn and Morone urged high tech firms to “Probe and Learn”: get a workable product or service out there into the market and see what works. I … Continue reading →

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