however, the method is definitely recommended!
2. Customer visit teams: With this approach, visit teams (cross-functional, typically three people) visit your customers or
users; they use in-depth interviews based on a carefully-crafted interview guide to uncover user problems, needs, and wants for new products. The method is ranked #4 in popularity with 30.6 percent of firms extensively using this method. It is ranked #2 by users for effectiveness (a strong 6.6 rating out of 10).
The major advantages users claim are the ability to identify and focus on customer problems and unspoken needs during these interview sessions, a vital source of product ideas. The main challenges are getting customers to cooperate (to agree to the session and to provide honest answers), finding the time to do this valuable study (in-depth interviews at multiple customer sites do take more effort than most of the methods), training the interviewers, and
designing a robust interview guide with the right questions.
In spite of the challenges, however, this VOC visit team method is definitely recommended!
3. Customer focus groups for problem detection: In this VOC method, focus groups are run with your customers or users to identify needs, wants, problems, points of pain, and new product suggestions. (Note that in product development, focus groups are most often used to test concepts, not to generate ideas.) The focus group
moderator skillfully focuses the discussion on problems or wants and helps users walk through their problems.
There is a lack of substantial research to reveal the most effective idea sources.
The method is ranked #5 in popularity, with 25.5 percent of firms extensively using focus groups for problem identification and ideation. Its effective-ness is ranked #3 by users, with a positive effectiveness score of 6.4 out of 10. The method shares the same strengths as the visit team approach above, namely the ability to identify problems
and to drill down into these problems. Challenges include get-ting the right customers to agree to participate (a
particular problem with business-to-business or B2B customers), finding the right moderator with focus group skills and product knowledge, and cost. This method is definitely recommended!
4. Lead user analysis: This VOC method, pioneered by Eric von Hippel, has been around since the 1980s, but has caught on only in the last decade.
4 The theory is that if one works with innovative customers, then innovative product ideas are the result. The
technique often entails assembling a group of particularly innovative customers or users (a group workshop) to identify problems and potential solutions. The method is positioned very close to #3, customer focus groups, in the magic ideation quadrant diagram; and it proves to be quite popular, with 24.0 percent of firms extensively using
the approach. The method is thought to be effective, too, ranked #4 on average by users, with a positive effectiveness score of 6.4 out of 10. This method is definitely recommended.
The advantage of lead user analysis is that innovative customers, who are ahead of the wave, are hence quite likely to have your next new product idea; and this method is how you can uncover what it is. And the method works: For example, some businesses at 3M swear by the approach. Others are more neutral in their assessment.
The major challenges are identifying who the innovative customers are, getting them to participate in an off-site workshop, and then structuring and running the workshop session properly.
5. The customer or user designs: This novel method has received much attention in recent years, and it has been made possible in part because of new information technology (IT) tools.
5 Here, customers or users are invited to help you design your next new product. For example, an article by Stephan Thomke and von Hippel reports that:Bush Boake Allen (BBA), a global supplier of specialty flavors to companies like Nestle, has built a tool kit that enables its customers to develop their own flavors, which BBA then manufactures. In the materials field, GE provides customers with Web-based tools for designing better plastic products. In software, a number of companies let users add custom-designed modules to their standard products and then commercialize the
best of those components.
6 The method has not caught on widely, however, with an overall popularity ranking of #11 (only 17.4 percent of firms extensively use the approach). In spite of its limited popularity, however, it ranks #5 in terms of effectiveness, with a positive score of 6.0 out of 10 and above the average rating for the 18 methods.
The big plus of this method is that informed users are in the best position