Titanium Developer Forum

My four favorite buzzwords of 2009? I’m glad you asked:

Disruption. Innovation. Design thinking. Social media.

They were popular this year in the press, and publishing, and business, and many (not all!) conferences, and I suppose for good reason, since a lot of people got very excited about them.

I think it’s important to know the current slate of buzzwords, to demonstrate that one is Keeping Up With The Times, but beyond that it’s mainly important to know what you believe and stick with it. If your core belief happens to correspond to a current buzzword, so much the better.

I’m a hedgehog who tends to say a couple of ideas again and again in whatever ordinary language I have at hand. It doesn’t make headlines – for that matter, it’s not news, by definition, because this stuff is OLD. Most of the good ideas out there are old.

So the ideas behind “good experience” are old, and ordinary, and full of common sense. But they’re effective as all get-out.

One of my core beliefs is this: to make something good, ask someone what they need.

That is to say, ask the person you’re serving what they need, as opposed to what journalists want to cover – or what bloggers want to review – or what investors want to brag that they’re involved in. Ask the person you serve what they need, then listen.

In fact, we can apply this little nugget to the buzzwords of 2009.

• Want to be really disruptive? Listen to a customer. They’ll tell you things that will turn your business model upside down, if you really listen.

• Want to be really innovative? Listen to a customer. Most of the companies out there would rather do anything, try anything, talk to anyone, before they actually listen to a customer. Innovation means doing something the other guys aren’t doing. Listening to customers seems to fit that bill.

• Want to pursue “design thinking”? Listen to a customer. Nothing orients you toward the needs of the customer like, well, listening to a customer. (Is there a better way to do it?)

• Want to pursue social media? Listen to a customer. They’ll tell you whether the Twitter account and the social media strategy are as important as fixing the basic problems in your product or service. (They’ll even tell you what those basic problems are.)

I don’t suppose 2010 will bring glossy magazine articles extolling the exciting high-tech process of listening to a customer, but we don’t need that anyway. You have the knowledge already. Go and listen to a customer next year. You might be surprised at how much good you create.