I was reminded of a conversation I had with a Mountain Bike Design Engineer at Specialized bikes a couple of years ago. Some of you who know me will know that I’m a bit of a bikey and I wanted to find out about how they innovated as part of a programme to learn from innovative organisations. When I asked him how he got to consumer/rider insights, he replied that every weekend he would meet up with his friends who were all mountain bikers and they would discuss all the latest coolest pieces of kit. He would get their views about his latest designs and their suggestions for other improvements when they were actually riding the trails. He lived and breathed his business area. In fact, Specialized took the whole thing further and had a policy that anyone they employed had to be a cyclist. Their bonus scheme was also pretty clever but that’s another tale.