This approach can lead to very efficient and reactive project implementation, as only what is perceived as being needed by users or customers is provided. However, it can also lead to short-sighted and/or ineffective approaches. Market research often either fails to reveal latent needs or only reveals information available to all competitors, which generates limited opportunities to develop a differentiated offer.
Market research often struggles with innovations, because most people have difficulty in talking about what they have not yet experienced. They tend therefore to focus on incremental or obvious innovation opportunities. Past market research misses include major innovations such as the personal computer, cellphones or the Walkman. This approach is therefore in general better suited when the objective of the firm is to identify continuously incremental innovation opportunities.
One way to implement such a “pull” approach is to rely on lead users. These are users who tend to recognize their needs before mainstream customers (they are “awake”) and who expect to benefit from and/or contribute to the development of new solutions (they are “interested”). Let us stress, however, that relying on these lead users can reduce a firm’s control of the process and expose it to some degree of customer opportunism. It can also generate interactions that are complex to manage, in particular regarding the leakage of information and the loss property rights.
Having reviewed some key aspects of both “push” and “pull” approaches, three things must be highlighted regarding the use of these. First, both approaches (pushing/creating waste and pulling/efficient short sight) have their benefits and shortcomings. Relying exclusively or excessively on one of them is probably a recipe for failure. Hence each firm has to identify the balance of “pull” and “push” approaches that fits its strategy, and in particular whether its resources, environment and purpose support the identification of incremental or radical innovation opportunities.
Second, combining and integrating “push” and “pull” approaches often requires mixing people and teams that have very different cultures, values and mental models. It can therefore be productive but also very tricky (see the discussion about diversity in innovative teams in Chapter 4). The archetypal engineer, focused on building, reinventing and improving features and on perfection rather than speed, will often conflict with the archetypal marketer, focused on conviction rather than feasibility, and on selling, reusing or repackaging good enough things that can provide tradable benefits.
Third, as discussed in Chapter 1, innovations are not just ideas that pop up instantaneously out of the blue. Organizations might in some cases want to look for early innovation opportunities or new concepts. They are often relatively easy to fine and cheap to acquire; for example, by scanning inventors and patents directly or through specialized intermediaries. But organizations should also look out for more mature innovation opportunities, those that have already been developed and tested – for example through replication, licensing from or outright acquisition of existing businesses. These can be more difficult to find and more expensive to acquire, but they can also significantly decrease the risk of failure and reduce the time to market.
In other words, organizations must look for a wide range of innovation opportunities, scanning both within and outside their boundaries (not only in R&D), and both new concepts and more mature opportunities.