In my latest Mass High Tech column I assert that making customer experience central, not technology, is the key to any innovation process.

The imperative of our time is to unleash the power of innovation to solve our big social challenges, including health care, education and energy. I think a lot about how to simplify the innovation narrative, make it more inclusive and become more experimental. Unleashing the power of innovation is about making customer experience central, focusing on outputs and looking up from our silos.

For starters we need a shared definition for innovation. Our rhetoric is all over the place and innovation has become a buzzword. Everything is an innovation and everyone is an innovator. When that happens, nothing and no one is. We conflate invention with innovation. They are not the same. A simple definition: Innovation is a better way to deliver value. It is not innovation until value is delivered one customer at a time. Often we don’t have to invent anything new to deliver value or solve a problem. We have to get better at reconfiguring and combining existing capabilities to deliver value. It is not technology that gets in the way of innovation, it is stubborn humans and organizations that resist change.

I am amazed at the number of innovation discussions where the voice of the end user is missing. Customer experience must be at the heart of any innovation and design process. Solutions are not about institutions, they are about patients, students, citizens and customers.

Continue reading Focus on the Customer Experience, Not the Technology in Mass High Tech