how to interact intelligently with customers and deliver optimal home energy management; Greece: how to control smart energy devices in a fully decentralized and bottom-up way to achieve optimal energy efficiency
customers need to be free from range anxiety, i e. the fear to get stranded because the car runs out of battery power.
and encourage customers to take up electric road vehicles. ecomove (Cooperative mobility systems and services for energy efficiency) The project will tackle three main causes of avoidable energy use by road vehicles:
The latter are sets of fluid congregations of businesses coming together on the Internet to create value for customers.
and maintaining advanced instruments at customers'locations from their business home base (van Geenhuizen, 2005).
If more customers around the globe, distance may increase (more air transport) with smaller loads.
and service centers (telecommuters) and relocation at a greater distance from key suppliers (customers)( web-based companies).
and the most frequent way of achieving this included contacts with customers. Chanaron (1998) identified demand placed on business by customers/clients,
close working relationships with a key customer and close analysis of competitor products are the major drivers of innovation in SMES covered in three different countries: UK, France, and Portugal.
of which suppliers or customers are the most frequent. According to Ussman et al. 2001), SMES in Portugal do not just depend on internal sources
and relating to customers (enabling the firm to serve certain customers). These studies strongly indicate that neither internal competence of the firm nor customer requirements alone will drive a firm to undertake innovations.
and labour would depend more on how far they have been able to satisfy their customers'needs and requirements rather than on the nature of innovations in terms of new products/processes or improved products/processes.
If improvement of existing products/processes as demanded/required by their customers is done appropriately it may prove to be more useful to increase sales than development of new products/processes.
and the recognitions are confined largely to winning of awards from large enterprise customers and financial institutions.
For the stimulation of demand of innovation-public organisations can play an important role as visionary risk-taking and demanding reference customers.
How to stimulate demand of innovation Public organisations can play an important role as visionary risk-taking and demanding reference customers
and take up of the innovation procured to additional customers and markets. Experiences from Asia and US show that
Our proximity to the fastest growing region in the world not only allows access to an untold number of customers;
Its customers include Lockheed martin Airbus, Boeing, BAE Systems, GE Aviation and Thales. Ferra has signed recently a number of long-term agreements to supply JDAM ER Wing Kits, P-8, CH-47
including by capping wholesale domestic roaming rates to prevent wireless providers from charging other companies more than they charge their own customers (Government of Canada, 2014).
help start-ups commercialise their good ideas with advice from experienced entrepreneurs to facilitate connections with customers and investors;
Innovation is an important part of enterprises day-to-day efforts to develop better products for their customers
in order to provide the good quality products that the customers want Not taking into consideration the internal feedback of demand to production will result either in the production of more products than are demanded,
So we have to attract more customers, we have to increase the quality of the products and so on.
get new customers for a market. Steps to be followed in organising a brainstorming session: 1. Selection of a facilitator (she/he has to have good communication skills, hold a certain level of authority in the group.
How can you get new customers? He writes down on a board the problem. 3. Set up the rules of the session:
then all the knowledge and information relative to customers must be the start point for the content of the Knowledge management System.
a Mexican cement company, regularly uses all its employees and its customers for ideas. These firms understand that corporations cannot have out-of-the-box thinking
and Magic Books was thinking of new ways of attracting customers and coping with the new competition.
The questionnaire asked customers to answer a few questions regarding their use of the Internet and whether they would find it useful
These points included the cost, results from the customer survey (e g. the number of customers with Internet access, the number of customers interested in a Magic Books website, etc..
This list included aspects of productivity, communication with customers, marketing and some internal working processes.
and R&d directors, manufacturing engineers, start-up directors, development engineers, quality managers, customers'service and support staff,
and marketing energy-based products to commercial and residential customers. It recruited some of the best people in the industry
"We were surprised initially by the call from ENERGEX-energy retailing is a long way from our usual customers in manufacturing".
This involved structured interviews with both the users and customers of the current product development process.
We also found product development processes that had much in common with those of our traditional customers.
They make excellent visual aids for communicating ideas with co-workers or customers. In addition, prototypes can be used for design testing.
