Tips for Instilling a Customer-Centered Innovation Culture in a Startup Business

As is known, innovation is one of the things that drives a startup business. In an effort to create innovation in an organization, there is what is called an innovation culture or culture cultural innovation. Taken from several sources, it can be concluded that this innovation culture is an environment that supports creative thinking to produce new or better products, services, or processes.

In a more in-depth discussion of innovation culture, DailySocial.id stage webinar Super Mentor who is part of DSLaunchPad 3.0 in collaboration with Amazon Web Service (AWS). On this occasion, Jaspal Johl as Head of Marketing for Amazon Web Service ASEAN explained a number of insight related to the implementation of a culture of innovation in the company.

Customer centered

Before getting into more technical matters such as sales or market penetration, Amazon started the innovation step with one fundamental question, "How can this business improve the lives of customers?". When the company succeeds in creating the best product, all technical matters will follow automatically, such as market penetration that drives expansion, efficient operations, as well as customer conversion.

A quote from Jeff Bezos says, "There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here's the big one: Customers are always very happy, very dissatisfied, even when they claim to be happy and the business is good. Even when they don't know it, customers want something. better, and the desire to please customers will drive you to create things from their point of view."

This requires companies to observe all data related to satisfaction levels and try to understand consumer desires, even before they know it. Therefore, it is better to focus on what consumers are doing rather than what competitors are doing.

During its 27 years of existence, Amazon is known largely for its business E-commerce. Beyond that, the company also has services such as technology solutions, electronic products, content streaming, groceries, also retail. Until now, there are more than 60 business units spread across the world.

In realizing an innovation culture within the company, there are 4 key factors that AWS applies, namely:

1. Culture

Amazon has one important foundation that becomes a reference in implementing a culture of innovation, namely the Leadership Principles. Starting from building enthusiasm for customers (customer obsession), through various innovative processes and ending with achieving results, becoming the best employee.

This leadership principle is also used as the basis for recruitment. This procedure is carried out very strictly, the selected candidate must not only meet the standard, but must be able to raise the standard. Even when they have joined, candidates will still be evaluated by their colleagues. Amazon believes that an indicator of a company's success is cultural unity (work).

Regarding roles in work, Jaspal said, "We recruit smart people not to tell them what to do, but they come to the company with a list of what they want to do. The balance will be found when each has understood his role. "

2. Mechanism

Amazon as a global company has many processes, one of the famous ones is working backwards. This mechanism is a behavior associated with innovative thinking. In a sense, starting from point bread customers, where we create ideas to solve customer problems not problems within the organization. What the company has done so far is to create processes that innovate from the customer's point of view.

To run this mechanism, there are five questions that must be answered (1) Who are the customers?; (2) What is the customer's problem or opportunity?; (3) Are the benefits for customers clear?; (4) How to know the needs or desires of customers?; (5) What is the customer experience like?

The answers to these questions will be presented through 3 outputs. Press Release, which provides all product-related information to customers. Companies must be able to make customers understand what they want to be presented through this product. Then, FAQs containing the most frequently asked questions by customers, related to pricing, expansion. Meanwhile, in parallel building Visuals to see from the customer experience side.

Why are these questions and answers important? Because when the idea is just at the stage press release, will be very easy and cheap to change. It's a different story when you've invested millions of dollars and spent time on research and development. By then, it was too late to realize that the product was not what the customer wanted or to think about making a better product.

3. Architecture

From the technology side, companies are starting to switch to microservices. "We separate processes that have a single-purpose service. Because when all services are integrated, it can hinder innovation," said Jaspal.

With microservices, each team can move more freely with their own dynamics. On the other hand, it allows team members to work faster, agile and innovative. One thing that needs to be underlined, Amazon does not start the journey with the technology in mind, but the user experience first.

4. Organization

As a startup, just like Amazon used to be, there are always companies willing to pay more and offer more. However Jaspal emphasized that what is important is how to attract builders, creative people who love to execute, to the company. They think far ahead from the customer's point of view and have a sense of ownership of the products or services they run.

There is one scheme that Amazon uses to assemble teams, namely two pizza teams. Two pizza pans are a good portion for 6-8 people. According to the company's point of view, 6-8 people is the ideal number in a team. A number that can meet all needs without having to make too many adjustments or division of meeting sessions. This allows for team decentralization as well as autonomy which will drive acceleration in innovation.

"In an effort to innovate, what is actually being done is to create something new. To start something new we must be willing to take risks. it is to make sure that the idea really matures," said Jaspal

Dynamics is the key in doing business, there are many decisions and actions that reversible or can be changed and does not require in-depth study. However, the company prioritizes taking calculated risks. When the scale of the company increases, it will affect risk appetite-his. "This is what makes us stop aging in the organization to make room for innovation," he added.

Understanding the concept of failure

Another quote from Jeff Bezos says of, "Failure and discovery are inseparable twins. To create you have to experiment, and if you know beforehand that it will work, it's not experimentation."

Failure can happen in the process of finding something new. If there is nothing new, can it be considered an innovation? In this case, the best scenario is as fast followers. In addition, this is also a way to reduce risk and find out whether a product/service can run or not.

Just like Amazon has leadership principles, the company must have a foundation and seek people who are aligned with it. When you have found what is fundamental and essential to the development of the company, then a culture of innovation can begin to be applied to all employees in the organization.

Differentiation strategy (Growth Flywheel)

There is a cycle which is also called growth fly wheel when companies try to create the best customer experience. When you manage to provide a good user experience, the more users come, the higher the traffic, then the sales numbers will increase, and attract more sellers who will increase the selection of goods. This cycle will come back again and create the best user experience.

At Amazon, the company is taking economies of scale by lowering the cost structure, then expanding the product selection to create a better user experience. This can be implemented by other companies by determining what it looks like growth fly wheel in their organization. This is done to maintain customer centrality as well as innovation and sustainable business

In an effort to penetrate the market, Amazon as a global company has the same approach, only the execution is different. The key is observation, then find customer pain points, for example by asking questions about their needs. In providing customer-based services, feedback is one of the most essential things.