The upside of these projects is they always work — that is, we always uncover unmet needs and generate novel ideas. The downside to these projects is they always work. In short, innovation assignments can be like drinking from a firehose.

Oftentimes, the success of these projects is wrongly judged by quantity of output. Lack of content is rarely the issue; maintaining focus on the opportunities is the secret sauce.

Consider this typical outcome of an innovation assignment: 50 in-depth interviews generate 200+ need statements. Internal synthesis and a quantitative study reduce this down to 20 broad needs. In ideation, these 20 needs are then expanded to 200+ ideas.

After an innovation assignment, the organization begins the meticulous process of vetting ideas. What were once considered “great ideas” get shifted around based on feasibility, cost to develop, timelines, and the business case.

Research from the Kellogg School at Northwestern shows the creative process really does not (and should not) end after formal ideation. In fact, the process of vetting existing ideas often generates even more new and novel solutions.

This continuous cycle of divergence—convergence—and divergence is a lot to manage and can bog things down. The remedy: stay focused on the Opportunity Areas (OAs).

The key deliverable of any innovation assignment is validated OAs. In short, OAs are the focus areas of your innovation roadmap. OAs emerge from a common bundle of unmet needs (where customer intensity is high and satisfaction with current options is low). Some organizations refer to these as platforms. Regardless of what you call it, OAs are the strategic glue that holds everything together.

The secret is to make a commitment to the OAs and stay focused on them as existing ideas are vetted and new ideas emerge. Where organizations run into trouble is they lose focus of the OAs and get swallowed up by an ever-growing pool of ideas.

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Another factor that makes B2B VOC challenging is pushing participants beyond the table stakes—better known as customer pre-requisites and minimum expectations. Regardless of industry, the table stakes are always the same: cost savings, greater efficiency, reduced risk, and improved compliance. These are logical responses, and they’ll usually come up top of mind. But though people tend to be more rational when making purchases decisions in a work context vs. a personal context, that doesn’t mean there are no emotions involved.

Evidence is mounting that one way to stand out from the crowd is to strike a different balance between rational vs. emotional in your positioning and marketing communications.

It turns out that even while making supposedly rational business purchase decisions, emotions still play a role. The B2B Institute in Europe conducted a very compelling study sponsored by LinkedIn. Pay particular attention to the section: Harness the Power of Emotion. Even in B2B, more emotional appeals are linked to better business performance.

For more context on the different kinds of value drivers, check out this 2018 Harvard Business Review research that identified 40 distinct value drivers among B2B buyers. The research categorized these value drivers into table stakes and beyond. This is required reading in our organization.

So, during qualitative research how do you overcome the obvious table stakes? Here are some pointers:

• Cost, compliance, risk, and efficiency will always come up. Accept it. However, what most interviewers fail to do is to exhaustively unpack what each means. For example, “cost” could mean acquisition cost, maintenance cost, sunk cost, and more. Knowing the exact definition and degree of each cost factor is essential.
• Look beyond the immediate. A requirement is to fully understand the decision ecosystem. Your product or solution may be a nuisance to one department but have tremendous positive (or negative) impact elsewhere.
• Make it clear to the participant that we MUST move beyond the table stakes. We often do this by introducing thought starter questions prior to the interview. An intra-interview visual aid can work wonders. We’ve extracted information from the HBR study and used that as a prompt.
• When defining your research objectives, make it known that table stakes are not enough. A highly skilled researcher can design the best engagement to get at the good stuff under the surface.

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One of the most common tools used to validate ideas is a survey. It is what we know and what many of us were trained to do. Increasingly, however, surveys are the wrong tool. Here’s why:

• Surveys only quantify four things: perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes. They do not measure behavior.
• Opinion used to be closely correlated to behavior. Not anymore. A common metric to evaluate the demand for product concepts is “purchase intent.” In some product categories, the correlation between purchase intent and actual behavior is only 0.1.
• Recent developments in brain science show that most people are terrible at evaluating 2D written concepts. In fact, 75% of the U.S. adult population are sensory processors—that is, to fully grasp an idea they must touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, and see it. That’s hard to do in a survey!

So, what do we do about it? The future is doing VOC in context. Observe your target audience: virtual is better than nothing at all. Co-create with them and involve them in the design of your ideas. Talk to them face-to-face and have them “play around” with prototypes. Do more field tests. The quality of the encounter is more important than the quantity.

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However, it all depends on who you engage.  And, as it relates to innovation work, it pays to break some rules.