The common opinion from our customers is that our exhaust systems have a very precise shape and fit easily,
customers will not accept one item unless another is also available. Units could be picked up by a customer,
Some customers are willing to wait for certain types of products while others expect immediate service on demand.
changes required by new products Incremental Often incremental Incremental or radical Always radical Number of customers Many Many
Short-range operating schedules take the orders directly from customers, or as generated by the inventory system
That is to say, customers should be able to distinguish, at a glance, between your products or services and those of your competitors and associate them with certain desired qualities.
and potential customers and in positioning your business in the market. IP rights, combined with other marketing tools (such as advertisements
or platforms when providing complex systems and original solutions developed ad hoc for its customers. However
Frequently the interests of customers and R&d centres do not converge when it comes to patentable knowledge created within a project.
in order to know what do the customers really need and avoid spending money for products with low demands.
Will all customers want the same from your products? How are distributed products into the marketplace?
as it is known, allows you to build up a comprehensive picture of your market and your potential customers from publicized data.
Libraries Directories (they provide details about the activities of your potential customers) Regular publications Market research reports Electronic Media (CD-ROMS, The Internet,
that are potential customers and this can become indistinguishable from personal product/process promotion. Attention focuses on the following aspects of contacting companies:
customers, end users, distributors, agents, university specialists, trade journalists, research and technology organizations etc. Organizational buyer Organizational buying is concerned with the purchasing by so-called formal organizations.
Product Defining the characteristics of your product or service to meet the customers'needs. Price:
THE MARKETING MIX The goal is to make decisions that center the four P's on the customers in the target market
Selling to Simulated Customers"Innosupport: Supporting Innovation in SMES"-9. 2. Use of Media to support innovation page 196 of 271 http://www. engines4ed. org/hyperbook/nodes/NODE-291
and reach so many potential customers at such a low cost. Advantages: intensify communication ease access to new information stretch the reach of marketing
and as a result boost productivity and profits e-business should bring new customers grow the business from a local one to a international one In a recent survey,
This company has a loyalty points scheme to encourage customers to come back and therefore create a community around their site.
This allows customers to purchase a bespoke computer which has been built according to their specification. Musicroom. com Internet Music Shop is an online retailer of music CD's. The business
They have succeeded in creating a strong online community around their site with 40%of their orders coming from existing customers.
Your visitors are your customers. Very often they will give you some valuable wisdom, or advise you, completely free of charge,
High rate of returned products from customers Bad quality control Large delays in deliveries to customers Production Quality control Distribution Production Quality Logistics Problem:
Cash-flow problems Bad cash-flow management Delays in invoicing customers Bad negotiation process with suppliers about payments policy Budgeting Invoicing Purchasing Financial Financial Purchasing Opportunity:
and shift quality manager High rate of returned products from customers Large delays in deliveries to customers Distribution Logistics Delivery time rate 98%Packaging employees Delivery workers Defining
Identifying training needs for Innovation in SMES page 222 of 271 customers after product delivery ing control system Financial Director and Administrative Manager in order to create an invoicing generation and control system.
You figure out what customers want on Monday, and on Friday they want something else. And in the week in between, a hungry pack of competitors have taken your idea
and implementing new ideas ensures that its business processes are aligned to satisfying the needs of its customers has a commitment to access finance from a range of sources to fund innovative activity ensures that individuals employed within the company have the appropriate knowledge
and the knowledge present in the enterprises supplemented by the cooperation with more enterprises, customers and external know-how carriers.
Strategy detailing by Inter-enterprise innovation teams for product market finding Bundling of competences/know how available in the enterprises Integration of further enterprises/customers/external know-how carriers Introduction
preferences of its customers everything else and possibly even more since it is important to be always at least one step ahead of others.
What they didn't know nor expected was that inventive Spanish customers very soon spelled the name in a different way:
or how it could provoke positive ones with customers in the country of destination. However, this is only one aspect to demonstrate the importance of correct language application in the market.
when customers internationally boycotted the company because of the company's conflict with Greenpeace. Public opinion becomes more and more critical, the idea of cheap, cheaper,
cheapest still works but more and more customers are asking how products are produced, if production exploits resources and people in a not acceptable way.
by way of finding out about and learning from the culture (e g. customs, practices and values) of the customers, clients or business partners you will be working wth
and have direct contact to customers thereby potentially gaining valuable impulses in the form of customer feedback.
Public support pays much less attention to the creation of favourable ecosystem for SME innovation in which public enterprises, SME intermediaries, direct and indirect customers, end-users,
and services that are attractive to customers, and can make a business stand out among the competition.
often providing customers with better service and allowing their needs to be monitored more accurately, facilitating new product development.
These include backward linkages with suppliers, forward linkages with customers, linkages with PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATIVE SMES IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY OECD 2004 35 competitors who set new standards
28 3. 10 The Customers'Role in Product and Service Development...28 4. 0 INNOVATION MODEL AND TOOLS FOR TOTAL SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT...
