Introduction

WELCOME TO YOUR CUSTOMER’S IMAGINATION

Imagination is a place where all the important answers live.

—JOE MENO

We are not actually there yet. But it is nearby. Your customer will have to invite you in. That will likely happen later on. At this point, I am merely preparing you for the journey ahead and letting you know what you might expect. There will be special provisions involved, but we can talk about those later. First, we will explore why we are here. A thorough understanding of the rationale is important, so this will not be a drive-by explanation.

Let’s start with a map of your journey ahead. Organizations need breakthrough products, services, and solutions to compete effectively. They need the customer’s imagination to ensure the discovery of innovative and valued offerings. Accessing the customer’s imagination requires a co-creation partnership that invites and attracts creative contributions. A co-creation partnership takes 1) curiosity that uncovers insight, 2) grounding that promotes clear focus, 3) discovery that fosters risk-taking, 4) trust that safeguards partnership purity, and 5) passion that inspires energized generosity. This journey leads to ingenious outcomes and a customer who emerges as an advocate.

Now let’s slow down and unpack the parts of this map with a bit more detail. Innovation is all about new. In fact, the word itself comes from its root, nova. The word has also come to mean unique, novel, and ingenious. Innovation today is a big deal to all organizations. They ardently pursue innovation because simply improving their offerings (products, services, or solutions) is not enough to remain competitive. Their boards, owners, and stakeholders continually encourage them to stay on the cutting edge. Customers also want new, not just the same old same old.

Organizations typically turn to their research and development departments for assistance with innovation. They visit other companies to learn best practices they can emulate. They offer incentives to employees to provide suggestions and ideas. They create innovation centers and design test labs. All this innovating is aimed at creating offerings that will hopefully meet their prospects’ or customers’ needs and be valued.

Innovating offerings that will meet customers’ needs assumes those needs are known. But in the fast-paced, everchanging world of commerce, customers don’t always know what they want. They might have a hunch but not a concrete or complete definition. No one asked for a fax machine, a laptop computer, an answering machine, or even a bicycle, but customers valued the benefits these products provided. Henry Ford reportedly said, “If I had given customers what they wanted, I would have given them faster horses.”

Consider what the journey with the customer would be if you understood the customer’s needs so deeply you were assured of absolutely nailing a match. What if you ran the innovating approach of most companies completely backward, starting with the customer, instead of with a hoped-for solution? How would it be if you involved customers in such a manner that their hopes and aspirations were revealed, to them and to you? This is the venue where customers are treated as true partners.

A partnership can be a key to accessing the customer’s imagination. Done properly, it is an alliance of trust and a liaison of equality. But most organizations manage customer partnerships in a way that the customer, if a partner at all, is more of a junior partner. The organization remains in charge and lets the customer have a limited role. It’s like plowing with my dad when I was a kid.

When I was seven or eight years old, I would sit with my dad in the tractor seat as together we plowed a field. We were partners. But when we came to the end of the row, he took over. He raised the plow, slowed the tractor, made the turn, lined the tractor up on the next row, and lowered the plow for me to resume steering. I felt like a partner, but I was clearly not an equal partner, only an active participant. It was an appropriate status since I was too short to reach the tractor pedals. The customer, on the other hand, is plenty tall.

What This Book Is About … and Not About

Customer participation is not a new concept. There are many examples of customers being encouraged to get involved. The Craddock Terry Hotel, housed in a 1905 converted shoe factory in Lynchburg, Virginia, invites guests to take the hotel’s dog concierge, Penny Loafer, on a walk through the town’s historical district, and to “decorate your own tree” during the winter holidays with shoe-themed ornaments. Vans shoes enthusiasts have been able to design their own kicks since Vans’s first week of operation, when the company’s founder told a customer to go to a fabric store and buy cloth in the brighter color she wanted.¹ Two of Starbucks’s most popular items—cake pops and pumpkin spice lattes—came from the imagination of their customers. So did splash sticks and free Wi-Fi, along with 150,000 other innovations via the company’s My Starbucks Idea platform.² Participation helps customers put skin in the game.

But participation and partnership are not the same thing. The focus of this book is co-creation, on getting customers fully integrated into the creation process, not just tangentially or superficially invited to participate. Dell computers had co-creation hardwired into its DNA from the start. Michael Dell, from his dorm room at the University of Texas, started selling computer upgrade kits. He got a license as a vendor, giving him access to discounted parts, and sold assembled computers to customers at an economy price. The seventy-billion-dollar company today continues to actively involve customers in design. Customer answers to “What would you really want this thing to do? Is there a different way to accomplish that?” type of questions get turned into offerings, created by customers, not just for customers. Michael Dell himself visits chats rooms, not as the CEO, but as an anonymous, caring partner. What they learn enables quick turnaround when mistakes occur.

