Every year, Nissan Europe runs a competition called the Chairman\u2019s Innovation Awards. It is open to all employees who want to propose new ideas for Nissan. A few years back, John Ferguson, a British technical architect, proposed a technology that allows customers to change the colour of their car whenever they want. John won the Chairman Innovation Award. John’s idea was incubated in Nissan Innovation Lab where the Innovation Coach guided John to explore his idea using the Lean Startup approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lean Startup sees an idea as a stack of hypotheses hiding the risks behind the project. The approach requires identifying those hypotheses and confronting them with reality to see if the idea can stand. In John\u2019s project, the two initial biggest risks were posed by the technical feasibility and the customer\u2019s desirability for such a feature. Was there a market for his idea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With no previous experience of innovation projects, the Lean Startup approach gave John a structured methodology to guide him forward. And it was a huge help he says: \u201cI very quickly saw the benefit of Lean Startup. The coaches explained how this was going to work and gave me deadlines, things to deliver, which I really needed. It would have been quite difficult without it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the technical side <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For technical feasibility, John found a company developing an e-ink technology. \u201cI went out to different companies, made contact with them. We settled on one company to provide a prototype.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the market side, there were 3 big business risks:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n John had to figure out who was interested in his new feature. Who wants to change the color of their car with a simple mobile app? And more importantly, who will pay for it and how much? John drafted about 10 canvases with possible customer profiles and the pain point that this technology can address. After a quick prioritization exercise, it was time to get out of the building and confront his understanding with the reality. He went down the street to meet car buyers: \u201cThe hardest part of the whole activity was when I ended up in the street and talked to people. That will live with me for a long time. I still have nightmares of standing on the street corner of London, trying to stop people to see if they want to buy. But it was the true gold.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He asked about the challenges of buying a car, trying to grasp the influence the colour has when buying a car. It was not about asking leading questions but rather about giving the person a chance to open up and explain what they found frustrating when buying a car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the biggest learnings the coach gave me was: you don\u2019t go up to a customer and say \u201cWould you buy this?\u201d because the customer will say \u201cyes\u201d because he wants to please you. So, what you get is a kind of positive distortion of the truth. If you then say to them: \u201cOk then, give me the money now.\u201d, they would say \u201cOh no!\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n People were talking to John and saying things like: \u201cI spend 2 hours a day inside my car, I don’t care how it looks like outside\u201d,<\/em> or: \u201cI just want a black car because I don’t want to have to wash it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those interviews brought new perspectives and a refined understanding of the customer’s needs. John decided to focus on one specific customer segment: the fashionista<\/em> who would like the color of their car to match their style of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To probe that segment, John got a video produced to show the product in action: a TV advert based on the idea that the customer was able to accessorise the car to their outfit. The actress in the advert is wearing a red dress. She walks outside; her car is blue. She pulls out her cell phone, opens up an app and chooses the colour red. And the car turned to red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n