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In the landscape of innovation, a unifying thread runs through a variety of current disciplines: the commitment to human-centricity. This principle is at the core of several methodologies, each iterative by nature and focused on trial and error, revealing a collective pursuit to understand and serve the user's needs. Although these methodologies have emerged from different origins and practices, they converge in their dedication to answering how we can create profoundly human-aligned solutions.

Let's go through a list of the most common theories:

Design Thinking is characterized by its iterative cycles of empathy, ideation, and testing, putting the user's experiences and needs at the forefront to drive innovation that truly matters to them.

Service Design iteratively shapes services to meet users' emotional and practical needs, ensuring that each touchpoint in a service journey is empathetically crafted and user-friendly.

Lean Startup integrates Human-Centered design with its build-measure-learn loop, emphasizing rapid prototyping and continuous user feedback to steer product development.

Service-Dominant (SD) Logic views customers as co-creators and partners in an iterative value creation process, focusing on adaptive interactions that prioritize the user's context and input.

User Experience (UX) Design is dedicated to refining products and services iteratively to enhance usability, accessibility, and pleasure in the interaction between the user and the product.

Customer Experience (CX) Design extends UX principles across the entire customer journey, examining and iterating on every interaction point to optimize the overall experience.

Theory-U invites leaders and teams to iteratively descend into the depths of user understanding, leading to transformative solutions that resonate with users' actual needs and aspirations.

Agile Development is an iterative and incremental approach to software development, which revolves around flexible planning, customer feedback, and rapid adaptation.

Systems Thinking involves an iterative approach to understanding and mapping the complex web of interactions within user ecosystems, aiming to create holistic and sustainable solutions.

Jobs-to-be-Done iteratively focuses on the user's objectives, aligning products and services with the tasks users are trying to accomplish in their lives.

Behavioral Design uses iterative testing and learning to apply psychological insights into products and services, influencing user behavior in subtle yet impactful ways.

Speculative Design challenges designers to iteratively envision and explore future possibilities, considering how users might interact with potential scenarios and technologies.

Emotional Design by Donald Norman iteratively considers the emotional impact of design on users, emphasizing the creation of products that elicit positive feelings and connections.

Social Innovation is an iterative process that addresses complex social issues by creating solutions that are scalable, sustainable, and most importantly, aligned with human needs.

Liberating Structures offers a suite of iterative facilitation strategies and processes that engage and include every user in shaping the future of organizations and communities.

Each of these methodologies (and others), despite their distinct angles, iteratively cycles through understanding, creating, and refining, all with a relentless focus on the human experience. Their collective narrative champions the idea that deep user empathy and continuous learning are essential for crafting solutions that are not only functionally excellent but also socially relevant and emotionally resonant.

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In the landscape of innovation, a unifying thread runs through a variety of current disciplines: the commitment to human-centricity. This principle is at the core of several methodologies, each iterative by nature and focused on trial and error, revealing a collective pursuit to understand and serve

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We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers actually want. Although one question we get all the time (especially from new users of the value proposition canvas) is: Do you always start with the customer?

The last couple of decades have seen an overwhelming focus on customers. I have yet to advise a company whose vision or strategy doesn't include an acute customer focus. And this plethora of customer-driven organisations rely more and more on methodologies such as Design Thinking which starts with an empathetic and exploratory approach toward the customer. But a good idea doesn't have to become a dogma.

In this post we explain why you don't always have to start with the customer, but you always have to end with the customer - especially the validation of fit between the customer (as mapped in your customer profile) and your product/service (as designed in your value map).

Fishing for customer insights

The innovation journey of many teams starts with a customer discovery process and a large number of customer interviews. In many corporate innovation programmes, it has become a design principle that teams cannot advance to the next stage of the programme and access more funding before having completed a large number of customer interviews, sometimes as high as 100 interviews in a 6-12 week window.

Why this focus on customer interviews?

There are many benefits to doing many customer interviews early in the innovation process:

1. Consistent customer feedback helps innovators to not fall in love with their initial ideas, and thus avoid one of the most dangerous pitfalls facing entrepreneurs.

2. Customer interviews are the simplest form of testing innovators can do. When done properly, these interviews can provide early evidence on the most critical assumptions.

3. After a while, these interviews will lead to a deeper customer understanding and to critical insights for designing a product or service that customers want.

What are the most critical jobs, pains and gains of customers.

And are any of these important enough that customers would be willing to pay for your product or service?

The insights that innovators need to get from this discovery process are:

When teams start their innovation process with just a business idea, the customer is a pretty good starting point. In this case, we coach teams to work on the circle - the customer profile - and map the critical jobs, pains and gains.

Making the most of what's available

Many of the teams we coach in large organisations have much more than just good ideas. These organisations might have key resources such as patents, capabilities or access to technologies that innovation teams can use to prototype new value propositions and business models.

