How strong values of innovators allow them to listen to the market

Radical innovative product Mitka © Mitka-Nike

Chris Tucci ed at the University of Melbourne

How to make radical product development happen within the firm?

The conventional path for New Product Development usually starts within an R&D facility with several projects that go through different stages (prototypes, technical feasibility, preliminary market research, testing...) before getting close to being launched to the market.
On the other hand, to allow radically innovative products to come to market, the internal mechanisms within the firm tend to be too conservative to allow it (too many controls for instance).
One of the ways to handle this and to allow radical innovation is to put together a "Skunkworks operation:" a separate organization that doesn’t have the same chain of command, usually set up in a different location and which has more freedom to develop something new and radically innovative.

To listen or not to listen?

Nowadays, the current debate is to know to what extent firms should be listening to the market to develop such radical products.
Tucci explains that taking market feedback too much into account too early might prevent the firm from developing something radical. "You’re too focused on getting users’ feedback and that prevents radical innovation."
Such projects are usually led by teams that share values and a vision, for example changing the way workers commute to the office to save the environment. They are driven by passion and this would lead to not listening to the market.
In one of his article with Luca Berchicci, Chris Tucci explores the different steps of the development of a radical product, a mobility and electrically assisted vehicle.
"It appears that in order to follow the team values, the project members didn’t listen too much to what the market had to say about such products. But in the end, once the product got closer to being launched on the market, it would have been useful to get some kind of feedback."

How does feedback get integrated within the product development?

"Feedback about the features of the product itself gets well received and is usually easily implemented. On the other hand, feedback on the concept of the product itself is usually harder to swallow." Some people just ignore such feedback and act as if they didn’t hear it. But, as Chris Tucci states: "Instead of ignoring the feedback that is conflicting with the project’s vision, it is important to be conscious of the decisions the team is making. It is a tricky balance between taking feedback into account and deciding to consciously ignore it."

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