Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 103

the need for the design of a new sensor to measure something of interest) or re-
lated to a process or business (for example, the need for an approach to obtain
up-to-date information from stakeholders). Once an opportunity has been identi-
fied and analyzed, an understanding of desired customer outcomes is needed to
create innovative solutions.
Understanding desired outcomes goes well beyond simply talking to cus-
tomers; it includes putting oneself in the clients' shoes to separate what they say
they want from what they want . A common mistake in trying to innovate is to
substitute desired producer outcomes for desired customer outcomes. While
EPA is in a different position from product manufacturers, only by understand-
ing why customers are purchasing products can the agency help promote crea-
tive solutions. One example is the development of alternative plasticizers for
polyvinyl chloride plastics rather than alternative materials that do not require
plasticizers. Another example is the creation of less toxic flame retardants rather
than creation of an inherently flame-retardant fabric or even consideration of
whether flame retardancy is needed for a particular part or product. Insightful,
unbiased determination of desired customer outcomes is crucial for proper sup-
port of innovation.
An innovative means of defining desired customer outcomes is ethnogra-
phy, hypothesis-free observation of customers in their “natural habitats”. The
technique, pioneered by such design firms as IDEO (Palo Alto, CA), has pro-
duced a number of insights into consumer behavior that have been translated
into successful products. For EPA, the analogue of ethnography is the willing-
ness of staff to visit their “customers” (for example, industry, the general public,
or even specific EPA regional offices or laboratories) to see technology or sci-
ence needs, to see where current regulations or prescribed methods cause people
to struggle to conform, or to see where regulations create perverse results. An
example of the benefits of observing customer needs is the design of the copying
machine. In the 1970s, Xerox used anthropology graduate student Lucy Such-
man to observe how users interacted with their copying machines. Suchman
created a video showing senior computer scientists at Xerox struggling to make
double-sided copies with their own machines. Surprising ethnographic results
like that have led to a host of innovative alterations in office equipment that ren-
der the user experience much more productive (Suchman 1983). While direct
observation of this sort may be unusual for a regulatory agency, similar observa-
tional activities by EPA might lead to insights regarding how consumer products
are actually used (informing exposure models) or whether responses to specific
regulations have unintended consequences that could be readily addressed.
In business, innovation is a catalyst for growth. Business innovation in-
volves the development of ideas or inventions and their translation to the com-
mercial sphere. Innovation results in rapid (favorable) change in market size,
market share, sales, or profit through the introduction of new products, proc-
esses, or services. Those are clear outcomes that are relatively easy to measure.
In an agency like EPA, innovation plays a different role but one that is no less
important for the success of the agency in achieving its mission, adapting to