From Participation to Trust: The Necessity and Way to Success of Customer Participation in New Product Development
In the first week of the new year, I visited the customer. The customer took out this year’s production plan for discussion, and quickly finalized the cooperation plan with us for this year, which can be regarded as a good start for 2023. We have cooperated with this customer for three years. In the three years, we started from scratch, and the customer also grew step by step. From distrust at the beginning, to sharing core technology with each other later, this trust did not come easily, especially in our product development, the customer was willing to be a guinea pig and gave selfless help. The products successfully tested with the customer are expected to be promoted to the entire industry. Now, the two parties have changed from mere Party A and Party B to partners. The two parties plan to cooperate deeply this year to promote this product.
The reason why the two parties can deepen their cooperation step by step, in addition to trust and common cognition of the industry, there is another very important point, that is, they jointly polished an excellent product. In the long-term cooperation, a tacit understanding was formed, and a friendship of fighting side by side was formed. This mode of jointly polishing new products may be popularized as an important strategy for company development.
When developing new products, we often do not understand the final needs and real usage scenarios of customers. It is easy to work behind closed doors, and finally make a product with pseudo-demand, which will not only fail to get market recognition, but also waste precious company resources and development opportunities. At this time, it is very necessary to let customers participate in the polishing of the product. Customer is a general concept. For polishing the product, we must be specific to people, and we must choose the final users within the customer. Only they know the product requirements best. To create products with customers, first, the company must allocate special resources for cooperative projects to ensure that necessary technical support and timely response can be provided. Second, we must fully respect the customer’s independence, creativity, and subjective initiative. Third, we must ensure the long-term enthusiasm of customers through long-term and short-term incentive mechanisms.
Whether it is product development or investment decisions, industry research needs to be done. When listening to the Silicon Valley 101 podcast, I heard a one-sentence summary from Zhang Lu, managing partner of Fusion Fund, about why industry research should be done. She summarized it very well. On the one hand, doing industry research is to understand the stage of industry and technology development, and on the other hand, it is to determine the timing of the market. Investment institutions and consulting institutions are very willing to share research reports. As ordinary investors or entrepreneurs, sometimes you don’t need to do it yourself. You can also obtain necessary industry information by reading research reports. But to obtain industry insights and wealth codes, you need to think deeply yourself.
For example, regarding blockchain and cryptocurrency, because the industry is full of fraud, coupled with strict regulation of the cryptocurrency industry by various countries and investor education, it is easy to conclude that cryptocurrency is a scam without in-depth research into the industry. But if you have a deep understanding of the difference between currency and money, and understand what blockchain and Bitcoin mean to Africans, Southeast Asians, and Latin Americans who do not have traditional bank accounts, you may turn from a hater to a fan. For blind worshipers of blockchain and cryptocurrency, if they read the Bitcoin white paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 carefully, they will turn a blind eye to the numerous altcoins and hype “white papers” on the market and avoid investment traps.
Published at: Jan 10, 2023 · Modified at: Dec 4, 2025
