220 • 100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS
If users are encouraged to devise new products and services,
innovative new products can be developed quickly in a way that is
highly effective and popular. This approach has been championed
with great success by the Danish government.
The idea
The fi rst automated drug pumps and heart and lung machines were
devised by doctors, not medical equipment companies; sports energy
drinks were invented by sports enthusiasts before beverage businesses
became involved. Increasingly it is users, not producers, who can make
the best advances in innovation: inventing, developing, prototyping,
and even producing products. Recent research suggests that as much
as 70 percent of new product development fails because it does not
adequately understand users’ needs.
Governments favor innovation because of the economic benefi ts
it provides, and in May 2006 the Danish government announced
a national priority of “strengthening user-centered innovation.”
This policy is pursued by encouraging a wide range of techniques,
including research into issues such as ethnography, that enhance
understanding of users’ needs, directly supporting user-centered
innovations, and encouraging Danish business schools and fi rms
to share best practice. According to Danish Minister of Science
Helge Sander, the government’s focus on user-centered innovation
is paying off.
The central theme is to fi nd new, improved ways to connect directly
with a shifting group of users when developing new products.
(^97) USER-CENTERED