Thank you, Mr Brown

During a recent experience as a customer, I was reminded of the value of listening and staying close to those you consider "customers".

Too often, we get caught up in making the widget, following a process or maybe just trying to make everything fit a way we can handle it. But while there's nothing new under the sun, there's something impersonal about making your customers into something to be processed. Some might suggest that in the need to understand demand, control and manage risk, we become too separated from the person we making the widget/product or service for.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever made something into a process to be done as efficiently as possible?

I have. Sometimes that's alright. Churning out the same item 25 times, for example. When I get asked for a piece of material at work, I find it tempting to always to re-using some previous piece of work - taking my eye off the uniqueness of this piece of work. I'm all for re-use, but not at the expense of impact. Not at the expense of thinking about the audience you are creating for.

Every moment we can create something new. Every interaction can be something special.

is innovation new or perpetual?

I've been thinking that I can sometimes think that when we fix things now that we're breaking new ground, solving problems that no-one has ever solved.

When I read about the way that early audio instructions were included in cars, I was struck that Solomon was right: "there's nothing new under the sun" (which, interstingly was the topic of my Higher English dissertation in 1997 - based on Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5). We might be solving problems more efficiently, but we're probably reusing ideas others have had and applying them to our problem.  In the case of the speaking car, the problem is "how to make the car tell the driver what's happening".  The first solution in the 70s was to basically create small records - now we do it with digital audio files.

And I love that. Learn from others and become wiser (not smarter, there's a difference, in my mind).

I think that's why I enjoy listening - either in person, in print, on RSS feeds or on Twitter.  Learning.  Only caveat, it's got to be followed with action. 

On the topic of digital audio, have a listen to the latest edition of The Guardian's techweekly podcast.  A really interesting interview with Kane Kramer, who basically seems to have invented the digital music player (or at least the way it could work) in 1979. 

So what have you learned by listening? How has it changed how you work/live/play?