Microsoft XC Research
XC Research Blog
The first step to using an idea is knowing which idea to use. It is important to learn which ideas will bring the most value to your customers before choosing what to focus on. One method that can be used…
Innovating a legacy product can pose a seemingly contradicting set of goals. On the one hand, you have the benefit of an entrenched product with a loyal user base that has become day-to-day experts in their usage of the feature…
I’m in the enviable position of hearing what my research colleagues are working on within my team and in other groups at the company. I’m also regularly reading what other researchers are posting. This gives me a broad perspective about…
Serving the needs of the VSB space requires understanding of their motivations. The dreamer wants technology to take care of the mundane, operational tasks that are required to run a business, so they can focus on their passion. The pragmatist…
We need to take a good hard look at the problems we’re solving before we get into solutioning. Yes, coming up with solutions is the interesting and exciting piece but once you’re on this path it’s very hard to turn…
By Hilary Dwyer, Ph.D. Image credit: iStock My colleague Nancy Perry recently posted about how we’re driving a customer-driven mindset in our organization. Why are we focusing on this? We believe that a key piece of successful product making is…
We’re told to celebrate failure, because that’s how we learn – and while that’s correct, many of these failures could have been avoided. How about if we could fail before our idea reached production? Remember, that each idea that reaches…
We have learned a lot about blockers to customer obsession, and what behaviors we see in teams and individuals that ultimately leads to a more empathetic, customer driven organization. From research conducted across our organization, I wanted to highlight two…
As the world becomes more complex, so too do the problems we need to solve together – so less collaboration isn’t the answer. What teams need is more collaboration, and more effective and efficient collaboration, so that everyone can contribute…