Here is another way to consider the difference. When businesses are asked why they do what they do, they acknowledge they are in the business of creating products, providing services, and crafting solutions for customers. If that purpose is done well, they keep score by generating a profit and/or growing. The operative word is for. This book is about creating that same outcome, only it is performed with customers, not just on their behalf.

The word “customerization” was introduced by management guru Tom Peters in his 1992 book Liberation Management. “Customer focus,” he wrote, “still clutches the tired imagery of ‘us’ designing to attend to ‘them’; ‘us’ as active, ‘they’ as passive.”³ It is a Copernicus-like view, with the customer revolving around the products, services, or solutions provider. His metaphor suggested a better approach: to think of the relationship as being like the one between a potter and potter’s wheel, where the provider supplies the clay and the machinery and the customer creates the pot—“something neither one could have accomplished alone.” But let us be clear on who is the customer.

Labels are always imprecise. Earlier the word “customer” was used to mean someone with a need and an expectation. He or she might go by a multitude of monikers, including client, patient, guest, colleague, student, citizen, patron, member, consumer, or partner. We will call them all customers—those with a need seeking some individual or entity to help meet that need.

When a company creates a product to be sold to a customer, they might be labeled a manufacturer, builder, supplier, or producer at the wholesale level, a merchant, seller, or dealer at the retail end of the marketplace supply chain. When a company delivers a service to a customer, they might be called a service provider, and if their stock in trade is expertise or advice, like a doctor or lawyer, they might be known as a professional services provider. Since all are providing a tangible or an intangible supply of something of value to a customer, we will refer to them all as a “provider.” It is not a term of exactness, only one of convenience.

This book is focused on interpersonal encounters between customers and human providers. The settings for meeting customer needs can be anywhere and anytime. These might be face to face, ear to ear, or even click to click, but they are not AI or robot to customer, at least not in the foreseeable future!

Finally, an important assumption. Imagination might be unlimited but business practices are not. This book does not suggest abandoning fiscal responsibility, reasonable capacity, or organizational values. It is important for partners in all relationships to be generous, but not sacrificial.

Inside Your Customer’s Imagination—A Sneak Peek

Deep inside every customer is a treasure trove of half-baked ideas, creative capacity, and ingenuity-in-the-raw. Some customers are aware that trove exists; others have no clue. The key to unlocking this vessel of innovative goodies resides only with the customer. Think of the challenge as a bit like helping a very cautious person demonstrate courage. When an organization builds that kind of deep, valued partnership with customers—a coalition laced with curiosity, grounding, discovery, trust, and passion—three important outcomes occur.

First, some customers discover their treasure chest. Second, some customers become willing to open that chest and share it with the provider. But a third thing happens that is purely magical. It changes the provider as well, and the entire relationship is enriched. The value of the co-created offering becomes more valuable to all involved, ensuring the long-term future of the partnership. There are partnerships with customers. And then there are co-creation partnerships. Co-creation partnerships operate with intimate customer connections, a high level of structural freedom, and an obsession with “being the customer.” Inclusion and transparency are second nature.

Co-creation partnerships are those in which all parties relinquish any effort to control or manipulate the outcome. They are populated by people putting all effort into being entirely authentic and real. They are devoted to discovery and learning, not dedicated to convincing. We all wear masks, in part to protect ourselves against rejection. When a provider is completely genuine in front of a customer, it changes the nature of the relationship from cautious to unguarded. Energy typically devoted to cover and protection becomes available for insight and discovery.

Co-creation partnerships value candor without rancor. Providers in these relationships are assertively candid, with the intention of helping, not hurting, the customer. There is a cleanness in such relationships in which the value of straightforward interaction is unmistakable. Great providers care enough to be forthright; they are also curious and learning oriented enough to invite and accept frankness from their customers. Partnering is always a two-way relationship.

Co-creation partnerships are connections filled with zeal and obvious attention to the customer’s need, issue, problem, or concern. It is the “be all … there” feature of undivided and uninterrupted focus on what matters most to the customer. When customers sense a provider is passionate about championing their cause and finding a novel solution, they are more willing to open up their imagination and meld it with the provider’s imagination for an ingenious synergistic outcome that is often labeled a breakthrough.

Five Secrets for Co-Creation Partnerships

DHL is the FedEx and UPS of Europe. With over a half million employees, they are the largest private carrier in the world. Their commitment to co-creation partnerships takes many forms, including their annual DHL Innovation Days. Customers and business partners connect in an inspirational atmosphere to think outside the box and honor creative minds with the DHL Innovation Awards. When customers wanted help rethinking supply chains and logistics to improve future business performance, DHL created a series of intensive hands-on workshops that brought together DHL experts with customers to do scenario planning for future applications. It yielded breakthroughs like Parcelcopter, a drone delivery project; smart glasses, an augmented reality that improved warehouse picking efficiency by 25 percent; and “Maintenance on Demand,” co-created with DHL customer Volvo Trucks, which uses sensors to automatically send back vehicle performance data to identify when and where truck maintenance will be needed.⁴

In the pages to come, we will delve deeply into the five tactics—I call them secrets (figure 1)—for creating and sustaining a co-creation partnership. Their foundation comes from the components of all renowned innovation companies, cultures, and relationships. The goal is to encourage customers to discover and disclose their imagination and meld it with the provider’s imagination in order to create an offering that exactly matches the customer’s hopes and aspirations. Along the way, we will explore techniques for applying these secrets in real-world situations.

