New products are affected by known high failure rates. Many fail, not because of technical shortcomings, but because they do not have in the market. Not surprisingly, studies have shown that timely and reliable knowledge about customer preferences and requirements is the most important area of information necessary for product development. To obtain such data, many organizations have made heavy - but often unsuccessful - investments in traditional market research. The authors offer an alternative. Companies, including Threadless, Yamaha, and Ryohin Keikaku including customers in the innovation process by bringing new concepts of products directly from them. These firms are also asking customers to make a purchase for a new product before the start of the final design and production. This process - called a "collective commitment to customer" - can help companies avoid costly failures of the product. In fact, the collective commitments client enables companies to efficiently serve the market segment without define the segment and helping to convert the cost of market research directly into sales. "Hide
by Susumu Ogawa, Frank T. Piller Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 9 pages. Publication Date: January 1, 2006. Prod. #: SMR196-PDF-ENG
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