{"id":36151,"date":"2026-07-30T10:55:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/?p=36151"},"modified":"2026-07-30T12:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:09:27","slug":"customer-first-principle-1-for-edh-and-clusters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/news-en\/customer-first-principle-1-for-edh-and-clusters\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer First – Principle 1 for EDH and clusters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any organization sooner or later makes a choice. Build a system around yourself – or build a system around customers. First of all, our SMEs – because it appears in the mandate of both clusters and EDIH. A real focus on the customer – that’s what distinguishes client-centric<\/strong> organization from self-centric<\/strong>. However, sometimes it is difficult to notice this difference – because in words and in declarations it sounds about the same. In practice, these are two completely different ways of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-centricity sounds like this<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

‘First we will agree on the rules. We still need to identify those responsible.
But we haven’t set up our services enough\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘No, it looks raw – let’s hold an internal meeting. We need to refine the interaction formats\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Listen, you do not take into account the motivation of our experts – and they are clearly not motivated …’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘But stop – is it our competence? – This is the service of another partner. And in general, without a quality procedure there will be chaos. Everyone needs to fill in the matrix of services and solutions…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and it all drags on for weeks and months, because in the center of everything is the organization itself – not a client<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer First sounds different<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is a request from the company. Who can help today<\/strong>? If this is not our service, we will find someone who can. Otherwise, why do we declare ourselves ecosystem coordinators or orchestrators? The rules will be polished later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No ready solution? – Gather the team. Don’t know the answer? – Let’s find it in the community!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer First is when every request has an owner, in the center is always a customer’s problem. <\/strong>Everything else is secondary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is clearly seen in simple examples<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Speed of processing leads and willingness to take responsibility<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Self-centricity: the lead lies for two weeks, and the team is currently discussing the rules of working with ice.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Customer First: lead got a responsible person in an hour. The rules are finalized after the client has been helped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    What is in the focus of discussions<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • Self-centricity. Experts constantly talk about their own services. about (umder) motivation. about the limitations of the system (especially noticeable in universities).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Customer First. Experts start with the question – ‘What problem of the company are we ready to solve now? Who will take the lead?’<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      Reaction to offline events<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      • Self-centricity: an offline event for experts is an ‘additional burden’. – ‘We don’t have time for that.’<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Customer First: An offline event is an opportunity to hear and understand the client before he ordained a technical task.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Responsibility for the decision<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \n
        • Self-centricity: ‘This is not our area.’ (we do not have this expertise)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
        • Customer First: ‘We know who can help.’<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

          The use of A.I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \n
          • Self-centricity: ‘Let’s have another iteration of the expert interaction procedure – we have not yet taken into account this factor X’<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          • Customer First: ‘I’ll try another iteration in business case profiling, because it looks a little superficial, and I need come to the right questions<\/strong> ‘And what exactly should I ask this, a particular client.’<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

            After any meeting, the team should ask themselves the question – ‘How can we improve the state of our client’s affairs tomorrow?’. If the answer is obvious, we are moving correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            If the answer sounds like – We agree on the document We are clarifying the process of interaction We are creating a working group We have identified the responsible<\/em> – This is not a value for the client. It’s just preparing for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What it means for EDIH or innovation cluster<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

            Each ice is not an entry in the register (CRM or Google tables – it doesn’t matter). This is a real enterprise, real, concrete, Ukrainian director, who has already spent his time and trust by contacting us<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Every day, unanswered demand, does not work against our perfect model of innovative support. But he definitely works against trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So in the end, the question is simple. Do we understand that trust is the most valuable asset of any service organization?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \n\n\n\n

            Summarizing all of the above. The principle of the customer first – means a simple thing. We do not build a system to make it convenient for us. We build it so that our customers, SMEs, can easily get the right solution – no matter who provides it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Because in the center of the EDIH or the innovation cluster is not a service. not the KRI system. Not a report for the European Commission. Not a partner. Not a university. Not another grant. There should always be a client in the center.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Yurchak Oleksandr, CEO UCA<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Any organization sooner or later makes a choice. Build a system around yourself – or build a system around customers. First of all, our SMEs – because it appears in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":36149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36151"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36163,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36151\/revisions\/36163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}