One of our most successful ideation sessions involved people who were not even category users.  Our client thought we were crazy when we suggested the inclusion of single men in an ideation session to make the setup of play pens easier.  Turns out they had really good ideas. Current and expectant moms had too many learned behaviors.

Speaking of low-engagement categories:  how often do you think about the HVAC air filter in your home?  You are not alone if you said about 1-2 times a year and only when the thought pops into your head. Knowing this the norm:  is it possible to make qualitative research more fruitful? Of course.

First, don’t limit the discussion to air filters. Talk more broadly about maintaining “healthy air quality” in the home. Then only invite those who have (or who have a family member) with a chronic respiratory problem. Trust me:  you’ll spot many ideas and accepted beliefs that are relevant to the rest of us.

You ready to shake things up?  Let’s get started.

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Last week I attended a local workshop related to “fixing innovation.” A lot of energy was spent on how to tune up the engine through better people management and processes. While important, the root need of most attendees was oil in the engine they already had. In this case, the oil was a robust idea bank or a systematic way to manage and vet the ideas coming at them.

Of the 30 attendees, only one had an innovation roadmap. That is, they invested in rigorous voice-of-customer research that clearly pinpointed the areas of opportunity. Once done, they focused their ideation. They prioritized incoming ideas based on how well they fit the opportunity.

Our recommendation:  innovation processes always need tweaking. Engines will run smoother after a tune-up. But any mechanic will tell you that long-term performance of the engine really depends on how much attention you pay to the oil.

How much oil is in your engine? Check out our Get Smart Brief on Questions to Ask Yourself Before You “Innovate”.

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It is estimated that 60%-70% of a hospital’s operating cost is attributed to labor.  In a tight labor market and chronic shortages of clinicians, hospitals are highly motivated to improve staff efficiency and patient throughput.

Any innovation that obviously enhances productivity is likely to get airtime.  A highly effective marketing tool is to illustrate the positive impact your innovation will have on the patient journey.

Your goal should be to fully understand the current state, and factor in the role of all administrative and clinical departments.  At the most granular level that you can, diagram how a patient currently flows through the ecosystem.  Emphasize those steps in the patient journey that rely on human intervention, where delays are common, where patient safety risks exist, or where the patient experience is compromised.

You should then diagram how your innovation reduces these complexities.

I’ve seen this visual used in sales pitches and it generates a lot of head nodding:  a reaction that excites most sales representatives.

The good news is that deciphering this is not difficult.  We recommend telephone in-depth interviews.  After about 15 interviews with various stakeholders, you’ll paint a vivid picture of the current state and the positive impact your innovation will make.  Information can be easily captured in an infographic and incorporated into sales pitches.

And, here’s the irony in all of this.  Hospital leadership knows they are managing an unwieldy beast, but they often underestimate the complexity of many processes.  A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

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What we find more often is that businesses are drowning in ideas. That is, they have too many ideas and not enough resources to pursue them all. The more ideas, the harder it becomes to narrow which ideas are worth moving forward with, and many businesses lack a framework by which to prioritize ideas. In short, companies are good at creating ideas, but not necessarily good at recognizing valuable ones.

That said, there are several strategies that companies can use to evaluate ideas, so you don’t have to feel lost at sea. Historically, the most widely used is feasibility vs. market potential. This looks at how feasible it would be for the business to offer the product or service compared to the strength of the market need for the product or service. For example, ideas scoring high on both feasibility and market potential should be advanced. If a product has high feasibility but low market potential, don’t bother.

A recent article by the Harvard Business Review considers a different framework, cost vs. relative benefits, which they equate to efficiency. “Efficiency: how well each assessed unit converts the resources it uses (inputs) into outcomes (outputs).” Sometimes, a product’s value doesn’t always equate to sales, but there can still be value in the form of customer brand loyalty or satisfaction.

There are many ways to calculate the cost or feasibility of implementing a new product or service – usually companies are good at making these estimates. But evaluating the market potential or relative benefits can be more challenging, and it’s often helpful to bring in an objective third party to help evaluate this to avoid internal biases from getting in the way of good ideas.

When we look at market potential, we’re listening for two things:

1. Can the target articulate the benefit of the product/service? If customers can clearly see how the product would benefit them, they’re more likely to try it. If they’re struggling to do so, it may mean that the benefit is weak or lacking.
2. How excited are they about it? Not all benefits are created equal. Sometimes customers will call an idea “good” even if they’re on the fence. But when there’s something that they really want, it will show in their voice and enthusiasm. We often call this the “Gotta have it,” and it can help separate ideas with low value for customers from those with higher value.

