"Of course, rewards won't help if the inventions aren't focused on customer needs. Getting good consumer insight is the fourth most cited obstacle to innovation in our survey. Blogs and online communities now make it easier to know what customers are thinking. Hiring designers and ethnographers who observe customers using products at work or at home helps, too. But finding that Holy Grail of marketing, the "unmet need" of a consumer, remains elusive. "You need time, just thinking time, to step out of the day to day to see what's going on in the world and what's going on with your customers," says Stone Yamashita's Schuman."
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