Customer/Outside Innovation

  • The Evolution of African Rural University

    Co-Designed by Its Faculty, Students, and End-Customers (People the Grads Will Serve)

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    Discover how 29 young Ugandan women helped shape a unique innovative educational institution. Learn how necessity led them to create a new profession. Find out how a university should measure its success.
    Jan. 5, 2023
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  • Identifying the RIGHT Customers for CABs

    You Want Customers with Insights and Passion for the “Jobs” They Do

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    Whom should you invite to be on your Customer Advisory Board? The answers may surprise you. Try recruiting insightful, strategic thinking end-users rather than purchasers or decision-makers.
    Nov. 15, 2022
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  • The History of Customer Scenario Design

    Co-Designed and Evolved with Customers

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    Hear the story of how we co-designed our Customer Scenario Mapping methodology with our lead customers.
    Mar. 20, 2020
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  • Secret to Successful Customer Engagements

    Beware of These Four Things that Will Doom Your Customer-Centric Initiatives

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    If you want to involve customers in co-designing products, services, and/or customer-impacting business processes, you should know about, and avoid, these four common pitfalls.
    Nov. 15, 2019
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  • Zopa: Peer-to-Peer Lender Celebrates 10 Years

    Spawned a Global Multibillion Industry; Still Going Strong

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    Over 50,000 British consumers have invested in providing loans to over 100,000 British consumers and small business owners via Zopa since 2005. Lenders have provided £770,000 of their money to their peers, in exchange for an average return of 5 percent.
    Mar. 20, 2015
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  • Co-Designing Health & Care with a Community

    How a Prospective Provider in Boothbay Maine Is Gathering Customer Requirements

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    Boothbay Region Health Care is a start up non-profit chartered to provide primary healthcare for the residents and visitors in their region. They’re in the strategic planning stage of their project. Customer co-design is part of their planning process.
    Jan. 29, 2015
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  • Designing Solutions for Aging in Place

    Part 1: Boothbay’s Awesome Seniors’ Initiative—First Year

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    How do seniors design services that will enable them to thrive in their own homes? They look at what they need. They look at what they have. They experiment.
    Dec. 5, 2014
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  • Educating a Generation of Change-Makers

    Meet Some Graduates of URDT’s Breakthrough Curriculum

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    For over 25 years, Uganda Rural Development and Training (URDT) has evolved and refined an educational curriculum that empowers people to become creators, leaders, and entrepreneurs. These young women are changing our world.
    Nov. 14, 2014
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  • Ten Steps that May Save (or Improve) Your Life

    Prepare Now to Engage as a Patient and/or Advocate for Someone You Love

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    Let Patients Help! by Dave deBronkart with Dr. Danny Sands is a valuable patient engagement handbook. This little book should be a key resource for you and your family. You’ll learn about important steps in taking charge of your own health.
    Jul. 10, 2014
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  • The Customer Revolution Is Coming Back!

    Customers Are on the Cusp of Retaking Control Over the Big Things that Impact Their Lives

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    The next customer revolution is upon us. We will regain control of things that matter most in our lives: our government, our financial well-being, our health, our jobs, our privacy, and our access to the Internet.
    Jun. 12, 2014
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  • Can a Contest Improve the “Production of Health”?

    How Esther Dyson Is Using the Way to Wellville Challenge to Promote Collaborative Innovation

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    The Way to Wellville is a community health innovation contest among five communities in the U.S. The towns will have five years to dramatically improve health outcomes by focusing on the determinants of health, rather than on the treatment of disease.
    May. 9, 2014
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  • Culture Nurtures Innovation at Luck Stone

    How Values-Based Leadership Fosters Innovation in a 90-Year Old Company

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    Luck Stone is a 90-year-old rock quarrying business that has embraced values-based leadership. With a history of innovation when it comes to mining operations, now the family business is focusing on customer-inspired innovation.
    Apr. 25, 2014
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  • Customer Co-Design and Customer Scenario Mapping

    A Philosophy for Customer-Centric Organizations and a Method for Instilling It

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    Customer-centric organizations should deliver on their mission by co-designing with customers. And the best method for realizing this goal is to work together to map out your customers’ important scenarios.
    Sep. 12, 2013
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  • Defining the Customer-Centric Organization

    What Are the Attributes and Behaviors that Define True Customer-Centricity?

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    Is yours a truly customer-centric organization? See how well you stack up to the attributes and behaviors that characterize an organization that holds customers at the core.
    Jul. 25, 2013
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  • DuckDuckGo Respects Our Privacy

    Fast, Simple Search with an Open Customer-Friendly Ecosystem

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    People who are concerned about online privacy are switching to search engine DuckDuckGo. Users are pleasantly surprised by, and engaged in, its rapid evolution.
    Jun. 28, 2013
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  • Customer Co-Design for Elder Independence

    Approach for Elders to Age in Their Homes

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    Dr. Allan Teel's new book  tells the remarkable story of an innovative “virtual assisted-living” program that was co-designed with 40 elders in Maine and is now rolling out across the country. 
    Jun. 13, 2013
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  • Tackling a Wicked Problem: Water Issues!

    How the Delta Dialogues Project Is Using Dialogue Mapping to Build Shared Understanding

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    The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Conservancy wanted to engage key stakeholders in planning the future of California’s fresh water supply. They used CogNexus Group’s Dialogue Mapping™ to build shared understanding among polarized players.
    May. 30, 2013
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  • How to Address “Wicked Problems”

    Use Dialogue Mapping to Build a Shared Understanding and Evolve a Group’s Thinking

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    Jeff Conklin’s book, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, is a “must read” for people in groups grappling with intractable issues and/or for people who are designing products or solutions. Here’s why.
    May. 23, 2013
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  • Exploring the Five Customer-Centric Habits

    Necessary Qualities for Executives and Organizations

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    What are the habits that successful customer-centric executives share? Rob Thompson of CustomerThink has identified 5, and we add our Customers.com perspective.
    May. 16, 2013
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  • Collaborating with Customers

    Working Together with Customers to Achieve Their Goals

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    Collaboration is a method of working together to reach a goal; it isn’t the goal itself. But when you collaborate with customers to reach a goal, the results can be very powerful!
    Apr. 4, 2013
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