Many creative person don’t like numbers.
Number represent Logics and Rules that are very different in nature versus Creativity that are meant to break rules and boundaries with imagination.
As a product designers, we are trained to embrace the both world of logics and imagination with consumer centred mind-set.
On one hand, product solutions needed to be creative in addressing consumer needs and create new experience that are different and superior than competitors. On the other hand, product designers need to work with engineers to ensure the design solutions are feasible and practical for the mass production.
Product designers are trained to do consumer research to uncover pain points and unmet need insights. Now in the digital world, data analysis become another crucial source of business and consumer insight to drive innovation, and the true potential is yet to uncover for many organisation.
Innovations starts from uncovering new insights in consumer needs and new business trends. Traditionally, these priceless insights are heavily rely on industry experts and researchers who spend a lot of time in the field talking to consumers and trend spotting.
While the industry experience are still very important in assessing consumer insights and opportunities, digital consumer data can now provide far more possibilities to drive business innovation beyond imagination.
If an organization want to build innovation capability, they must train their Product Development, Creative & Brand Marketing team to fully embrace Data Analysis! Nowadays, consumers are increasingly spend more time and money on line, and the traditional way of tracking them offline will miss a big part of the whole picture.
Innovation is curiosity meets Data and Creativity.
To uncover new insights, one must curious about the end user’s unmet needs, Data analysis could provide hints of potential patterns and shift of clusters insights. Then the innovation team will need to dig deeper to understand why and what is needed in the change of behaviour and values. Imagination also come into play to project future demands and new value creations.
You don’t need to be a data scientist to start explore the world of data analysis. For most business team, learn how to use MS Excel solvers will give you a good start. We will leave the complex data-analysis for the professional. 😛
Having so much fun with Excel solver lately, and will continue to explore the world of data analysis to uncover new insights and innovation opportunities.