Evaluating ideas can feel overwhelming, but hopefully these strategies can buoy your innovation pipeline. If you’d like to learn more about prioritizing business ideas, read this article by the Harvard Business Review.

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Things must change and here’s why.  In 2016, Harvard Business Review published a pivotal article around The Elements of Value.  The research identified 30 distinct kinds of consumer value, and these value drivers fall into a 4-layer pyramid.  At the bottom of the pyramid are the functional elements such as product quality, saves me time, and simplifies my life.  At the top of pyramid are more personal types of value, such as reduced anxiety, badge value, nostalgia, fun/entertainment, etc.  Even higher up on the pyramid are aspirations like “hope” and “belongingness.”  Increasingly, it is the value drivers at the top of the pyramid that are the differentiators.

The good news is that these top-layer motivators can be identified in research, but not in traditional formats.  We’ve honed a process that allows us to uncover these more emotional drivers. First, there must be a high level of trust between the interviewee and interviewer.  This is developed deliberately and using several touchpoints prior to the formal interview.  Lastly, while it may seem like conducting an interview just means asking a bunch of questions, there is a science to asking questions and engaging people at a more personal level. Professional moderators are trained with techniques of laddering that allow them to uncover higher order needs.

Want to learn more?  We strongly recommend The Elements of Value.  It has been an invaluable framework in our research efforts.  It can be used to segment consumers above and beyond demographics and psychographics.  We’ve also introduced the framework in ideation when looking for ways to improve the overall consumer experience or boost advocacy for existing products.

In this age of consumer experience, we think it is high-time to look at qualitative research from the participant’s point of view.  Purposeful trust-building is just one example that works in other social science disciplines.

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Recent research, however, suggests that, when it comes to motivations around B2B purchasing, the mind is not so simple after all.   It may seem counter-intuitive, but the research proves that even in business purchase decisions, emotional motivators are extremely important.

The research identified 40 distinct kinds of value that B2B offerings provide customers, and these value drivers fall into a 5-layer pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the table stakes (e.g. meeting minimum specifications, an acceptable price, and regulatory compliance) and functional values (e.g. product quality, expense reduction, or enabling the buyer’s topline growth).

At the top of pyramid are more personal types of value, such as reduced anxiety, fun and perks, reputational enhancement, career marketability, and growth and development.  Like it or not, these factors are increasingly important in differentiating your offerings. In other words, don’t forget about the emotional motivators.

The good news is that these underlying motivators can be identified in research, but not in a traditional format.  Through our own work with B2B customers, we’ve honed a process that allows us to uncover those emotional drivers. First, there must be a high level of trust between the interviewee and interviewer.  This is developed deliberately and using several touchpoints prior to the formal interview.  The format of the interview is typically one-on-one, and it is better when conducted after-hours, where there is more confidentiality.  Lastly, there is a science to asking questions and “peeling back the onion.”  Leave that to the trained moderators.

Want to learn more?  We strongly recommend The B2B Elements of Value.  First published by Harvard Business Review last year, it has been an invaluable framework in our research efforts.

As B2B offerings become ever-more commoditized, expand your learning to better understand how you can leverage these more subjective value drivers.  While the mind is not so simple, the process for getting at these insights is within your reach.

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The mainstay in healthcare market research is, of course, the MD.  They provide much needed input on the clinical merits of your innovation and are also an excellent resource on evaluating clinical abstracts.

Often overlooked are the mid-levels, the Physician Assistant (PA) or Nurse Practitioner (NP).  As the role of the MD changes to that of decision-maker, mid-levels are assuming more responsibility for day-to-day patient care and procedures.

From a research perspective, we often find that the mid-levels are much better at explaining the full patient journey, patient education approaches, and treatment algorithms in laymen’s terms.

Increasingly, it is the mid-level that engages with sales representatives.  In a recent study we found the PAs instrumental in guiding us on the messaging and materials most likely to engage and persuade the MD.  In many practices, it is the PA or NP who “gets things on the doctor’s radar.”

Because of their direct patient role in the practice, mid-levels can also be a good proxy for understanding the patient experience.  This was particularly helpful on a recent assignment dealing with an obscure patient population.  The mid-levels were outstanding in “filling in the blanks” when only a small number of patient interviews were feasible.

While the MD is the ultimate decision maker, there are many influencers and gatekeepers between your innovation and the final prescriber.  In most cases, a best practice is to include mid-levels in your learning plan.  As in the case of my busy primary care physician, they may be closer to the day-to-day patient experience than the doctor.

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