Fifteen years ago, some analysts believed Xerox Corp. was headed for bankruptcy. Instead it has managed to achieve what very few established enterprises can claim: a transformation from one type of company to another. Faced with a disruption and decline in its core copier and printer business, Xerox embarked on a difficult, long-term journey to become a major player in business process services, as detailed in “Two Routes Two Resilience,” an Innosight article in the Harvard Business Review.

As part of that shift into services, Xerox is now in the position of helping other companies transform by discovering their own new areas of growth. These efforts often begin in Xerox’s research lab with a gathering that the company calls a “dreaming session.”

https://www.innosight.com/insight/how-xerox-jumpstarts-trans...

Inside Xerox’s ‘Dreaming Sessions’ with customers

How do you forge a better connection between R&D and actual customer needs?

That was a hot-button issue several years ago at Xerox, the $22 billion document management and business services company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. Xerox R&D is perhaps best-known for its Palo Alto Research Center, situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it also has research sites in Rochester, New York; Europe; India; and Canada.

mazeauBut there was a strong sense at the company that interactions between researchers and customers had become too much of a “dog and pony show,” says Patrick Mazeau, the manager of customer-led innovation at Xerox. “When researchers were in the lab, they had very limited exposure to customers and their concerns. And when they were invited to participate in customer events, it seemed like they were giving presentations to try to impress the customer, but not really more than that.”

Customers had problems they wanted solved, and researchers wanted to explore potential applications of the software and other technologies they were developing. “They wanted to get feedback from direct discussions with customers about how their technology could be used,” Mazeau says.

For Xerox, the answer was what have come to be known as Dreaming Sessions. ...

https://www.innovationleader.com/inside-xeroxs-dreaming-sess...