I have been remiss in pointing out that IdeaFlow contributor Joyce Wycoff has herself started not one, but TWO blogs -- Heads-Up! On Organizational Innovation! and Good Morning Thinkers. Joyce has been sending these out as email newsletters for some time (you can still sign up for that version at her Innovation Network site), but it's better to look at the blog versions, because there you can see the comments other people are making on the entries.

I want to point particularly to her Heads-Up entry on Gaining Customer Insights The Creative Way because there've been a lot of posts here about tapping consumer creativity and involving customers in the new product development process. Joyce writes about Staples' Invention Quest as a creative way to find out what customers want.

In The Innovators' Solution, Clayton Christensen says the point is not to find out what customers want, but to find out what jobs customers are trying to get done. Then figure out ways to help the customers get those jobs done. That could apply beyond new products, obviously -- focusing on "jobs" is a creative and efficient way to figure out how to streamline any process in which a company interfaces with its customers.