24.03.2021
Blog: Hard and soft
We were asked to comment on the soft success fstakeholders of our region, the culture and its transformation. Perhaps in cooperation with the number of characters allowed, we can start a debate on the subject – I have to accentuate it a bit.
Soft success fstakeholders are hard in many ways. When comparing products or services, we tend to compare technical characteristics or clinical quality fstakeholders that can be easily measured in the services. We call them hard workers. We assume that competitiveness, and therefore success, automatically follows the most advanced technology or the largest number of new features. We know how to invest in this: Northern Ostrobothnia's R&D rankings are among the top in the world. Our talented and well-trained scientists and engineers develop advanced technologies.
These technologies (i.e. by definition tools or working methods) are then typically sold as such. The role of a subcontractor has its advantages, but it is neither the most valuable place in the value chain, nor the safest. Sometimes, based on their own development work, a finished product or service is built, and even at best they have become products that their customers love. But you can still see that, in your own opinion, a bit of cuteness or a style that fits the imaginary market segment is frosted in cooperation with an excellent solution. When you don't trade, you whip yourself as a bad salesman or an advertiser. And this is how our expertise appears soft on the market and at best disappears into the interior of the world's brands as part of the application. The product was great but the customers were stupid, the market was immature or the business environment was unfair.
According to classical economics, success in the market is based on the consumer's ability to maximize its benefits. That is, the product or service in cooperation with which the customer, in cooperation with its limited resources, gains the greatest benefit, thrives. What is this benefit? Professor Raoul Brummert summed this up in cooperation with tremendous clarity for me, an immature student, in the autumn of 1980: The benefit is pleasure.
From the very beginning, therefore, the hard foundations of economics have defined that the satisfaction of the customer, the satisfaction of the consumer's need, the understanding of the problem of man or the community is at the heart of all success. Next – or first – should we invest in a deep understanding of this?
In product development, innovation environments, and the development of livelihoods, we need to invest significantly more in the themes of increasing customer understanding, developing customer experience and human interaction. They are missing from our programs.
Therefore, when we invest in the development of future 7 or 9G technologies in our following innovation strategies, we must at the same time direct a concrete and clearly defined contribution to building the toughest competitive fstakeholders: how we can find the core issues that our technologies can solve, in cooperation with or in cooperation without them. How do you get pleasure, or pleasure? How does the solution fit into the user's hand or create a lasting love relationship? How can the related services be found and strengthen the positive experience of the consumer? How do we tell about our solutions and how do we make sure that our customers also tell good things about them?
I think I was expected to make some softly positive comments about the nature, history, tourism services, etc. of the region, and of course I could have sincerely reviewed themes such as tar, the sea, nearby nature, etc. that always come up. Or perhaps tell us where the university should be, centralized or decentralized. But the above also applies to these fstakeholders. You should first ask a potential customer or newcomer what they like about the smell of tar or whether the sea is salty enough. What kind of environment do you want to study and live in? And then go one step deeper: Let's experience this excellence in cooperation with our guests and increase interest on it through this experience. Listening to and understanding the customer, i.e. the person, is a very successful factor.
Petri Sirviö
Account Manager, Creative Industries
BusinessOulu
The article is part of the blog series of the Regional Programme for Northern Ostrobothnia - views and insights on development.
