By nature, innovation and new product development is a road littered by failure – most new product development programs require in excess of 3,000 ideas to achieve a single market success. The delicate balance of matching well understood consumer needs with a relevantly designed product or service is hard to reach. But with the right approach, companies can negotiate this path to arrive at a product that generates the excitement required to break into the market and capture the imagination of consumers.

New products fail for a variety of reasons – product problems or defects, lack of effective marketing effort, higher-than anticipated costs, competitive reaction, and so on – but the number one cause of new product failure is inadequate market analysis – failure to understand and adequately respond to unmet consumer needs.

Because identifying and qualifying genuine growth opportunities is challenging, many companies leap from high-level product category interest to concept development. It’s not that they ignore category assessment overall, but the urge to “innovate” quickly leads to a compacted process that skips necessary steps. The “front end,” if you will, is incomplete, so there isn’t a clear link between consumer needs and products that are ultimately developed.

As a research partner in the Product of the Year program, and a company with a proud heritage in innovation and new product development, we’ve found that concepts lead to more successful product launches when several steps are included to make the process more robust – including a complete analysis of the competitive arena, identification of specific situation-based unmet consumer needs, formation of a clear understanding of the white spaces where your brand can compete effectively, and ideation that is focused on the opportunities uncovered during this strategic foundation.

Building in the consumer need

Research we conducted recently as part of the Product of the Year awards found that some of the core desires consumers have are products that make their lives easier and save them time, products that are environmentally friendly, or products that improve their health. Companies that dig deeper to find out exactly what that means in their categories will take a longer term view, re-think business strategies and focus resources on a smaller number of targeted innovation opportunities. They understand that, if they invest properly in the front end of the innovation process, it may take a little longer to start developing alternatives, but they save time and money in the long run, and have a much better chance of developing successful new products.

TNS has been conducting research and uncovering marketing insights for 60 years, covering issues surrounding branding and communications, retail strategy, shopper attitudes and behavior, stakeholder management, Innovation and Product Development, which we refer to as “IPD” for short. Today TNS has thousands of employees worldwide dedicated to IPD research, making it one of our strongest areas of expertise. There are very few IPD issues or objectives we have not encountered or worked on.

Whatever techniques we use, we believe it is important to keep consumer input at the heart of product development and innovation initiatives by:

•  Identifying white space opportunities
• Developing relevant ideas
• Filtering those ideas through early stage screening
• Prioritising and optimising those that make it through the screening
• Testing them against established volumetric benchmarks to minimise financial risk and ensure a successful launch, and
• Monitoring product success in the marketplace, our clients’ position versus competitors, and helping find ways to reduce costs while simultaneously building brand equity and maintaining quality standards.

Since we evaluate so many new product ideas, we get a unique opportunity to see successful products well before they make it to market – and many, many more that never get anywhere near the launch pad. Whether a client is focusing on very close-in product improvements, line extensions, category launches in unfamiliar categories, or disruptive innovation, we find that their chance of success is greatly enhanced by emphasising upfront strategic planning and alignment of goals – the front end of innovation.

Popularity: 2% [?]