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Create Products that People Need and Want

Posted by on 02 June 2016
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If you want to create products and sell
them to people, well'to be blunt'nobody's cares. The mass-market engine that
drove this mode of production and type of selling has expired.

According to AcuPoll more than 95-percent of new products fail
each year. This harrowing statistic should sound an alarm, one that says the
way we approach the conceptualization and launch of new products does not work.

In reality, the world doesn't need new stuff just because it
is new. New for the sake of having something new to sell, is the most
short-sighted, non-strategic, and unthinking mode of behavior for a company.

Landfills and aftermarket discount stores are filled beyond
capacity.

Somewhere in the lust to create new value the most important
factor in a successful equation was overlooked: the real people who may use
your product. These humans, not objects to which you move a unit, but
flesh-and-blood with the power to purchase, naturally desire a better life. If
you create with them as part of your process, your success potential because
much, much greater.

New products that meet a real need for real people; well,
that's something useful and novel, a product with distinction and different
than the rest of the heap. Just ask Swiffer, users of Dr. Scholl's kiosk, or any
other leading brand that keeps their consumers at the heart of the innovation,
product development, and marketing efforts.

The trick: find people for whom you can solve problems. Then,
get to know them deeply. Hang out in their homes, at their work, go shopping
with them. Understand their rituals, their motivations, their relationship to
the world and things in it.

Product development can take a year or
two, so make sure you are creating for how your people may be interacting with
the world a few years out. Know also where the trends are pointing a few years
out. Think about it in reverse. If you look back five years ago, half the
people you knew didn't have Smart Phones, most had never stayed in an AirBnb or
taken an Uber to their destination. Now, they use their phones to book these
services and do so much more. Trends and technology accelerate at quantum
speed.

People matter to the success of your new products. Ignore them
at your own risk. If you can add value to their life, you thrive.

The hardest thing for organizations to do to accomplish such
growth is to realize that traditional marketing research and segmentation is
outmoded. The reason: it looks at the people with whom it should be trying to
cultivate a relationship as a target, a one-dimensional object, rather than a
fully alive human subject with a treasure trove of stories, memories, dreams,
hopes, and fears. In summary, the old method edits out the humanity.

Here's the key point: just get out of your own head and your
office and get inside the homes, routines, rituals, and hearts of your people.
Honor those that buy from you or give to you, as subjects with dynamic lives
and problems you can help solve.

Michael Graber is the
managing partner of the Southern Growth Studio, an innovation and strategic
growth firm based in Memphis, TN and the author of Going Electric. Visit
www.southerngrowthstudio.com to learn more.
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