Focusing on human-centered innovation helps businesses drive meaningful outcomes, stronger adoption and sustainable growth.
getty
It might be tempting to believe that growth is purely a matter of scale and technology. But the companies that gain sustainable advantages combine the power of technology with human-centered innovation.
The real, durable, exponential growth does not come from the best algorithm; it comes from the best application of that algorithm to a real human need. Human-centered innovation is the core of practically every successful innovation effort.
These efforts do not just look at market trends or how to advance technology. Instead, they focus on the human element, trying to align their work with what the end users truly value and need. When you bring human-centeredness and AI together, you get a multiplier effect.
Here are four reasons why:
1. Human-Centered Innovation Focuses On Needs And Experiences
Perhaps the most important reason human-centered innovation spurs business growth is that it focuses on solving real-life needs and wants. The approach draws on the real-life experiences of those within the business, as well as their customers or employees.
For example, payment processing company Stripe grew out of one of its co-founders having difficulty finding a way to accept online payments for his other side projects. With a focus on solving their own problem first, Stripe’s co-founders were able to develop a solution that also provided an easy, straightforward solution for countless other small business owners.
Stripe’s history follows a pattern set by many other successful founders. Those who try to innovate to solve their own lived challenges often create a product or service built to scale, because the solution is designed with an inherent understanding of why the problem matters for other users.
2. Resonant Solutions Get Stronger User Adoption
When a product or service is designed with a human-centered approach, it is far more likely to be quickly embraced by its target audience. This can lead to rapid growth as users quickly flock to the innovative solution.
First movers tend to be highly favored in terms of user adoption. For example, Uber was founded in 2009, delivering a human-focused innovation in making it easier for passengers to connect with drivers, rather than calling for or hailing a taxi.
As the first major entrant in what proved to be a highly appealing idea, Uber has come to dominate total market share in its niche, while seeing consistent revenue growth, particularly as it expands into new services and geographic areas. In 2024 alone, the company generated $43.9 billion in revenue — an 18% year-over-year increase.
A truly human-focused approach can be a powerful differentiator that helps your solution stand out from its competitors. This can easily be seen in the marketing for different AI tools and platforms. The companies that focus on technical jargon tend to get lost in the shuffle for everyday users. On the other hand, tools that use natural language that focuses on the needs of the end user make their value proposition easy to understand and more relevant to customers.
3. Human-Focused Efforts Build Social Proof
When implemented correctly, human-centered innovations spur meaningful business growth simply because the proof is in their outcomes. By delivering outcomes that help end users with their problems or needs, the business gains powerful social proof and builds trust with its audience.
For example, in a case study by Ezra Dewolfe, entrepreneurs and business owners who were diagnosed with ADHD late in life often struggled with decision-making or feeling overwhelmed by their day-to-day business demands.
However, by implementing a framework of training and coaching built specifically for leaders with ADHD that focused on immediate executive function scaffolding, training underused neural capacities, unlearning counterproductive habits and rearchitecting workflows to match ADHD strengths, entrepreneurs achieved an incredible turnaround.
The case study saw a 20.09% improvement in decision-making, a 27.05% improvement in feelings of overwhelm and a 29.97% reduction in procrastinating business decisions. In this instance, the ability to demonstrate meaningful outcomes generated powerful, relevant social proof for Dewolfe’s framework. Such social proof gives businesses a powerful edge over their competitors by leveraging the human experience.
4. Future-Proofing In A Changing World
Another inherent advantage of taking a human-centered approach to innovation is that it encourages a culture of continual improvement. When an organization is truly human-centered, it carefully considers user feedback to improve its innovations or further evolve them to meet the users’ changing needs. This ensures that the organization and its products or services remain consistently relevant and that they continue to deliver value.
This can be just as effective for internal initiatives as customer-facing efforts. Toyota’s “Creative Idea Suggestion System,” in which all employees are encouraged to contribute ideas for innovation and improvement, is credited with generating billions of dollars in value for the company while also resulting in strong employee engagement. In 2023, employees submitted an average of 14.4 suggestions per person, with 70% of these suggestions being implemented.
Such suggestions typically draw from real-life observations of Toyota employees, helping foster a culture of continuous improvement that has made the program a long-term success in improving employee retention, engagement and performance.
Action Plan
Growth is out there for the taking. Steps to get actionable include:
- For Individuals: Build AI Fluency, Not Mastery. You do not need to code. You need to understand what AI can do and how to ask it questions (prompt engineering). Double down on the skills AI cannot touch, such as empathy, critical judgment and creative collaboration.
- For Teams: Find Your “Super Users.” Do not wait for a top-down mandate. Find the people on your team already experimenting. Empower them to teach their peers. Start small, pilot one workflow and build momentum.
- For Organizations: Establish AI Governance Now. Define your ethical red lines before a crisis emerges. Appoint a cross-functional team to review tools and outputs for bias and privacy. Most importantly, lead with an empathetic vision. Stop asking “How can AI cut costs?” and start asking, “How can AI make our employees and customers feel truly seen and supported?”
Delivering Results
Whether an organization’s human-centered innovations are focused on their customers or their employees, using the foundation of human needs, experiences and insights can be truly transformative. By innovating in ways that deliver meaningful outcomes to the end users, businesses will achieve the external and internal buy-in that helps them enjoy sustainable growth.
