IRI Workshop: Innovation in Action: A Case Study Workshop on Driving Innovation through Customer Insights

This 75-minute interactive professional development workshop is designed to prompt conversations among R&D, innovation, and technology management practitioners on how exemplary cases of innovation can help them approach and think about innovation in their own contexts. This session is built around active participation, so expect to collaborate, analyze, and discuss as you explore an innovation case study.

Workshop topic: 

The session will focus on the critical role of customer insights in driving successful innovation across industries. Over time, customer insight strategies have evolved from simple feedback mechanisms to sophisticated, data-driven approaches that involve customers as active participants in the innovation process. By utilizing diverse methodologies such as ethnography, AI tools, and techniques like the repertory grid, companies can understand customer behaviors, needs, and preferences.   

The session will feature a case study on the integration of customer feedback with commercial and technical feasibility to drive innovation at Novonesis, a leading global biosolutions and biotechnology company focused on the production of enzymes, microbes, and functional proteins. As a business-to-business company, Novonesis serves over 30 industries. Its customer-centric approach to innovation is centered around a comprehensive methodology involving customer feedback, trend analysis, and exploration of white space that drives product and solution development.  This workshop is based on IRI’s report Driving Innovation through Customer Insights: The Novonesis Approach to Collaborative Product Development. We encourage you to read this report before the workshop: https://iriweb.org/resources/driving-innovation-through-customer-insights-the-novonesis-approach-to-collaborative-product-development/ 

Workshop format: 

Each session will feature a short presentation that summarizes the case study’s main concepts and applications. Then, the participants will be assigned to small groups and tasked with discussing and identifying common challenges, available methods, and creative solutions related to the session’s case study and theme. The attendees will return to the plenary and engage in a facilitated conversation to share key takeaways from their small-group discussions, highlighting areas of convergence and divergence and connecting the session’s takeaways back to their work. Seating for this workshop is limited, so we encourage you to register soon. If you have any questions, please contact Besher Al Makhlouf (balmakhlouf@nam.org). 

This workshop is designed for current IRI members only. If you are not a member, please contact Clayton Warnke (cwarnke@nam.org)  

All IRI events are broadcast in Eastern Standard Time