“Success lives at the intersection of these three criteria” – Scott Cook, co-Founder, Intuit Inc.
Intuit’s co-founder, Scott Cook, studied the characteristics of Intuit’s most successful products, and discovered they share three characteristics in common. At Intuit we refer to these characteristics as the principles of “Customer Driven Innovation”, or “CDI” for short.
At Intuit we use CDI as a lens through which to make decisions about what opportunities to pursue, what solutions to further invest in, and what areas are likely to be less fruitful. Intuit’s strategy for the future aligns with CDI, and our product creators use CDI each and every day to guide their decisions.
The Principles of Customer Driven Innovation
“An important, unsolved customer problem…”
When we describe a customer problem as “important and unsolved”, we mean the problem is an important priority to the customer, and that existing alternatives do not solve the problem. When customer problems are important and unsolved, the opportunity exists to deliver a big improvement in our customers’ lives.
“…that we, and those we enable, can solve well…”
“Solve well” refers to our ability to create solutions which go above and beyond customer expectations, and deliver big, measurable improvements in our customers’ lives. It is not enough to be different, our solutions must be much better than the competition. “Solving well” requires the creativity, collaboration, and diverse perspectives of cross-functional teams, all working together to achieve our mission – power prosperity around the world.
“…and build durable competitive advantage.”
Durable competitive advantage is achieved when the benefits to our customers increase the more customers use our products. This can be achieved in many ways – one reason we champion diverse perspectives on our teams. As one example, Network Effects Platforms create two-sided businesses where important problems are solved well for the customers on each side. In fact, the products get better as customers on both sides use it.