WHAT!!! Ignore the Customer!? This sounds ridiculous until you recognize that the Customer is not very good at articulating their needs, much less telling you what Innovations to work on. Ignore is really too strong of a word, but we got your attention. The bottom line is that you must BOTH Explore and Ignore the customer if you want to create truly successful and innovative offerings that help you create a Unique Value Proposition. Several tools are used in Step 1 and Step 4 of the Systematic Innovation Process can be used to go “beyond” what the Customer can articulate to get at “Future” customer needs/requirements.