Customer Insights

With its on-trend merchandise, fast fashion, and amazing deals, Target is the perfect place to shop, socialize, and spend a Saturday afternoon. But more than that, Target is an example of a company that’s been able to thrive despite massive disruption across its industry. Today, thanks to the company’s agile execution and future focused strategy, Target endures as one of America’s most beloved consumer brands. 

How do you find out what people really need? The answer is a hybrid of social science and design planning methodologies. Focus on critical needfinding principles to figure out what’s really going on.

Organizations working to better understand their customers would do well to employ direct observation techniques. But how do these techniques actually work? Here are some guidelines for the novice practitioner.

Today more than ever, business growth requires an ability to see new possibilities, and seeing new possibilities requires new ways of looking at the world. Here’s how to get started.

Business growth today requires new ways of looking at the world, say Sarah Rottenberg and Isabel O’Meara, of design firm Jump Associates in New York. In Rotman Magazine, they offer seven ways to enhance your ability to see new possibilities that do not yet exist.

Here’s a simple equation that leads to new thinking and novel products. But it’s a formula that too few companies have grasped.