I teach a course on new product innovation for MBA students. What I want to emphasize is that any successful product needs to meet the needs or wishes of a specific customer group. 

Arthur Middlebrooks is a professor of clinical marketing and executive director of the Kilts Marketing Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

This seems obvious. right? But you will be surprised how quickly this information disappears from the minds of students and experienced product developers.

Last semester, shortly after bringing this home, my students started a way of brainstorming new matcha green tea flavored products. Some of them are regular customers of Whole Foods. I have to remind them that most grocery shoppers don’t go to high-end stores, and their own taste preferences may suit the wider market.

This happens because we have a human tendency to think about the products we want to own. If you are similar to your sales target, that may not be a problem. But we often don't even realize that our own experience may put us in a particular field that most people are not suitable for.

Knowing your customers is important, but I find that making recommendations to the company may cause them to hesitate about what they think will be a huge expense. However, it is now easier than ever to collect high-quality customer data, which will provide better information for these product development meetings.

The key is to learn from a few in the context. In other words, if we are interested in developing a new breakfast product, for example, we need to deeply understand the morning habits of customers. We should watch them prepare for work, or prepare children for school, and ask them about the setbacks they encountered in these tasks. We need to inquire deeply about the types of products they and their families like, and what makes it easier for them to eat a nutritious meal before going out.

There are several flexible and inexpensive research tools that can link companies to this information, including UserTesting, dScout, and Digsite. Customers working on these platforms usually record their activities, upload their daily videos, or contact the company through video conferences to answer in-depth questions or make observations. 

Doing this with a dozen people from your customer base is usually enough to gain insight and truly understand their needs, and it may only cost a few thousand dollars. This is nothing, but it's not that companies used to think that collecting such data would cost tens of thousands of dollars or more.

After learning from customers, it's time to conceive, build prototypes, test them and improve the product. Repeat as needed. These fast user-centric cycles bring you closer and closer to new products and services that people may need and are willing to buy. 

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