People's love journey normally are: Chasing, Dating, Engaging, and then Marry. And I think that is just like how innovators fall in love with his/her product.
First, they also need to meet/find the right target; just like an innovator should also find a right market opportunity. And this answers the Who question. As a innovator, we got to define target market segment, define your primary user groups, validate user group definition through research and create a list of Attributes. (Just like how we describe our dream of another half)
When people want to date a girl/boy, he/she may also like to know if she/he already has a boyfriend/girlfriend? In product innovation, we will do the same thing, which is competitors analysis.
People may like to find out what she/he like/dislike? Which just like an innovator conducting research on target users. Different methods can be applied, e.g. Heuristic Analysis, Contextual Inquiry / Interview, User Typology, and so on and so forth.
People will make up themselves to show the best of himself/herself to loved ones, just like how entrepreneurs will do branding, with company name, logo, value proposition, to give target audience strong impression.
People got to find a way to let the target one get to know him/her, in product field, that is called awareness. Social media, lead generation, content marketing, viral spreading, etc. Different methods have been applied to achieve this awareness.
People will start to get in contact, in product field, which is accessibility, make the product available to the target group of users.
Dating, approach; Dress up, design; Drive to meet, distribution; Tell her/him how good you are, which is advertisement; let her/his friend tell her/him how good you are, which is PR; finally they fall in love, just like a product offering function and emotional value.
The "Triangular Theory of Love" was a perfect theory for how customer fall in love with a product/service as well; a stable love triangle got to have intimacy, commitment and passion. If anyone of them is missing, the love would not last long.
The intimacy refers to "feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness in loving relationships", passion refers to "the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and related phenomena in loving relationships" and decision/commitment means different things in the short and long term. In the short-term, it refers to "the decision that one loves a certain other", and in the long-term, it refers to "one's commitment to maintain that love." -- Robert Sternberg
People become boyfriend and girlfriend, just like early adoption or trial of a product; when people get married, that is just like a product/service have been purchased or subscribed. A product loyalty also has many things need to manage well, just like a marriage also need loved ones to work on it.
Customer may also divorce a product, they may be attracted by other new offerings in the market; hence companies should keep offering value to keep up the passion and maintain good relationship with great customer services.
Some of my portfolio together with some other products have been used as an example during this speech. e.g. Nokia reader, mobile listener, Widsets mobile widgets subscribe service, V1 mobile lottery game, etc.
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