Consumer Wise
Peter: We deliberately put the customer at the center, yes—both theoretically and developmentally. Our initial ideas were based around going back to basics, imagining ourselves as a startup with access to the vast library of Safari Books Online, and no other restrictions, and thinking, “As a user I want to _______.” Some really good ideas came out of that, like wanting to watch the individual clips and read the sections that were most popular with our peers, and the notion of ratings within a book or a set of videos that power some kind of recommendation engine. But we weren’t certain about these ideas, so we built them out quickly in order to get the ideas in front of customers as rapidly as possible and validate them—or not. So there was a lot of customer development as well as more traditional data capture, and that whole process is ongoing and will be forever.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
- Bowker
- Harlequin