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Stéphane Dufour is head of the Strategy & Innovation division at Swisscom Switzerland. He is convinced that innovation is driven by the customer. For him, innovative strength is not gauged by the number of patented inventions, but rather by looking at a company's ability to maintain a dynamic culture of innovation.

Stéphane Dufour, how do you explain the resounding success of the iPhone?
Firstly, the iPhone builds on a strong community of Apple fans. Secondly, with its user interface, it introduces a completely new operating concept. And thirdly, Apple spent enormous sums on global advertising.
  
The iPhone is perceived as an extremely innovative product. What is the essence of this innovation?
Unlike an invention - which is based on an inspiration - an innovation originates in a good understanding of the customer. Furthermore, an innovation needs to develop effectiveness on the market. It doesn't just exist, like an invention does, and wait for the market to discover it. The iPhone is an innovation which takes advantage of an old invention: the touch screen.

What specific criteria must an innovation meet to be classified as such?
First and foremost, a disruptive technology must be used. In other words, there must be a radical improvement in at least one dimension. With the iPhone, it's the multi-touch screen. In addition, an innovation must meet a customer need and have a short time-to-market.

What does this mean for Swisscom?
We need to deepen our understanding of our customers even more, take advantage of technological revolutions and develop our ability to integrate innovative technologies from third parties - and we need to be fast.

What is Swisscom doing to understand its customers better?
By structuring the company according to customer segments, we are consistently focusing on our customers. We created the post of customer experience designer whose role is to think of products and services in terms of customer experiences and not just product functions. Furthermore, our User Observatory, which we have been running for a few years now, is unique. A team of sociologists observes and accompanies our customers over a long period with the aim of understanding their behaviour and identifying changes and trends at an early stage. From these findings, we can derive customers' real needs.

Being able to communicate while on the move is, without a doubt, a great customer need. All the same, Swisscom is making huge investments in fibre-optic networks…
This is about two different things. On the one hand, we're talking about rates of several Mbps, and on the other, a broadband demand of quite a different magnitude - and this is continuing to increase. Take the transmission of high-definition TV images which requires tens of Mbps, for instance. In our labs, we have applications such as very high definition television, sometimes even 3D, groupware and the PC network, which, when they find their market will result in another very rapid increase in bandwidth. Only a fibre-optic network can meet these needs.

Nevertheless, Swisscom offers TV reception via mobile phone. Is there really a need for mobile television?
We assumed that customers would - for example - watch a football match while on a train or bus. But surprisingly, mobile television reception is used more at home. This behaviour reveals quite a lot about the individualisation of television consumption. From it, we can draw valuable conclusions for the Bluewin TV strategy. But it also shows just how important it is to launch an innovation fast and to learn directly from the market.

You head the central division of Strategy & Innovation and employ around 150 people, including strategy experts, engineers, sociologists, psychologists and ergonomists. Why does Swisscom need such a department?
There are various models for organising research and development. Swisscom has chosen a centralised solution. It is difficult to develop highly-specialised skills without pooling them. What's more, mixing skills together in one centralised entity allows us to create intersections of perspectives, which are a source of innovation. However, these experts must not become isolated from operational reality which is an important source of their ability to innovate. With this in mind, our experts work on operational issues or on joint development projects with operational units.

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