Unleashing The Voice Of The Product And The Voice Of The Process

In this paper we propose that, our need to create products and services that match the 'voice of the customer' becomes much more achievable when designers allowing the 'voice of the product', the 'voice of the process' and the 'voice of the system' to guide them. The paper explores how TRIZ helps us to systematically map these 'voices' and how, once we have found them generically we can then set about making a systematic transfer into the domain of specific solutions. Several mini-case study examples are used to illustrate the various points raised in the paper. Just about any organisation today recognises the importance of capturing and utilising the 'voice of the customer'. The voice of the customer is the thing that allows organisations to survive in an increasingly fierce global market-place. It is, however, notoriously difficult to capture accurately, and, paradoxically, experience tells us that very often the actual voice of the customer turns out to be considerably different from that assumed by the prevailing market behaviour. It is our proposal in this paper that capturing that voice can be made very much more easy when we also take into the account the voices of the product and process. Very few organisations are aware of the 'voice of the product' and the 'voice of the process'. But, thanks to TRIZ-based research into patterns of discontinuous evolution, both very definitely exist. This paper is about the application of TRIZ trends and the Evolution Potential concept and the way in which both can be applied to systematically identify where products and processes are going to evolve in the future. The paper takes as its starting assumption a desire on the part of companies and individuals to generate specific 'killer application' solutions to satisfy a stated target market. We are looking, in other words, for 'innovative' solutions as opposed to merely inventive ones. Our definition of 'innovative' thus equates to the precious few inventive solutions that eventually turn out to be sustainably profitable market successes.