The performance of a solution is essential: when the performance becomes (too) low, the solution may be disbanded. And loss of a solution may very well lead to a loss of customers, relationships, money, societal benefit, etc.
With user-centered innovation the focus is entirely on the performance of the solution. By guaranteeing autonomy of participants, the solution becomes more robust and adaptive. By aligning delivered added-value to desired added-value, the overall matching of delivered-to-desired added-value will increase, which is directly related to an increase in performance.
Within user-centered innovation a different performance indicator is used: the (mis)match between delivered and desired added-value in each relationship among participants. This is in addition to other indicators, such as costs, income, quality of service, throughput, etc. By directly relating performance to added-value, the pitfall of optimising on one set of indicators is avoided. For example, optimising on speed of transactions may not increase the solution’s performance as understood by users, if the delivered added-value is not matching their desired added-value (e.g., regarding transparency of each transaction’s status).
User-centered innovation and its concept of added-value focuses on the overall performance of the solution. User-centered innovation brings together each participant’s assessment of the performance of the solution.