Innovation Starts with Empathy | design mind

Description

Innovation Starts with Empathy
The importance of developing deep connections with the people you serve.
By Dev Patnaik, Founder and Principal, Jump Associates
A few years ago, my publisher asked me to write a book about innovation. They’d read some of the articles I’ve written on the subject over the years, and they wanted more. And although I was flattered, I had to tell them no. The world didn’t need another book on innovation — there are too many as it is. I instead made them a counter-offer: Maybe what the world needed was a book about empathy.

At Jump Associates, my colleagues and I have had the chance to collaborate with some of the world’s most amazing companies. And if there’s one thing that we’ve learned in all that time, it’s that companies prosper when they’re able to create widespread empathy for the world around them. That’s why I ended up writing Wired to Care, which shows how great companies around the world, from Nike to IBM, benefit from building a culture of widespread empathy for the people they serve.

Every one of us understands empathy on an individual level: the ability to reach outside of ourselves and walk in someone else’s shoes, to get where they’re coming from, to feel what they feel. Widespread empathy is about getting every single person in an organization to have a gut-level intuition for the people who buy their products and services (the folks who really matter).

How many times have you stared at a competitor’s new product and said, “We had that idea two years ago, but we just didn’t act on it.” Well, why not? Did you think the market research wasn’t quite right? Did you become convinced that it wasn’t a good idea when you couldn’t rally other people around it? Did people get in your way with stupid or irrelevant questions that tied ...

Original URL

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/the-substance-of-things-not-seen/innovation-starts-with-empathy.html

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/the-substance-of-things-not-seen/innovation-starts-with-empathy.html