Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become

by Michael Schrage, Erik Synnestvedt (Reading)

Who do you want your customers to become? According to MIT innovation expert and thought leader Michael Schrage, if you aren't asking this question, your strategic marketing and innovation efforts will fail. In this latest HBR Single, Schrage provides a powerful new lens for getting more value out of innovation investment. He argues that asking customers to do something different doesn't go far enough-serious marketers and innovators must ask them to become something different instead. Even more, you must invest in their capabilities and competencies to help them become better customers. Schrage's primary insight is that innovation is an investment in your client, not just a transaction with them. To truly innovate today, designing new products or features or services won't get you there. Only by designing new customers-thinking of their future state, being the conduit to their evolution-will you transform your business. Marketing executives, brand managers, strategic innovators, and entrepreneurs alike should understand how successful innovation rebrands the client and not the product. A requisite question for its time, Who Do You Want Your Customers To Become will liberate you and your team from 'innovation myopia'-and turn your innovation efforts on their head.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Design, Entrepreneurship

89 pages, Audiobook

First published July 17, 2012

About the author

Michael Schrage is a Research Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. A sought-after expert on innovation, metrics, and network effects, he is the author of Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?, The Innovator's Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas (MIT Press), and other books.

Reviews

[Noam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is there only one Google in our life? One Apple? One Amazon and one Facebook? Isn't there room for more? Why should they succeed and not others? Why did Google Glass, Amazon Fire Smartphone and Apple Watch fail to live up to the media, company and user expectations? Why would dropbox succeed and not copy.com- it's rival?

Why should your business, product or service stand out of the competition- more than others?

Business models, regulations, customer relationships, competition and even user experience explain only half the story- as this book offers a striking explanation to what makes any business, product or service succeed.

If you're looking for a book that'll totally clear your view about your (or any) business - read this.

Very much recommended for CEO's, UX professionals, educators and product designers/ managers.

[loafingcactus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Customers are not Schrodinger's Cat- you don't throw some kibble over the wall unsure whether there is a cat there at all. Rather, the interaction changes the customer in a way you can see and measure. Your first question is "Who do you want your customer to become?" If you aren't careful with your investigation of that question, you could be McDonalds, changing your value conscious consumer into a fatazz with everyone looking at you as the cause. Better to be Google, creating customers that can search up any bit of information at any time- expanding the customer's abilities and life experience. So, who do you want your customer to become?

[Andrea Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A succinct (read: quick) read, Who Do You Want Your Customers To Become encourages the reader to consider how they wish to engage with their customers. Although the term wasn't used, I thought about the idea of customer relationship management: how you want to grow your relationship with your customers and ultimately become a trusted advisor. By identifying who you want your customers to become and delivering the products to help get them there, you are establishing their benchmarks and expectations, ideally resulting in greater loyalty and stickiness.

[SL · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become" is an alright book proposing a good idea, but ultimately fails to give much advice on how to determine an answer to the title's question for your own business. Filled primarily with examples, it makes some decent points and ends on a rather "meh" note. It was ok, but would have been better condensed to a series of articles.

[James Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the part about Henry Ford. His greatest contribution to society wasn't the assembly line. It was getting people to do something they had never done before... Drive. When cars came out we were carting around on buggies and the affluent (first to buy the autos) were carted around in buggies manned by others. That's a big ASK!

[Ties · Rating 3 out of 5]

An abstract thesis that is explored through b2c examples. The question is indeed thought provoking but I don't believe it to be as central to the examples' success as the author does. It's an interesting perspective on the positioning and marketing of a brand. For me it lacks a bit of clarity on how I would actually use this in daily business.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good business book. Very thought-provoking for a business owner in ANY field. I also loved that it was short and to the point. Some business books belabor a point and go on and on. This one was clear and to the point.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was mentioned at the UX Brighton 2012 conference and took me a while to get around to reading. It was worth the wait and was an interesting twist on the usual focus on customers.

[Dujo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind blasting.

[Tai Odunsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting new paradigm for doing business

[William Beldham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thoughtful approach to business development.

[Sami · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was ok because it introduced some interesting use cases of marketing a product in a clever way such as Starbucks marketing specialised coffees. Overall the content was OK, but just so-so.

However, I felt the 'asking your customers to become X' got a bit gimmicky after a while. It makes sense in certain scenarios when you are creating a new market but I found the phrasing to be overdrawn out. I would have preferred if they just said 'they created a new market for smartphones with apps' instead of 'they asked their customers to become people who use smartphones'.

[Abhilash Gopalakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem! I had always felt there is more to the user experience innovation around. The book summarises it to transforming customers and innovator‘S ask. Great insights! The fundamental aspects of human psychology is demonstrated in understandable terms. I have turned out to be a big fan of Prof. Michael Schrage and his work from Serious Play and now this one and planning to do the innovators hypothesis.

[Jiwon Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. Communicating better with customers was less important than facilitating how its customers talk with each other about the bank's offerings.
2. The future of the brand demanded different conversations than defining customers' futures. Designing tomorrow's best customers is not the same as designing tomorrow's best products.
3. They should look at customers as ongoing investments of appreciating assets.

[Mark Parent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short books but I like the perspective it offers as we think about how new product and services shape who we attract and who our customers become as a result.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could be a two page HBR article - hasn’t aged well.

[Ashley E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

New to marketing, quick read with some good nuggets.

[Mwita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great concept! Audio Book got boring and a bit repetitive with examples even though it’s short. I think the written version might be the best way to experience.

[Puru Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great extension to JTBD framework. The examples, while mostly old, are excellent sources of inspiration!