Who Do You Innovate For?

Anyone who works in innovation, marketing, or product development will tell you that they’ve been conditioned to cater to customers, consumers, shoppers, and users. But, who are these mysterious entities that we are always told to reach? The answer is really quite simple. Regardless of how you categorize them, the goal is to innovate for humans. Real people just like you, me, our friends, and family.

Innovating for humans begins with humanizing data. It’s one thing to convey numbers and another to tell a story about the numbers and what they mean for the human experience. To connect your data to humans, translate it into plain language and always convey the conclusions from your data first. This will ensure that you focus on the overarching result and how it will impact the human experience with your company and not the nitty-gritty of the numbers themselves.

Whether innovating consumer products or implementing new technologies as part of a company’s digital transformation, the human element must remain front and center. Technology and machines can serve as powerful tools when aligned with a robust strategy. It does not always mean using the newest tech. Instead, focus on how to employ tech that carries out an intuitive, people-centric approach. For some, this may mean making a move to the cloud for its flexibility and accessibility, while for others this may mean investing in IT automation. Whatever path you choose to innovate, taking an agile approach means asking yourself how this tech will help put humans first.

Not only is it important to integrate your tech with the human experience, but also your marketing. This means ethically marketing by focusing on your purpose. If you are unsure about your purpose, a great question to ask is, “what is it in your brand’s heritage or founders’ stories that will resonate in the marketplace? What do you stand for that matters to people.”

At the end of the day, innovating for humans means leaning into insights to create something that actually speaks to the real pain points and desires bundled up within the human experience. And the best way to find out pain points and desires is from humans themselves. Engage and build your empathy. Get outside to where real life happens. For example, while innovating Millie Gram, SnackFutures used social media and real-life consumer testing to find out customers’ pain points with functional foods. CaPao was born from learning that throwing out cacao fruit wasted food and nutrients humans could use and money farmers could benefit from. 

As both these examples show, innovation is all about digging into the human experience and creating something for real people. So the next time you get bogged down in data, simply look in the mirror and remind yourself that you innovate for humans just like yourself.