Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?

The most important takeaway is the insight that innovation’s role is a human capital investment in the competence and capabilities of customers.

innovation isn’t about an exchange of value at a moment in time but part of an ongoing investment in customers as appreciating assets.

what overlaps and distinctions exist between your competitors’ ask and your own? Do nascent “new entrants” exist whose asks might innovatively subvert customer expectations and behaviors?

Do your best customers come toyou for advice and insight on who they want to become?

But the dark side of The Ask is not about the innovation’s riskiness but the customer weaknesses and vulnerabilities that innovation might expose.

Innovators investing in the now invest in who customers are; innovators investing for the longer term invest in who they want their customers to become. They are cultivating their human capital assets.

“Market research,” said Land, “is what you do when your product isn’t any good.”38Sound familiar?

This offers another reason why Jobsian innovation and design-driven differentiation matter so much. While luxury firms compete for the wealthiest of the wealthy and most discriminating of the discriminating, market realities suggest remarkably little meaningful commoditization at these peaks of the pricing pyramids. No narcissism of minor differenc

Value creation transcends sales and exchange. Investments are more than simple transactions; they’re a bet on the future of value.