Harvard Business Publishing

There's a straightforward question that can be a reliable gauge of the potential of an innovation: Does it make it easier and simpler for customers to do what they are already trying to get done?

If something helps people to do what they are already trying to do, there's good reason to believe the innovation will succeed. When a customer would perceive an innovation to be worse and more difficult than what exists, or that innovation doesn't address a perceptible problem, the innovation is likely to struggle.

Take, for example, a new milk jug that is appearing on shelves in Sam's Club and Costco. The milk jug is more energy efficient, easier to produce, and cheaper. Unfortunately, it requires customers to change the way they pour milk, or suffer the consequences. As one person told the New York Times, using the jug involves a "rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip."

Not surprisingly, customers aren't flocking to something that appears strange and difficult.

Disrupting competitors--following approaches that competitors consider unattractive or uninteresting--is a great thing. Disrupting customers--asking them to put up with solutions that seem worse to them or require behavior changes--is not.

Customers might still adopt the new milk jug because it does offer lower prices. But perhaps product designers could have found a middle ground that sacrificed some cost savings to make the product easier to use. By sacrificing the customer experience to optimize around dimensions that matter to retailers and suppliers, the designers might have botched a great opportunity.