Last winter, I spent time inside the headquarters of GN Group in Copenhagen, getting a firsthand look at some of the research and development that happens long before a new hearing aid reaches an audiologist or consumer.
I visited GN’s research lab, where teams test how hearing technology performs across different speech, noise, and acoustic environments. I also spent time with leaders responsible for research, markets, communications and sales. I was seeing how different parts of an organization have to come together to turn research into something a consumer will eventually understand, choose and use.
Months later, during a conversation with Peter Justesen, President of GN Hearing, he gave me a number that put what I had seen into perspective.
“We spend around 10% of our revenue on innovation,” Justesen told me. “It’s by far the biggest investment we make.”
Then he made the more important point: “We could spend 20% of revenue, but if we put it on the wrong things, it doesn’t really matter.”
There is no magic percentage that every organization should invest in research and development. What matters is where the investment goes, what challenges an organization chooses to solve and whether consumers ultimately experience the benefit.
I have been experiencing the results of GN’s approach for more than a decade through successive generations of ReSound Made for iPhone hearing aids, beginning with LiNX in 2014, followed by Omnia and now Vivia. They have connected directly to my iPhone, providing everyday audio connectivity and hearing controls that let me adjust and personalize how I hear throughout the day.
Innovation Requires Staying The Course
When I began using ReSound LiNX in 2014, my hearing aids were becoming part of the same consumer technology ecosystem as everyone else’s. What is easy to forget today is that this happened before Apple introduced AirPods in 2016. Hearing aids were streaming sound directly from my iPhone more than two years before AirPods arrived.
That history challenges the assumption that accessibility technology always follows mainstream consumer innovation. Sometimes it gets there first.
Twelve years later, I still experience occasional Made for iPhone connection challenges. They frustrate me. However, would I give up what that connectivity has given me? Absolutely not. The benefits have far outweighed the frustrations.
GN did not invent the iPhone. Justesen described partnerships to me as “the way that we punch above our weight,” citing Apple, Bluetooth, Auracast, and Cochlear as examples.
Auracast is part of that progression. Made for iPhone connected my hearing aids to my personal technology. Auracast is beginning to connect my hearing technology directly to the environments around me. I experienced that firsthand at Frankfurt Airport, where I met Justesen for the first time.
My experience with Auracast has been fantastic. The technology works. Its challenge is securing enough venues and consumers to understand its value so it can become ubiquitous. For me, its potential extends well beyond people who use hearing aids. This is hearing for all.
After twelve years, I have come to expect a certain progression from GN. There is familiarity in where it is going, and every so often something arrives that surprises and delights me.
Staying on that course does not happen by accident. Leaders have to keep making decisions about which initiatives move forward, where resources go, and how those choices support a longer-term strategy.
Research Has To Raise The Bar
What I saw in Copenhagen gave me a greater appreciation for how difficult the underlying hearing challenge is. Hearing technology has to deliver speech amplification and clarity. That is hard enough. Then the auditory environment around the person using it begins to change.
I live that every moment of every day.
In an urban environment, I move from a relatively quiet room to a busy street, into a car, onto a bus or subway, through different workspaces, and into a coffee bar to meet someone, sometimes within a few hours. Each presents a different auditory environment, and I have to adapt on the fly.
My hearing aids are adjusting, but so am I.
I am making frequent auditory adjustments, deciding what I need to hear, where to focus and what sounds I can push into the background. My brain is doing its share of the work, and that effort can affect my energy, concentration, and mood.
I often feel fatigued, that is auditory fatigue.
I describe it as a “sense fight.” Traffic, announcements, conversations, music, and background noise compete for my attention while I try to stay focused on what matters. These are also situations where I want to be at my best. I do not want to be managing my hearing technology. I want to be present in the conversation.
That gave me a different appreciation for GN’s research. Its facilities can recreate real-world sound environments and changing acoustic conditions to assess how technology performs as the world around the consumer changes.
The challenge is not simply amplification. It is delivering speech and clarity while helping manage everything else happening around me.
That brings me to ReSound Sensia, GN’s newest hearing aid.
After about a year of using Vivia and its Deep Neural Network (DNN) technology, I see real benefits. However, I also see a technology that has ways to go. One challenge has been knowing when I should manually engage some of its capabilities.
Sensia is designed to recognize changing listening environments and automatically engage technology intended to help elevate the speech the consumer wants to hear.
When I raised my Vivia experience with Justesen, he responded, “It is automatic, as you were wishing for with Vivia. Now it’s here.”
That matters to me because the less work the technology requires from me, the more attention I can give to everything else.
I still need to experience Sensia for myself. Research can establish what technology is capable of doing. The constantly changing world outside the laboratory is where the consumer ultimately tests it.
Innovation Still Has To Reach The Consumer
Watching Justesen recently walk through GN’s United States operation as Sensia was being prepared for market brought back a memory.
Growing up, I visited the warehouses of my father’s acrylic business. I was fascinated by inventory, prefabrication, and how products moved through the operation. My father, as president, knew the staff, suppliers and customers. What I remember most was how much he enjoyed finding even the smallest customer need that his company could solve and deliver on.
I think about that today because innovation does not always begin with a breakthrough. Sometimes it begins by noticing a small challenge your customer keeps dealing with.
Sensia now has to move through hearing care professionals and ultimately to consumers. GN has to convince audiologists that its newest hearing aid represents meaningful progress and give them the knowledge and confidence to demonstrate why it matters.
I deliberately call them consumers.
There is a clinical relationship. However, these are also people who choose, buy, and live with increasingly sophisticated hearing technology.
The research may happen inside GN, but its value is ultimately experienced outside the laboratory.
I experience whether I can understand someone across a noisy restaurant table, whether my hearing aids connect reliably to my iPhone, and whether Sensia makes it easier to hear the person I want to hear.
The question is much simpler. What will I be able to do better because of this?
What The Remaining 5% Can Teach You
My experience has taught me not to confuse innovation with perfection. I think about continuous improvement through a 95/5 lens. It is my analogy, not a GN metric.
If 95% of an innovation improves my experience, I am interested in what the remaining 5% can teach us. It may reveal what still frustrates consumers, what needs to improve and where the next investment belongs.
“Innovation for us is the main way that we try to help people and also grow our business,” Justesen told me.
That may be the lesson from GN’s 10%. Do not copy the percentage. Build the leadership discipline to invest in what comes next, stay aligned with a longer term strategy, learn from what remains unresolved and keep consumers at the center of deciding where to go next.
My father understood something similar in a very different business. Know your people. Know your customers. Understand what they expect today while figuring out what they will expect tomorrow.
I appreciate the 95% that makes my life better, and I will keep pushing on the remaining 5%.
The best innovation does not simply meet expectations. It builds what we will expect next.