Venture Outfitter Weekly presents: What They Really Want (and it’s not your product) with Royce Johnson

What They Really Want (and it’s not your product)

In this VO weekly, we’re going to hear a discussion about what customers are really looking for. Together with Tech Ranch CEO Kevin Koym, and Dr. Royce Johnson, Employing understanding as rocket fuel for innovation: Once businesses have a deep understanding of what customers seek, they can leverage this knowledge to fuel their innovation efforts. This means using customer insights to drive the development of new products, services, or business strategies that align with customer needs. By tailoring innovations to match customer desires, businesses can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately gain a competitive edge in the market.

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About the Speaker:

Royce Johnson has driven innovation in healthcare for four decades, with an emphasis on clinical systems in acute and critical care. After 20-years of instigating medical device innovation from the technology end, Dr. Johnson realized that the failure of most innovations began at the presumption that customers wanted a product/service when in fact they operate on far more complex and very human motivations. He pivoted to applying analytical anthropology methods for understanding what customers really want, and then using those skills to help a wide range of industry operatives to implement innovating from the outside in.

The focus of his work began with early-stage technology incubation and typical stage-gate commercialization processes but evolved to tackling the entire front-end of innovation as powered by a deep understanding of the customer.  As he says, “ it turns out the technology is the easy part, the customer is the hard part.” Trained in biomedical engineering, technology management, and strategic innovation, he has become an expert at assisting organizations in devising novel solutions to unrecognized opportunities across the healthcare workplace.

During his 14-year tenure with medical device developer KCI, Dr. Johnson held leadership roles in new technologies, innovation and ideation, and culminated in the role of Corporate Fellow for Research.  While with KCI, Dr. Johnson also led the creation and implementation of the front end of their commercialization processes, from technology strategy to opportunity portfolio management. These processes were built largely on the “outside-in” perspectives derived from his ethnographic demand studies and they continue to generate numerous innovations for the firm. Doing more than studies, he brought the outside-in home: he championed, designed, implemented, and directed the company’s acclaimed clinical simulation suite (including OR, ICU, medical library high-fidelity settings) as a core resource for in-context research and education of customers and commercialization staff alike.

Recognized twice by Frost & Sullivan as their “Most Valuable Thought Leader,” Dr. Johnson teaches these skills in workshops and as adjunct professor at several universities.  He is the first- or co-inventor of 38 issued, and numerous in-process, patents, including innovations in wound therapy, tissue engineering, physiologic monitoring, and therapeutic hypothermia.  His most recent project was leading the commercialization of nanotechnology in healthcare markets and has assisted clients in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to personal finance. 

Prior to KCI, Dr. Johnson spent his early career with Ohmeda, Inc. and Baxter Edwards Critical Care.   These “industrial post-doc” years were the basis of his conviction that deeply fluent insight into the customer is the key to successful technology commercialization.

Dr. Johnson earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in biology and bioengineering at the University of Utah and holds a certificate in technology and innovation from MIT Sloan School of Management.  Now independently practicing in strategic innovation, Dr. Johnson continues to pursue his professional goal of applying and teaching the skills that enable large organizations to innovate effectively.

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