A classic example of reusing an existing capability to build a new business model is Amazon with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon leveraged its IT expertise and infrastructure, which was initially built for its e-commerce business, to create AWS - a suite of cloud computing services sold to enterprise customers.

The innovation journey is long and hard enough: it would be careless not to use all the assets and opportunities available to you. When we work with teams in large organisations we often help them prototype many different product and services using available assets early in their innovation process. In this case, we start our innovation process with the square - the value map - and we ask them "what new value proposition could you design based on this key resource?" This piece of technology? Or this capability? Or this patent? And they describe how those available assets could contribute to a potential value proposition using the value map.

In both instances, whether you start with the customer to identify critical customer insights or start prototyping a new value proposition built on an existing key resource, you will soon need to go through a solid testing process to validate the fit between your value proposition and the customer segment.

That's why we always remind innovation teams that we work with that you don't always have to start with the customer, but if you want to achieve fit, you have to end with the customer.
* Please note that this post is only a small insight into the great work done by Greg Bernarda on Value Proposition Design best practices.
Why not come and join us at one of our global master workshops to learn about more value proposition design best practices for you to apply to your own business?

About the speakers

Fred is an executive advisor on strategy and innovation. He works with courageous leaders on how to develop an innovation culture, explore new growth engines and transform their businesses.

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We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers actually want. Although one question we get all the time (especially from new users of the value proposition canvas) is: Do you always start with the customer?

The last couple of decades have seen an overwhelming focus on customers. I have yet to advise a company whose vision or strategy doesn't include an acute customer focus. And this plethora of customer-driven organisations rely more and more on methodologies such as Design Thinking which starts with an empathetic and exploratory approach toward the customer. But a good idea doesn't have to become a dogma.

In this post we explain why you don't always have to start with the customer, but you always have to end with the customer - especially the validation of fit between the customer (as mapped in your customer profile) and your product/service (as designed in your value map).

Fishing for customer insights

The innovation journey of many teams starts with a customer discovery process and a large number of customer interviews. In many corporate innovation programmes, it has become a design principle that teams cannot advance to the next stage of the programme and access more funding before having completed a large number of customer interviews, sometimes as high as 100 interviews in a 6-12 week window.

Why this focus on customer interviews?

There are many benefits to doing many customer interviews early in the innovation process:

1. Consistent customer feedback helps innovators to not fall in love with their initial ideas, and thus avoid one of the most dangerous pitfalls facing entrepreneurs.

2. Customer interviews are the simplest form of testing innovators can do. When done properly, these interviews can provide early evidence on the most critical assumptions.

3. After a while, these interviews will lead to a deeper customer understanding and to critical insights for designing a product or service that customers want.

What are the most critical jobs, pains and gains of customers.

And are any of these important enough that customers would be willing to pay for your product or service?

The insights that innovators need to get from this discovery process are:

When teams start their innovation process with just a business idea, the customer is a pretty good starting point. In this case, we coach teams to work on the circle - the customer profile - and map the critical jobs, pains and gains.

Making the most of what's available

Many of the teams we coach in large organisations have much more than just good ideas. These organisations might have key resources such as patents, capabilities or access to technologies that innovation teams can use to prototype new value propositions and business models.

A classic example of reusing an existing capability to build a new business model is Amazon with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon leveraged its IT expertise and infrastructure, which was initially built for its e-commerce business, to create AWS - a suite of cloud computing services sold to enterprise customers.

The innovation journey is long and hard enough: it would be careless not to use all the assets and opportunities available to you. When we work with teams in large organisations we often help them prototype many different product and services using available assets early in their innovation process. In this case, we start our innovation process with the square - the value map - and we ask them "what new value proposition could you design based on this key resource?" This piece of technology? Or this capability? Or this patent? And they describe how those available assets could contribute to a potential value proposition using the value map.

In both instances, whether you start with the customer to identify critical customer insights or start prototyping a new value proposition built on an existing key resource, you will soon need to go through a solid testing process to validate the fit between your value proposition and the customer segment.

That's why we always remind innovation teams that we work with that you don't always have to start with the customer, but if you want to achieve fit, you have to end with the customer.
* Please note that this post is only a small insight into the great work done by Greg Bernarda on Value Proposition Design best practices.
Why not come and join us at one of our global master workshops to learn about more value proposition design best practices for you to apply to your own business?

We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers actually want. Although one question we get all the time (especially from new users of the value proposition canvas) is: Do you always start with the customer?

Thanks for your interest in

Starting with the customer

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We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers really want, but do you always start with the customer?

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Centralization is a spatial practice used by human collectives for thousands of years. It started in the archaic definition of village leaders and evolved to world empires, including their corollary transnational companies. Centralization promises to better organize society through the gathering of

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Bublitz Meeting