Inside Story of Good Innovation: A Perfect Blend of Innovative Ideas and Customer-Centricity

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Good innovation is a perfect mix of practical idea, customer need fulfillment, and marketability.
  • Establish an optimal point for innovation development where researchers can deliver solutions that adequately meet customer needs.
  • Embrace test-and-learn approach to empower researchers to develop innovations that meet business goals.

When thinking about innovation, we often refer to inventing an original object without considering limitations. But developing an innovation to meet business needs, fresh ideas are not enough to fulfill the goal. There are many more challenges that remain to be addressed regarding customer satisfaction and cost-effectiveness, which to ensure that innovation can become a commercial success.

Good Innovation: A Mix of “Customer Need Fulfilment” and “Marketability”

Researchers at SCG Packaging believed that “Good Innovation” is a perfect mix of innovative ideas and practicality. The innovation concept must be compelling and practical while meeting customer needs and generate benefits for them.

“ Innovation is a valuable invention. We don’t need an original invention that lacks values. We need to deliver one that is meaningful for customers and can be put to practical use.”

The research team said that another task of SCG Packaging researchers is opening the minds of customers, and introducing innovation and allowing them to access innovation’s value to see if it can be advantageous to their businesses or practices. In this particular aspect, Mr. Somchoke Limwongsaree, Senior Researcher of SCG Packaging, would like to share his experience.

“Some innovations are not yet well understood by customers on what could be the benefits that can help their businesses. It’s the researcher’s job to explain, educate, and understand customers’ businesses. This will help us develop the innovation that is practical in real-world scenarios.”

Mr. Somchoke Limwongsaree, Senior Researcher of SCG Packaging

Another major challenge in this day and age is how to come up with an innovation in constrained time to satisfy customer needs in a timely manner. Mr. Somchoke said that researchers need to learn and stay informed about market trends to take advantage of new opportunities to develop innovations that serve customer needs in a timely fashion. Furthermore, researchers have to stay relevant to changing global trends, and prospectively forecast customer needs well ahead to develop the innovation that can keep up with the demand.


Dr. Watchara Anannarukan, Senior Researcher of SCG Packaging

Dr. Watchara Anannarukan, Senior Researcher of SCG Packaging, said that customers usually provide a wealth of information on their unfulfilled needs for a new product. Researchers have to implement co-creation to allow customers to be part of an extensive process of data exchanging, insight sharing, learning, and recommending. With this rich and insightful data, researchers can develop a thorough product concerning functional benefits, manufacturing capability, packing conditions, sales cost, and customer’s expected price. If we neglect to identify an optimal point of needs, the innovation will be valueless as we are delivering an incomplete product to customers. Therefore, appropriateness is crucial to a business when it comes to creating innovation aimed at meeting the business goal.


Ms. Punnarai Rungsiriwattana, Researcher of Packaging Business

Ms. Punnarai Rungsiriwattana, Researcher of Packaging Business, noted that innovation must be married with customer-centricity. The original concept delivering the highest functionality values may not fulfill customer’s needs in terms of cost and manufacturing capability, which are vital consideration factors. So, the innovation development must find alignment between “innovative idea” and “practicality” by focusing on customer-centricity.

“The researcher team uses this approach in developing “FybroZeal™” (a biodegradable coated paper packaging made from natural fiber). The prototype is a premium model with an exceptional appearance in texture, high smoothness, and top functional benefits in all aspects. However, the product overall fails to meet the cost-effectiveness threshold. We have to repeat the research to find an optimal point between functionality and cost-effectiveness. It is common to develop several prototypes to find the right one. The important thing is that we must transform the best prototype into a proper product made for customers. To us, this is considered a success.”

As innovation development need to evolve with global trends and respond to ever-changing customer needs, businesses must embrace the test and learn approach to give researchers space for developing innovations that can truly serve businesses.

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