When Not to Use Focus Groups

I'm still a fan of focus groups. Yes, they're mostly qualitative, and at best you're capturing information from a handful of customers that may or may not be representative.

But the richness of information, the multi-dimensional and behavioral feedback is unique to that environment. And with some products (trying on jackets, or testing perfume for example) sending an email survey just doesn't cut it.

But to make focus groups effective, you have to consider what information you're gathering. If you want insights on current customer perceptions, focus groups are good. If you want to measure how current opinions might map to a future idea, great.

But if you want to capture accurate, directional feedback on an innovative new idea, good luck. Focus groups - or simply the act of asking any set of prospective customers their opinion - won't get you anywhere. In fact, it may point you in the wrong direction.

Your customers - current and future - know what they know. They like what's comfortable, what's expected. Throw something new in front of them, and you're asking them to adjust their current worldview. That doesn't always go well.

Innovative ideas, products and services don't always take right away. Even the early adopters don't always initially like it. So how would you expect a group of strangers (or even loyal customers!) to give you accurate feedback on something entirely out of their current frame of reference?

Too often focus groups are used to test new ideas, well beyond current thinking, and the negative feedback collected shuts down the idea before it gets to market - even for a measured test.

And that's a shame, because you can't expect even a well-targeted audience to understand something totally different, even if it will be critical to their productivity, happiness and/or success in years to come.

Innovation, for better or worse, is still about using your instincts and a direct read on the market and its needs. It's not always quantitative. If it was, it would probably be a lot easier and more frequently achieved than it is today.

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

14 Most Important Innovation Factors

I came across a nice 2003 study by Dutch academics titled, "SME innovation and the crucial role of the entrepreneur." The study's purpose was to ask small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) what they viewed the most important factors in innovation to be. In this study, SMEs consist of 100 employees or less.

Rather than have the businesses come up with their own factors, the academics conducted an extensive survey into the prevailing studies on the matter. From this survey, they culled to the 14 most commonly mentioned bases for innovation.

They then asked 167 firms to answer 50 different questions, which resolved to the 14 factors. From these responses, they generated a statistically valid ranking of the what small businesses consider to be the most important drivers of innovation.

Before discussing these ranked factors, it's interesting to note the academics' take on this. They came up with a really rough ordering of the most important innovation factors, based on their frequency in research studies. They then compared the research studies to what the businesses themselves identified. It's of interest to see the discrepancies.

The chart below shows how business ranked the 14 factors, along with their approximate frequency in research work:



The findings are useful, and perhaps not surprising. In a firm with under 100 employees, the entrepreneurial zeal of a founder certainly is a key driver of innovation. Unique product advantages make sense as the #2 factor - although perhaps that's a bit confusing in that innovation produces the unique product advantages.

Innovation culture comes in for #3. This is important, and my guess is that if you were to survey growing sizes of firms, this factor would rise in the rankings.

Check out the full paper for details.

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Hutch Carpenter is the Director of Marketing at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.