SMES face unrelenting pressure from powerful customers and competitors to lower prices and accept shrinking margins on sales.
They must offer their customers something different than their competitors offer in order to avoid the same low-margin trap that they now face.
This report suggests that a powerful way for SMES to do this is to offer customers new products
Their service experience is limited often to offering customers free or below-cost installation, training, and maintenance.
The above mentioned services require SMES to form deep and trusting relationships with their customers
and proprietary databases to help customers use their products more effectively. Changes in organization structure and culture are required almost always to do this effectively.
) Similarly, customers in food, textiles, and furniture tend to be conservative, thereby leading firms to be cautious about their innovation initiatives (March-Chorda et al.,
The type of customers that SMES serve also influences the type of innovation they undertake.
SMES that sell consumer products generally serve a larger number of customers directly or through distributors than do SMES that sell products or services directly to other businesses.
and attention to market research and advertising and generally have more difficulty getting timely and accurate feedback from their customers.
components, or instrumentation, generally have fewer customers than those that sell consumer products. Pavitt (1984) referred to such firms as specialized equipment suppliers.
Their customers tend to be large scale-intensive firms in industries such as food, metal manufacturing, shipbuilding, automobiles, glass and cement.
and manufacturing that they deploy quickly to meet their customers'needs. Small customers are candidates for services too.
Ashton et al. 2003) advise SMES to consider segmenting their markets to identify small customers that lack the technical resources needed to effectively install,
use, or maintain operations that are essential to their business. Also, high-end specialty customers may value the SMES services more than low-end customers. 2. 2 Types of Innovation that SMES Undertake SMES can introduce process innovation to enhance the capability of their production processes
or their supply chain operations (e g.,, increase reliability or reduce cost. These innovations are developed for their own use;
or pulled by customers. In the former case products may differ significantly from the firm's or its competitors'existing products (Salavou, 2005.
There is the risk that technical staff will push too far ahead of customers and lead to a product failure.
Products with pushed technology may require customers to change behavior or perception significantly before they are accepted and used.
when using input from customers as they can only suggest innovative ideas from what they've experienced.
It is more important for firms to ask customers what outcomes they value instead of just looking for solutions (Ulwick, 2002.
The value proposition may be targeted to a select set of customers whose needs are met best by the product or service.
or service that is better suited to the needs of a set of customers that a larger company overlooks.
because their existing customers don't value them or the emerging market is too small to interest them.
and targeted customers, also requires articulation of a value chain to produce the new product or service,
SMES can offer customers customized products perhaps supplemented with services. The same SME is unlikely to be nimble enough to modify its strategy to match the evolution of life cycle stages
or networking with customers, suppliers or even competitors (Freel, forthcoming; Vossen, 1998. A firm with strong marketing skills and weak technical skills can partner with a firm with a reverse set of strengths and weaknesses (Huang et al.
Lindman (2002) suggests that SMES that have close relationships with a limited number of customers may be able to forgo marketing steps
SMES in the Finnish metal working industry (most with less than ten customers) do market research and learn about their customer's needs by working closely with them.
They are influenced more by being in direct contact with people (suppliers, customers) whom they know well and trust (Lindman, 2002).
and the customers they serve (Mosey, 2005). 2. 4 What Innovation Strategies Should SMES Pursue?
SMES should cultivate relationships with a small number of captive customers (Lindman, 2002. Intimacy helps make up for lack of resources for market research.
) It is suggested even that firms can outsource innovation to customers by giving them tools to articulate their needs,
however, in that firms that work closely with only a few customers begin to depend mainly on their own internal 11 resources for ideas rather than seek new information from the outside.
SMES in mature niche markets should pursue price inelastic customers who still want products that larger companies have dropped
They can add new customers in their current market by offering them variations of existing products,
or seek new revenue opportunities from existing customers by offering them a more complete solution to their needs (Simon, 1996).
For example, Flinchbaugh Engineering, a small employee-owned company in Pennsylvania, now operates transfer lines for customers such as Caterpillar, SKF and Siemens that previously owned these lines (Anonymous, 2006.
It has mastered lean manufacturing practices so well that it can operate these lines more efficiently than its customers.
These companies now have much more leverage over their customers, the automobile companies. Few SMES have the resources to pursue such an acquisition strategy,
Another option for SMES is to perform industrial services that their customers currently perform or propose new services that will help them operate more efficiently.
