Stage 3: Conceptualizing The Opportunity Stage Overview and High Power Brainstorming

1. Stage 3: Conceptualizing The OpportunityStage Overview and High Power Brainstorming Robert Monroe Innovative Product Development March 12, 2012

2. By The End Of Class Today, You Should: • Understand the basic inputs, outputs, and tasks undertaken during the opportunity conceptualization phase • Be able to apply the principles of effective brainstorming and have experienced a high power brainstormingsession • Have generated a significant number of promising ideas for new products, services, or experiences to meet your customers' identified needs and desires

3. Phase 3 Overview: Conceptualizing The Opportunity Gate2 Gate3 Phase 3Product Concepts • Phase 2 outputs: • Prioritized value opportunities • Detailed scenarios • Prioritized product attributes • Prioritized stakeholder list • Phase 3 activities: • Generating and screening product concepts • Prototyping • Paper and pencil • Shape and form • Technological • Packaging decisions • Detailed market research • Phase 3 outputs: • Single product concept with which to build detailed business case • Prototype(s) that illustrate path forward for this product or service • Detailed market analysis

4. Detailed Eval: Define Test Refine, Repeat Brainstorm lots of concepts Quick eval Select one concept for Phase IV Phase III Process Overview ValueOpportunityAssessment Refined POG Product Attributes Select 3-10 most promising concepts

5. Concept Generation • Goals: • Generate a wide variety of product concepts • Explore many different approaches to solving the problem • Narrow list to 3-10 concepts for detailed evaluation • Tasks: • Brainstorming - encourage wacky, ‘out-there’ ideas • The crazy ideas often hold nuggets of opportunity to build on • Sometimes what has historically been crazy is becoming more feasible due to SET factor trends • Try to come up with 50-100 different concepts that could address the identified value opportunities and product attributes • Capture and build on ideas that came up during the first two phases • Draw on your observations of how customers interact with the world and their current tools/solutions

6. Concept Generation Example: Paper Fastening Identified product attributes: • Fasten related pieces of paper together • Inexpensively • Quickly • Reversibly • In order • Holds for an arbitrarily long time • In such a way that a person can flip through the papers • Allow ad-hoc disassembly, reordering, and re-assembly • Identify concepts to address this opportunity

7. Paper Fastening Example: Initial Concepts Images source: http://www.officemuseum.com/

8. Paper Fastening Example: Further Concepts • What did you observe about these concepts? • Have I generated enough product concepts yet? • Further ideas? Images source: http://www.officemuseum.com/

9. Detailed Eval: Define Test Refine, Repeat Brainstorm lots of concepts Quick eval Select one concept for Phase IV Concept Filtering In Phase III VOA Refined POG Product Attributes Select 3-10 most promising concepts

10. Concept Filtering In Phase III • Initial filtering criteria: • How well does each product concept address the key value opportunities identified in phase II? • How well does each product concept meet the product attributes identified in phase II? • Secondary filtering criteria: • Basic sanity checks • Technical feasability • Market sizing, readiness, likelihood of acceptance • Competitive landscape • … others?

11. Market Analysis In Phase III • Goals: • Determine business potential for concepts • Confirm that there is still a significant market opportunity • Evaluate customer acceptance of concept • Tasks: • Market research • Surveys • Focus groups and interviews • Brand analysis • Customer/consumer sessions showing prototypes and observing customer reactions to and interactions with the prototypes

12. Prototyping In Phase III • Prototyping begins in this phase • Simple visual and functional representations • Focus is on evaluating: • Customer reactions - desirability and utility • Technical and production feasibility (and difficulty) • Fit in customer’s technology ecosystems • Identifying early ‘gotchas’ • Tasks: • Create storyboards to illustrate and refine concepts • Sketch out pencil-and-paper concepts • Identify key technical challenges, figure out a way to convince yourselves that they can be addressed • Do necessary prototyping to understand key technical challenges

13. Some General Thoughts On Phase III Process • Iterate, Iterate, Iterate! • Refine, Refine, Refine! • Customer feedback good • Fail quickly and move on • Believe in your concept by the end of the phase

14. Conceptualization Exercise:High Power Brainstorming

15. High Power Brainstorming – The IDEO Way • Sharpen the focus • Playful rules • Number your ideas • Build and jump • The space remembers • Stretch your mental muscles • Get physical Source: [KL01] chapter 4

16. Concept Generation Exercise Identified Product Opportunity: Offer young families with kids who want to capture photos of their family a convenient way to record and share high quality images quickly and with as little hassle as possible. Observations: • Multiple pictures had to be taken to get a good quality picture (time consuming) • It is a hassle to get a picture with everyone in it • Getting the camera ready and set up is a time consuming hassle • It is hard to take a picture of the whole family without asking for help • It is not safe to give the camera to a stranger to take a picture • It is not safe to leave the camera on the timer far from the family • not a fun experience for the kids! • It is hard to take a picture while carrying your belongings; you have to find a place to put them down then get out the camera which consumes a lot of time. • It is hard to find people who will help you take a picture (socially awkward) • We had to deal with different languages and explain why we need to take a picture

17. Value Opportunities and Product Attributes Prioritized Value Opportunities • Reduce hassle of taking a picture: • Reduce time to set up the camera • Improve convenience of holding camera • Improve photo quality for non-experts taking pictures quickly • Quicker and easier sharing • Enhanced durability and flexibility of device (hard to break) • Easy to take a picture with just one hand Prioritized Product Attributes • Easily attachable to surrounding objects • Has auto focus plus automatic help for amateurs to take higher quality photos • Supports Wi-Fi and connects to social networking sites • Should be able to bounce around all day in handbag and occasionally be dropped on the ground • Should work in rainy conditions

18. Conceptualization Exercise Part 1: • Brainstorm product concepts to address opportunity • Develop a wide range of ideas (50+) Part 2: • Filter ideas to select top 3-5 to build on with further investigation

19. Exercise Discussion • How should we proceed from here? • What else do we need to know in order to convert these ideas into a detailed product concept? • How can you get this information? • What else do we need to do to develop the concept to the point that we can realize it as a prototype with a business plan and strategy behind it in phase 4?

20. Challenge Problem 5 • New groups: • Group 1: Ayah, Hamsa, Mohammad • Group 2: Fatema, Marwa, Hejji • Group 3: Amel, Nahan, Firas • Generate product concepts • Generate a list of at least 75 product/service concepts • Use the initial filtering ideas discussed to narrow to the 3 most promising product concepts for further investigation • Present those three top concepts to the class next Tuesday in no more than 10 minutes • Write up a concise report recommending which concepts to evaluate further, and why you make that recommendation • Include full list of product concepts as an appendix • The list needs to have at least 75 product concepts to get an A on the challenge problem • Further details to follow on the wiki

21. References [CE09] Robert G. Cooper and Scott Edgett, Successful Product Innovation, Product Development Institute, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4392-4918-5. [CV02] Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel, Creating Breakthrough Products, Prentice Hall, 2002, ISBN: 0-13-969694-6. [KL01] Tom Kelly with Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation, Doubleday, 2001 ISBN: 0-385-49984-1. [SSD09] David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, Neil DeCarlo, The Innovator’s Toolkit, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-34535-1.