In brief: Innovators are people or organisations that adopt or create new solutions earlier than most of the market. Willingness to try something new, however, does not automatically mean willingness to pay or remain for the long term.
How I use innovators in practice
I use innovators as a working framework, not as a box in a presentation. I compare the company’s promise with what the customer actually experiences while searching, buying, and using. I turn the difference into a concrete task and decide in advance how we will recognise progress. This turns a general term into an aid for product, marketing, and sales.
What to watch
A workshop alone does not guarantee a result. The problem arises when innovators become detached from economics, team capacity, or customer experience. Every claim therefore needs a source, an owner for the next step, and a date when we will return to it.
Questions for decisions
- Which specific decision should the term clarify?
- What supports our claim, and what is still only a hypothesis?
- What will we do differently because of this decision?
- Who owns the change, and when will we assess its impact?