Learning organizations seek to leverage existing assets, human resources, and experience to generate additional values over time. These values are interdependent and rely on the organization’s commitment to:
- Learning,
- Retention of knowledge, and
- Acquisition of new competencies in order to be sustainable.
Building upon previous platforms, the learning, knowledge, and added competencies become a competitive advantage for designing and delivering outstanding products & services.
Leveraging opportunities for innovation includes internal, external, and overlapping inter-dependencies. Several models have been promoted in the business literature over the past few decades.
- The Value Chain emphasizes the organization’s internal processes & procedures as executed by specialized areas and functions of the business.
- The Supply Chain Emphasizes the organization’s product & service delivery network and complements as well as builds upon the business’ internal value chain.
- An additional model, the 10-types of innovation (developed by Walters, Pickel, & Quinn 2013), represents an Innovation Opportunity Chain that builds upon the existing models and adds the customer journey map.
The literature on UX, or the User Experience, has long recognized the competitive advantage acquired by businesses that focus on the user experience when designing products & services. Lean processes and the customer development model similarly place customer feedback in the front of iterative product & service design. When all three of these models are contrasted and compared the business case opportunities to build, integrate, and deliver new innovative products, services, and processes is strengthened.
Opportunities to improve efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and satisfaction exist throughout the business product/service lifecycle. From ideation, through production, and up through use and replacement there remain opportunities to exceed customer expectations. The business that is able to identify and build upon these opportunities will have a competitive advantage.
The usability of your business products & services and the customer’s experience throughout the product/service lifecycle is determined by every choice you make.
What are your goals for introducing revolutionary new values into your business efforts? Leave your comments below.
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