Harvard articles on the user-centred approach

Harvard Business School Publishing has some articles available as (paying) downloads describing how experience design and the user-centred approach can lead to innovation.

Let the Users Take the Lead – May 15, 2005
Interview with Eric von Hippel, the head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group and a professor of management and innovation entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Let the Customer Make the Case – March 15, 2005
Collecting and analysing the stories behind purchases can provide deep and invaluable insights into jobs-to-be-done, much more so than traditional surveys or focus group

Harnessing the Power of the Customer – March 1, 2004
Organisations that can effectively harness the burgeoning power of the consumer to help shape their own products and services, argue C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, authors of The Future of Competition, are the ones that will dominate.

Making Routine Customer Experiences Fun – October 1, 2003
For certain service businesses, the addition of fun can be an important differentiator. The authors present three case studies taken from industries not known for fun–furniture retailing, consumer banking, and the grocery business–to show how it can be turned to profitable advantage.

The New Frontier of Experience Innovation – July 1, 2003
The intent of experience innovation is not to improve a product or service, per se, but to enable the co-creation of an environment in which personalised, evolvable experiences are the goal, and products and services are a means to that end.