If SMES are allowed to work closely with their customers, they might be able to propose new services to perform by observing points of pain (Gustafsson and Johnson,
and frustrate their customers when they use their product or other firm's products. Lastly, new service revenue opportunities can be generated by thinking beyond the sale of the product and about its installation, operation and 12 disposal.
These same pressures on SME customers on the other hand, are forcing them to focus on their core competencies
and establish closer relationships with customers. It is relatively easy for a competitor to provide a better and/or lower cost product,
but much more difficult to replace an intimate and trusting relationship between suppliers and customers.
and because of recommendations to other potential customers. 3. 3 Definition of Services There are several different definitions of service found in the research literature.
Often, where customers and employees are in relatively constant contact, interpersonal experiences are critical to the delivery of service products (Tidd and Hull, 2002).
This is done by showing customers the importance of services during the life of a product.
and has reduced costs associated with acquiring new customers. The OEM has inherent product knowledge and requires less cost to acquire any additional knowledge about the requirements of service over the product's life.
They may in fact be of considerable value to customers yet are bundled in free of-charge because of perceived or actual competitive pressures.
Two of these clusters involve migrating from a transactional to relationship-based approach with customers (vertical path)
Figure 3. 1 provides perspective as to where the largest portions of customers'spending and providers'sales are taking place in the industrial service sector.
Penetration of Services 18 3. 5 Mini-Cases The first mini-case illustrates how a supplier of a commodity product changed its business model to provide a complete service thereby satisfying previously unmet, indeed unvoiced, needs of its existing customers.
Additionally the data accumulated from having a greater knowledge of customers'behavior enables the company to continually add value
An internal entrepreneur decided to listen carefully to customers. He saw there were unmet needs and new sources of value to be accessed.
Customers did not want to buy and own steel drums, they wanted to move toxic chemicals efficiently and safely;
To meet its customers'actual needs, Greif converted its business model to being a trip leasing company for specialty chemicals the Fedex of problem chemicals.
Now Greif solves the total trip problem for its customers drum supply, cleaning, refurbishing, regulatory compliance, transportation, and tracking.
Customers, by foregoing certain tasks, increase their dependence on their suppliers. Switching costs therefore are increased.
and retain customers for later delivery of products and services. Mini-Case Example#2: General Fasteners, a supplier of components to the major automotive companies, had been squeezed more and more on price as the global competition in this sector became increasingly tough.
GF is lockedin to its customers both in design and operations making it difficult for competitors to displace them.
In addition, by taking over the front-end skilled design work, GF's customers have need no to retain these expensive skills in-house for occasional use
Providing a service component to existing customers builds on past relationships and increases revenue and profits from the installed customer base.
Services demand closer relationships with customers, sometimes requiring regular on-site engagement. These interactions can uncover unmet needs,
The latest information technology standards and infrastructure can be used to provide services that were conceived not even by customers until their providers innovate.
therefore highly by customers who are willing to pay for the reliability and security that the company provides.
This is now enhanced by its on-line monitoring systems that give it real-time access to customers'systems.
Again we see the power of using information technology innovatively to create added-value for customers while building barriers to competitors.
It now embodies customer contact on a regular basis by using remote monitoring that gives a basis for preemptive actions and regular interaction with all customers either from the local office or from the German HQ.
Customers initiated most of the new products by coming to the company with an unrelated water problem,
Customers may participate in production because the service preparation and the service delivery are identical (e g.,
1998) An offering not previously available to a firm's customers, resulting from additions to or changes in the service concept (Menor et al.,
Increasingly, IT can become a powerful weapon for SMES to create greater value for their customers.
Start-up companies can now harvest information technology to provide their customers with greater value and to create subtle barriers to competition.
but the ability to mine the data obtained by combining information from ALL customers nationwide.
by getting instant feedback from their database (customers provide long lists of future wants and rate past rents),
Netflix is able to provide its customers with a convenient personalized service, as it continually optimizes its supply chain.
DBI Services (www. dbi. com) learned by listening carefully to customers that businesses have greater and more complex needs than homeowners.
DBI realized that the value proposition for these customers was focused not on low cost but on the reliability and speed with
Understanding the customers'true needs has enabled DBI to build a dominant position in this sector by designing
DBI's business model is based on the principle of providing customers with reliable and customized services supported with proprietary information systems.
Information can be shared between customers and suppliers so that each is locked closely into the other as business partners.
and mining to lock in customers, suppliers and partners. The fifth mini-case provides an interesting and illustrative example of a company supplying commodity chemicals yet providing greater value to customers, and partners.
