Examples of Lead User Method
The lead user method can be utilized in any industry and at any level of product complexity. The following are examples where the Lead User method was utilized to create a new product which satisfied a specific need:
3M
The lead user method was utilized in 3M’s Medical-Surgical Division to develop a breakthrough surgical drape product. 3M assembled a team of lead users which included a veterinarian surgeon, a makeup artist, doctors from developing countries and military medics.
Hilti AG
Hilti utilized the lead user method to develop a simplified pipe hanger. Hilti put together a lead user group consisting of lead layout engineers, researchers from construction departments of institutes, an engineer from a professional organization in Bonn, and two engineers from municipal building departments.
Nortel
Nortel utilized the lead user method to develop a new class of web applications for voice, video and data. Nortel put together a group of lead users including law enforcement professionals, paramedics, military personnel, animal trackers and professional storm trackers.
Sense Worldwide
Sense Worldwide has been featured in Wired Magazine and Fast Company for using Lead Users such as dominatrices, Nigerian hackers, medical tourists and OCD sufferers in their innovation work.
Read more about this topic: Lead User
Famous quotes containing the words examples of, examples, lead, user and/or method:
“There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring ‘em all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifry.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“We have been educated to such a fine—or dull—point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it’s all about. We don’t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)