People who lived in a desert climates are lead users where they solved situations
using solar applications way before anybody else was using solar technology.
And finally, mountain climbers are examples of lead users
where they use insular supporting gear.
Thinsulate was one example where people solved their problem by getting
very light weight support gear that worked in mountain climbing and skiing.
And so the lead user research approach is a strategy that is used
by a variety of companies, 3M is a company that initiated that.
And what you do in lead user approach is you form some kind of cross-disciplinary
team of people who have different expertise, different professional
expertise and different understanding of market space and customers and
you put them together along with technical people.
And you get a diverse expertise and provide some synergy to look for
opportunities about where lead users might be, and some immersion approach actually
of those teams with different expertise forms a certain amount of synergy,
and sustains a certain amount of momentum in terms of finding the users,
and then you proceed through four phases, and
we're going to look at those four phases now.
First of all, you lay the foundation.
You identify and pinpoint the markets that you want to explore, and
then you need to remember the type, and
a level of innovations that are desired by people in the company.
So you're looking for lead users and you have people in your company, and
you're out there looking for
who is it that's solving a problem that we're trying to solve too.
And so you reconcile a broad market search within the company and
you match it with the company strategy, and mission.
And so, you're not looking for
lead users that don't have a relevant relationship to the company's mission.
And so in phase two, you look at the trends by identifying experts and
emerging technologies and
leading edge applications in the area in which you're exploring.
If it's in the medical area, you're looking in hospitals.
If it's in the automotive area, you're looking in, perhaps sport car clubs.
You're looking for people who are doing things that are way out ahead,
that are solving problems way ahead of what the market needs.
And then you find them, you seek their opinions and
get insights on what's changing.
What do they see to be the things that are happening
way out ahead of what the market's doing.
You identify also what's out-of date, what's behind the market and
what's coming along in the user horizon ahead of the market.
In Phase three, you then identify, now that you've got the trends,
you identify who those lead users are.
Who are those people who are doing these lead user activities?
And you do that by a networking process where you identify problem solvers.
You find out who it is who are the people who are selling this problems and
who would be potentially lead users for a new innovation and
then you gather that information and you develop solutions,
you help with those people you develop solutions that might meet their needs.
So in effect, you are developing a problem solving team working with lead users.
Helping them solve their problems, but they're helping you by identifying and
scoping the problem that needs to be solved.
And so once you get that information, you shape a product concept,
you test it with them and you assess the concept's potential
as opposed to your own company's goals and your own company's vision and mission.