Mini-Case Example#5: Chemstation was founded by George Homan (www. chemstation. com) in 1983 after he had spent some years as a distributor of industrial cleaning chemicals.
His close contact to customers led him to recognize that businesses do not want to handle bulky containers of cleaning chemicals
serves some local customers and uses its buying power to purchase cleaning chemicals at a lower price than can small competitors.
In this way the franchisee can provide customers with an immediate proven solution to their cleaning problems.
Such captured knowledge helps to lock in customers and prevents competitors gaining the account. Since its founding, Chemstation captured, in less than ten years,
New service ideas come from a close interaction between customers and employees. Thus, although product and service innovation are thought often of as the same,
and require different procedures. 3. 10 The Customers'Role in Product and Service Development In order to develop services that customers find valuable,
it is important to have customer input. Although this will be discussed in greater detail in section 4,
firms should observe customers and their points of pain (Gustafsson and Johnson, 2003), frustrations or unmet needs with existing products and/or services.
the firm and its customers should work together in order to generate ideas to solve the problem.
as customers are prone to changing their minds about their desires (Takeuchi and Quelch, 1983).
Customers will not buy products or services that they don't find valuable for their firm. New products and/or services must be developed to add value to the customer.
and its customers (y-axis) to shifts in the firm's strategic focus as reflected in the value proposition it offers to its customers (x-axis).
Firms in the lower left region of the figure offer stand-alone products to customers and sell products in arms-length single transactions.
The new product development (NPD) process for this region involves very little interaction between the firm and its customers
Interaction between the firm and its customers during new service development (NSD) may be greater than for NPD,
but the customers'role is still essentially passive, i e.,, respond when asked questions or observed unobtrusively.
when customers experience frustration with using the firm's products and the firm offers solutions that reduce the frustration.
Ideas for services may be offered to customers on a fixed-term contract basis. Customers are active participants in the NSD process and in service delivery.
The relationship between product/service providers and customers shifts from one-way static information exchanges in NPD to two-way overlapped information exchanges in NSD to dynamic and interactive information flows in TSD.
and/or NSD processes to a firm that engages collaboratively in TSD with its customers,
requires greater flexibility and often co-creation of new ideas during close interaction with customers.
and its customers (see insert in Figure 4. 1). Customer inputs are incorporated in this type of paradigm,
They call this stage Immerse Yourself in Customers. In addition, the model shows a closer relationship between the service provider and customers.
It posits that service is driven by unmet customer needs, customers are listened to and information flows primarily from the customer to the SME (see insert in Figure 4. 2)
. Despite these modifications to Cooper's original concepts, there is little mention of a continuous discourse and interaction between the supplier and customer,
and new service development models is that the TSD model generally starts with an established base of products and customers (such as a SME),
and have a dynamic rather than static interaction with customers. Some companies go as far as having a full-time relationship person on-site to ensure this continual interaction with the customer.
or a new product added to a service already provided to existing customers. Many SMES likely already have established products,
and customers (see insert in Figure 4. 3). Unlike the static relationship in stage-gate and quasi-static relationship in Gustafsson and Johnson,
TSD suggests intimate collaboration with customers with continuous exchange of bidirectional information. External parties, other than customers, are incorporated explicitly into the entire process of innovation.
They include potential partners, supply chain members, and competitors. Furthermore, TSD suggests the specific interactions between the firm and various external parties during different stages of innovation development.
for example, TSD recommends that the firm work closely with potential customers, potential partners, and supply chain members--customers will help assure the new solution does indeed address their needs,
partners will help address challenges in developing such solutions (e g.,, IT), and supply chain members will help ensure the new solution is in a form that could be delivered to customers in an efficient manner.
TSD dictates innovation should be an iterative and adaptive process; two specific arrows exemplify this process.
and suggest some common tools that can be used for each of the stages proposed in the TSD model (Figure 4. 3). 38 Immerse Yourself in Customers (needs identification,
it is essential that a firm understands the needs of its customers and ensures that the new solution addresses their needs.
(or a third party) to tag along with the current users of current products (or potential customers),
or customer sort (ask customers to sort the needs). The objective here is to reduce hundreds of needs statements to 10-20 major dimensions of needs (see Ulrich and Eppinger, 2004 for a very accessible discussion.
The second step is to understand how important these needs are to the firm's (current or potential) customers.
More than likely, the customers'preferences of various needs are heterogeneous. Segmentation allows a firm to do at least two things:(
or externally (by focus groups of potential customers or lead users). Screening Ideas. In most cases, managers will end up with more ideas than they can implement.