When you watch a video of an Olympic athletic performance in slow motion, you see the sterile mechanics. But when you see the performance live, you experience something almost supernatural. The magic of a co-creation partnership is the confluence of actions, attitudes, and associations that comes from these five building blocks or tactics.

SECRET 1. CURIOSITY: BE THE CUSTOMER

“Be the customer” borrows from the “be the ball” advice coaches give young athletes to encourage them to focus and retain attention. The Curiosity secret zeroes in on developing a deep connection with a customer that bonds, affirms, and supports, thus inviting and encouraging the customer to both source and share his or her treasure chest of imagination. Curiosity is the extractor of insight.

SECRET 2. GROUNDING: PARTNER ON PURPOSE

The Grounding secret enables high-performance collaboration centered on the juncture between the customer’s needs and hopes and the provider’s mission and values. It is targeted innovation. It is purpose-full with helpful guardrails and collective accountability. Note the double meaning of “on purpose.” Grounding disciplines the co-creation partnership to maintain a clear focus.

SECRET 3. DISCOVERY: SPARK DAREDEVIL LEARNING

The Discovery secret expedites and catalyzes the collective search for innovation by turning tryouts into bold, risk-taking learning adventures. It engenders growth on steroids, learning that is empowering and aha producing. And it provides a welcoming portal for the customer’s imagination to emerge from inside out. Discovery fosters risk-taking and experimentation.

SECRET 4. TRUST: PURSUE TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE IMAGINATION WAY

The Trust secret centers on being an active custodian of the relationship so that it always honors candor, respects clear work agreements, and has planned for the inevitable hiccups likely to be a part of a vibrant, high-energy partnership. It harnesses creativity as it guides its transformation from rough idea to polished execution. Trust safeguards the co-creation partnership to preserve its purity and wholesomeness.

SECRET 5. PASSION: NEVER STOP COURTING

The Passion secret fuels the co-creation partnership with signs of admiration and actions of caring that keep the alliance fresh and spirited. As an obvious source of focused joy, abundance, and gratitude, it makes a co-creation partnership contagious, motivating others to support it and inspiring them to emulate it. Passion sparks energized generosity.

Making the shift from viewing customers as junior partners to full partners requires actions that convince and consistency that proves. Customers are not accustomed to being in an equal position with providers. The whole negotiation of price, for example, illustrates the challenge of partnering in today’s competitive, transaction-driven world of commerce. The traditional view of “You have a need, I fill it” must be converted to use “we” pronouns.

Co-Creation Is beyond Customer-Centric

Countless business books today focus on the pinnacle of a provider-to-customer relationship as being one that is customer-centric. (Whether B2C or B2B, all business relationships are P2P—people to people.) Their view zeroes in on the right side of a four-point continuum that runs from customer hostile (we all can name a few of those) to customer aware, customer friendly, and customer-centric. But there is another, higher plane, one underutilized in today’s “hunt for breakthroughs” world (figure 2).

Customer aware organizations are characterized by customer accommodation rather than support. Customer friendly organizations give enough lip service to customer service that it shows up in pockets of their service delivery, but not consistently.

To say a provider is customer-centric generally means it is keeping the customer at the forefront of thinking, planning, and decision making.

Co-creation partnerships are about keeping the customer present and in the driver’s seat along with the provider, so the customer becomes much more than just the recipient of a provider executing with the customer in mind. As explained in this book, it features an approach more like a potluck “dinner on the grounds” right after church. People love it because everyone contributes to the meal. The salads at the beginning of the buffet line are just as important as the cakes at the end. Its power lies in the fact that it is co-created, not just customer-centric.

A Look Ahead: Curiosity

What does a provider need to do to encourage a customer to enter into a relationship that makes innovation far more likely? We start with curiosity since it establishes the rapport and lays the foundation for the trust your customer needs to reveal their imagination and join you in the creation of a novel offering that precisely meets their needs, expectations, hopes, and aspirations. Curiosity is conveyed through eccentric listening, witnessing like an anthropologist, and inquiring in a way that is unleashed (bold) and unfiltered (without bias). Pay close attention to the partnering crib notes at the end of each chapter. They will provide a thumbnail sketch of key takeaways to practice and master.