Successful new product development (NPD) starts with identifying good product ideas and using reliable criteria to decide which ideas to pursue. Show
You should take the following steps before you allocate funds to new product development. Idea generationWrite a customer needs list based on the information you gather from the sources identified below. You should try to identify existing weaknesses in your products, gaps in your product range and areas for product improvement. Brainstorm product issuesWork with your existing team members to brainstorm product issues. Your sales and service staff speak to your customers daily, hearing feedback about your products and the customers' needs. Capture the feedback, product observations and ideas from your team. Make sure you recognise their ideas and promote a shared culture of innovation. Use your research and development (R&D) processesUse your business's existing R&D processes. Identify modifications you could make to existing products, or adaptations for new products, consistent with feedback from your market and customers. Review your quality assurance (QA) processesNote any issues in your products and identify potential ideas for addressing gaps in quality. Review your customer complaint recordsIdentify common weaknesses in your existing product range, and look for areas where improvement is most needed. Learn about managing customer complaints. Review your researchReview your customer research and market research, and plan further market and customer surveys if you identify research gaps. What are your customers telling you they're looking for? What do they find frustrating or limiting about your products? How do they use your products most? Talk to your suppliers and other business partnersTalk to manufacturers, retailers and sales reps to capture their knowledge of your products and thoughts for improving them. Research and understand your competitionTry to understand your competition. Review your competitors' product range and consider how the market is responding to them. Do any of their products seem to be meeting needs that yours aren't? Study catalogues and product informationMake sure you have a comprehensive understanding of existing products available in your market. Idea screeningWith your list of potential new product ideas, you now need to decide which ideas to pursue and which to discard. Consider your competition, your existing products, their shortcomings, and the needs of your market. Draw on the customer needs list you have developed, and the areas for product improvement you have identified. Develop a set of criteria to evaluate your ideas against. Your criteria might include:
SWOT analysisA SWOT analysis can help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each idea. Innovation supportYour innovative approach and your steps to foster innovation in your team will help you realise your new product goals. Find out about innovation advice, grants and support. Read more about becoming an innovative business. Also consider...
Brainstorming is often touted as a great technique that business professionals can use to generate new and unique ideas. It’s a term that’s thrown around quite a bit, and is often used interchangeably with other problem solving and idea generation techniques. Brainstorming has become part of our daily lexicon in business, and with good reason. But what is brainstorming, and why is it an important technique for business professionals? Brainstorming is a group creativity technique used to find a solution to a specific problem. Individuals or teams use various brainstorming techniques to gather and record new ideas in a free-flowing manner. This article will tackle these two questions, and give you some examples of brainstorming topics or problems that are common in various business settings. [Free eBook] The Ultimate Guide to Visual Project Planning What is brainstorming?Brainstorming is a group creativity technique that is often used to find a solution to a specific problem. This is accomplished by gathering and recording new ideas from team members in a free-flowing manner. Brainstorming sessions are usually made up of a handful of core team members, and typically are led by a director or facilitator. Brainstorming originated from an advertising executive named Alex F. Osborne, and dates back to around 1939. Frustrated with his employees’ inability to generate creative new ideas, Osborne began developing new methods for problem solving that focused on a team-based approach to work. He began hosting group-thinking sessions, and discovered that this approach led to a significant boost in the quality and quantity of new ideas. Osborne coined these group meetings “brainstorm” sessions, and wrote about the technique in later publications. During these brainstorming sessions, ideas are collected and recorded using whatever tool is available to the team. Modern businesses have begun to adopt digital brainstorming tools to speed up the process and make the review phases faster and more productive. Quantity of ideas is usually emphasized over quality, with the goal of generating as many new suggestions as possible. Once all ideas have been collected, the team then evaluates each of them and focuses on the ones that are most likely to solve the problem. The four principles of brainstormingWhile brainstorming has evolved over the years, Osborne’s four underlying principles are a great set of guidelines when running your own sessions. These principles include:
Brainstorming techniques and processes helps your team innovate and work collaboratively. There’s no single right way to hold a brainstorming session. In fact, holding individual or reverse brainstorming sessions can both be helpful activities for generating new ideas. Your goal should always be to use the process that works best for you and your team. Why is brainstorming important?If you’ve ever held a brainstorming session, you likely know that they can be very effective for generating new ideas, and finding solutions to a problem. This is largely due to the many advantages of brainstorming that help teams work more collaboratively towards a common goal. Some of the advantages of brainstorming for businesses and individual productivity include:
In summary, the core advantages of brainstorming are its ability to unlock creativity by collaboration. It’s the perfect technique to use for coming together as a team, and can help to generate exciting new ideas that can take your business to a new level. Examples of when brainstorming would be usefulAs you can probably guess, brainstorming is a technique that can be used in a wide variety of different situations. It can be in both your personal and professional life to help you find new ideas and solutions to different problems you’re working on. Because of this versatility, brainstorming is a widely used technique among companies and teams of all sizes. To get you thinking about where you can use brainstorming, here are some examples of scenarios when this technique might be useful. Scenario #1Your content and product marketing teams need to generate new messaging ideas for an upcoming product launch. You have a set of new features that you know will be exciting for your users, but you’re struggling to find the right words to convey their importance and benefits. Calling a brainstorming session to generate new messaging ideas would be a perfect way to start this writing process. As a team, you can throw as many ideas and slogans together as you can, and then refine them together to get a clear picture of the direction going forward. Scenario #2You’ve been tasked by your executive team to come up with a growth strategy for the coming fiscal year, which focuses on expanding your footprint into your most successful markets. You know that there is room for growth, but aren’t sure which areas to focus on. Gathering the key stakeholders in your department and across the organization for a brainstorming session will help you quickly gather a list of growth opportunities. Each team member will have their own ideas for growth within their role which can be added to a longer list of strategic possibilities. Scenario #3Your product development team has been repeatedly running into an issue with a new version of your software. Because of the complexity of the project, it’s difficult to tell what the root cause of the problem might be. These are just three high level examples of brainstorming. This technique is incredibly versatile, and can be applied to virtually any problem or goal that your business needs to address. The advantages of brainstorming are many, and we highly recommend that you start to incorporate it more throughout your business operations. The Ultimate Guide to Visual Project Planning Download this free eBook to get a primer on the concept of visual project planning, an exclusive Project Planning Visualization Toolkit, and 13 downloadable visual project planning templates to get you started right away! |