There are many different tools that can be used for test marketing. 41 Pseudo-sale involves providing the new product/service to a selected few customers,
The full scale test marketing involves delivering a new product/service to a representative segment/location of potential customers,
For example, if a SME wants to test which of two different segments of customers it should target
it should include a large enough sample (customers) from both segments, and ideally, at geographically separate locations.
Experience in offering such services allows the firm to develop response capability, reputation and image with customers.
It also gives the firm experience in working with customers between sales which can be a prelude to a shift from transactional to relational selling.
Employees in this unit will need to be motivated to relate to customers differently than those in manufacturing units.
Dialogue is essential for success. These employees may need to be trained to relate to customers
Similarly, a service-centered firm believes in adding value to its customers. Values, norms and beliefs shape the firm and drive employee behavior.
or socializing with x number of customers x times per month as a customer relationship building goal.
High expertise refers to the availability of knowledge about the firm's basic technologies, customers and delivery processes.
External marketing is about portraying the firm's image to customers, but before employees can make that portrayal they must be sure of its existence,
which includes making promises to customers (Gebauer et al. 2005). ) Interactive marketing is the how the firm sells its value proposition to customers
and begins the transition from transactional to relational selling. The first stage in the transition from transactional to relational selling includes marketing activities,
which commonly don't include any personal interaction between the firm and its customers. If the firm is just beginning the transition,
) An inadequate assessment of customer needs can stem from a lack of attention paid to understanding customers
New services cannot be developed effectively in isolation of customers. Front-line employees, the ones who commonly work the most closely with customers,
need to be in-tune with customer needs, wants and frustrations, and should be encouraged to have frequent contact with them
Firms can move from transactional to relational selling by offering their customers a fixed-term contract for services.
In addition, regular contact with customers via opportunities such as newsletters, users'clubs, chat rooms, etc. will help make the transition easier.
The value proposition to customers is equipment availability or up-time. The firm's responsiveness and problem-solving capability underlie its ability to deliver on this proposition.
The firm might also consider offering consultation services to help its customers develop their own diagnostic and response capabilities. 5. 3 Phase III:
and its customers deal with problems that emerge over the course of their relationship. Smaller customers may lack the knowledge
or resources that larger customers possess to solve their operational problems or pay for infrastructure and ancillary services that relate to the effective use of their products.
This presents an opportunity for market segmentation and focus on customers with the greatest need for the firm's services.
Firms can recognize the need for new services by studying how the customer uses or consumes the firm's current product
or NSD because of the nature of the type of services that firms and their customers will co-develop
Firms should encourage employees who are in regular contact with customers to share ideas with other employees concerning optimal use of the product,
and frustration that customers experience in using the product. These ideas and observations, if captured, may help create a proprietary database that can give the firm a competitive advantage over its rivals.
2003), or frustrations that customers have with existing offerings, and generate ideas for new solutions.
What are they offering of value to customers beyond the sale of a basic product (e g.,
Greif Packaging and General Fasteners observed how customers used or consumed their product and believed that they could do this better by specializing in activities that customers currently perform
but don't have the skill, time or interest in mastering to the same degree. Taprogge specializes in providing maintenance activities and spare parts.
All five cases required 51 their work force to be trained extensively in activities that their customers could not do as well as they could.
In all cases, once a firm establishes a foothold inside the customers'operations, they are privileged in a position to offer new ideas to progressively take over more of their customers'current activities
or suggest new ones to perform. 52 6. 0 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE MEP NETWORK 6. 1 Introduction This report has reviewed the literature on innovation for creating SME growth.
As a result, national customers usually have to work with many centers and fail to get the desired quality
SMES rated customers, co-workers, marketing and professional journals as more important. 61 Booz, Allen, and Hamilton (1982.
Discusses applying NPD to new customers using existing technologies. There is a need to empower cross-functional teams
Found that innovation is based on product newness to customers and product uniqueness. Found that technology-focused firms are likely to introduce products that are new and unique to their customers.
Scheuing, E. E. and E. M. Johnson (1989.""New product development and management in financial institutions."
"Customers as innovators: A new way to create value.""Harvard Business Review 80 (4): 74-81.
"Harvard Business Review 80 (1): 5-11.70 Ask customers for desired outcomes, not solutions; use ideas for innovation.
There are dangers in listening to customers. Presents 5 steps and a mathematical formula for deciding what innovations are most promising.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011