Innovation Blog

How To Get Your Customers To Innovate For You:  Building a Customer Innovation Center

By Shlomo Maital

     If you happen to be in St. Paul, Minnesota, and survive the freezing weather and deep snow, drop in to  3M’s “World of Innovation” Center.  You will find 40 “technology platforms” that 3M believes can be combined and applied to meet market needs. 

        3M wants its customers to come and see these platforms and then come up with ideas — like using dental technology to improve car parts.  Visteon, an automotive supplier and customer of 3M, has worked with 3M (following a visit to the Innovation Center) to develop navigation displays, Thinsulate material (to reduce noise) and optical films that hide elements of the dashboard until the driver asks for them to be displayed.   These technologies appear in a new concept car developed jointly by 3M and Visteon.

       According to Mary Tripsas, associate professor at Harvard Business School, more and more  companies are building centers where customers are invited for face-to-face innovation sessions.  [1]    3M has set up such centers in Japan, Brazil, Germany, India and China.  Its 23rd such center opened this month in Dubai!

      Usually, notes Tripsas, such centers are located near the company’s own research centers.  They help bring marketplace customer-driven ideas to their innovation efforts.

       Dr. John Horn, VP R&D at 3M’s transportation and industrial business, notes the Centers are not just about harvesting ideas, they also cement long-term relationships with customers.  He notes that at the Centers, no products are shown.   “It would constrain their thinking,” he notes.  He says that the focus is not to find out what customers need, but rather what they are trying to accomplish.   Typically a visiting customer team presents an open-ended view of their business to 3M experts, who pepper them with questions. 

        These centers remind me of EMC2 ‘s Executive Marketing Center, where customers similarly present their business.  Only after deep listening does EMC suggest a solution — and usually, a sale results. 

        Hersey, the chocolate company, has a similar center. There they try different merchandising  arrangements, to see which work best.  Pitney Bowes too has one.  I once visited  a model store at Staples headquarters, used to test new  store layout. 

   HBS Professor Ranjay Gulati’s new book Reorganize for Resilience discusses customer innovation centers, as part of his study of how companies can be more customer-centric.[2]

[1] “Seeing customers as partners in innovation”,  New York Times,  Dec. 27, 2009.

[2]  Gulati, Ranjay. Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization. Harvard Business School Press, 2010.