Identify opportunities for new products and services – Exploratory research
Challenge
The leading provider of international-exchange programs serving U.S. schools is facing declining growth in its core business, a trend accelerated by the recession.
The co-founder and past President recently returned as CEO and needs to rapidly adjust to the market and find both short-term and long-term growth opportunities. Time and budget constraints are high.
Action
Designed and conducted exploratory research about the company’s key market opportunity assumptions.
Used both secondary and primary research methods, including interviews with experts.
Results
Determined that the market is not ready for a new service identified by the company as the top opportunity.
Identified short-term market development opportunities, and new service development opportunities.
The above enabled the company to redirect its resources to the most promising opportunities and prevented heavy investment in a service concept that cannot help the organization with its short-term goals.
Improve innovation and new product development process – Personas and Scenarios
Challenge
A leading designer and manufacturer of infant and children products with highly trusted brands wants to increase its market share and retain its margins despite increasing pressure from competitors.
The company is known for its strong history of technological innovation and safety. However the organization needs to adopt a more customer and user-driven process.
Marketing executives see Personas as a key method to create a better understanding of customer and user types, to identify and define who to design for, to generate better cross-functional communication and alignment, and ultimately to improve design and NPD decisions.
Action
Innovate|2|market designed with the client a two-step process to introduce Personas and Scenarios in their organization and help them build the cross-functional support needed for embracing and adopting Personas.
The first phase included a two-day off-site workshop conducted by Innovate|2|market with key members of the organization’s marketing, design, engineering, and customer service team.
The workshop was preceded by Innovate|2|market’s review of the organization’s qualitative, quantitative, and industry research to select critical material that informed the Persona effort planning process and helped the team develop data-driven Personas and scenarios.
Results
The workshop led to the identification of key customer and user types with a level of clarity and understanding higher than anticipated by client, and an immediate adjustment of their marketing research approach to include critical user and customer types not previously identified.
The workshop also led to the immediate implementation of a social media strategy and website modifications. Our client has brought Personas to their new product development process and is developing new products which are more highly focused on the needs of their key customers.
Technology Commercialization StudyChallenge
An R&D company specialized in U.S. defense, homeland security and health agency markets wished to expand in commercial markets.
The CEO retained Innovate|2|market to explore all commercial opportunities and to provide guidance, from licensing to spin off of a new business, for one of its motion measurement and analysis technologies.
Action
The project included two phases, designed by Innovate|2|market.
Phase 1 was a market research phase for which our primary goal was a sound quantitative estimation of the U.S. market potential. We researched a range of industries where the technology was most likely to be needed and applied: retail (including travel retail), shopping centers, transit (including rail and bus), and casinos. In light of the limited amount of relevant data available from secondary sources we conducted interviews with experts. We even attended a national show to collect feedback to our client technology.
Upon client selection of a shortlist of target markets, Phase 2 was dedicated to probing product commercialization issues from a marketing and user standpoint as well as from an engineering and manufacturing perspective. We reviewed and discussed all information pertaining to our client's technology with our client's R&D leader, and we updated their patent research. We conducted interviews with users, clients, trade associations, industry experts, and competitors. We expanded our research to foreign markets for an overall estimate of the global opportunity.
Results
Several opportunities were identified, but once all elements were balanced (market, user need, technology advantage, client resources, etc.), we found one opportunity of higher value to our client, a need for which there is no known and used solution, as evidenced by expressions of interest for partnering and piloting from various experts during the research process.
While the client put the pursuit of the opportunity on hold due to the need to meet the strong growth in their defense activities, Innovate|2|market was further retained to conduct technology commercialization research for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award projects.