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Innovation projects almost always begin with enthusiasm. There are ideas, sketches, technical possibilities. Teams talk about scaling, differentiation, competitive advantages. And exactly here, in innovation development, a quiet but consequential shift in perspective occurs: suddenly, more is being said about one\u2019s own perspective than about the target audience.<\/p>\n
This is the moment where it is worth pausing and asking the question: Should products be developed that the market demands, or products that first create the market? This touches one of the most basic contradictions in corporate strategy. Studies do not provide a simple answer, but they provide something more valuable: a clear view of the mechanisms behind it.<\/p>\n
Die Spannung zwischen Innovationsorientierung und Zielgruppenorientierung ist keine neue Debatte. Schon Peter Drucker formulierte in den 1950er Jahren, dass der eigentliche Zweck eines Unternehmens nicht Gewinn, sondern die Schaffung und Bindung von Kunden sei. Was dabei oft vergessen wird: Drucker meinte beides zugleich \u2013 Kunden bedienen und Kunden erschaffen. Genau hier zeigt sich die zentrale Herausforderung.<\/p>\n
In der Praxis passiert etwas anderes. Unternehmen neigen dazu, sich entweder vollst\u00e4ndig auf die Stimme der Zielgruppe zu verlassen oder sich in technologischen Innovationen zu verlieren, die niemand versteht oder kauft. Berthon, Hulbert und Pitt haben dieses Dilemma in einer vielbeachteten empirischen Studie systematisch untersucht und gezeigt, dass beide Extreme ihre Schw\u00e4chen haben [1]. Zu viel Zielgruppenfokus f\u00fchrt zu inkrementellen, reaktiven L\u00f6sungen. Zu viel Innovationsfokus f\u00fchrt zu brillanten Ideen ohne Markt.<\/p>\n
Das Gef\u00e4hrliche daran: Wer ausschlie\u00dflich auf bestehende Bed\u00fcrfnisse der Zielgruppe h\u00f6rt, erh\u00e4lt immer nur Variationen des Bekannten. Wer hingegen ausschlie\u00dflich seiner technologischen Vision folgt, riskiert, an der Zielgruppe vorbei zu entwickeln. Die L\u00f6sung liegt nicht im Entweder-oder, sondern in einem bewussten Dialog zwischen diesen beiden Perspektiven.<\/p>\n
Studies on customer orientation and innovation performance show that companies perform better when they systematically collect, interpret, and integrate information about customer needs into decision-making [4]. This is not only about data collection, but about the ability to question internal beliefs. A key point emerges here: the more emotionally a team is invested in an idea, the harder it becomes to evaluate it from an external perspective.<\/p>\n
We cannot easily shift from the developer perspective to the user perspective and simply observe. This shift is not intuitive. It is a cognitive discipline.<\/p>\n
This form of mental distance is a well-researched mechanism: those who consciously adopt another person\u2019s perspective reduce cognitive biases and expand their decision-making repertoire. This is why innovation development requires not only creativity, but also methodological clarity.<\/p>\n
Recent marketing research confirms and deepens these findings. Professor Byron Sharp from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute describes in his book How Brands Grow<\/em> that brands do not primarily grow through loyalty, but through penetration \u2014 by acquiring new buyers who were previously not reached [3]. For innovation development, this shifts the core question: not \u201cWhat else can we offer our loyal user?\u201d, but \u201cWhy is the majority still not buying our solution, and which everyday barriers stand in the way?\u201d<\/p>\n This is where not a theoretical contradiction emerges, but a practical tension. Within this gap lies the potential for truly market-relevant innovation.<\/p>\n This becomes even clearer in a study by D\u2019Souza and colleagues, who examined the relationship between customer orientation and innovation performance across more than 300 small and medium-sized enterprises [2]. Their finding: customer orientation improves innovation capability \u2014 but only when it is not understood as a mere reaction to expressed needs, but as an active exploration of latent needs. Innovation based on genuine target audience understanding is more sustainable and more differentiating than innovation driven by an isolated development perspective.<\/p>\n For practice, this means: target audience orientation in innovation development is not a soft addition. It is a strategic competitive advantage that determines market readiness.<\/p>\n To make these insights directly usable in your innovation work, the following strategies help align development processes consistently with the target audience:<\/p>\n Those who truly understand their target audience, understand their everyday lives, and recognize the gap between the present and what is possible do not develop products for themselves. They develop products that succeed because they are genuinely needed \u2014 sometimes even before the target audience itself realizes what is missing. And this is exactly the difference between an innovation that fascinates and one that truly works because it is used, changes behavior, and finds its place in the everyday life of the target audience.<\/p>\n Would you like to align innovation more strongly with your target audience? The Insights and Innovation Workshop<\/a> by BESTVISO GmbH provides psychological consumer insights for market-relevant innovations and practical, target-audience-oriented implementation.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||-2px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.5″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Sources:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Innovation projects almost always begin with enthusiasm. There are ideas, sketches, technical possibilities. Teams talk about scaling, differentiation, competitive advantages. And exactly here, in innovation development, a quiet but consequential shift in perspective occurs: suddenly, more is being said about one\u2019s own perspective than about the target audience. This is the moment where it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":22561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[131,250,275,276],"class_list":["post-22567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","tag-brand-communication","tag-innovation-en","tag-innovation-development","tag-targeted-marketing"],"yoast_head":"\nPractical Impulses for Target-Audience-Oriented Innovation Development<\/h2>\n
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Conclusion<\/h2>\n
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