Evaluating Your New Product Idea

By Ty Hagler

One of my favorite conversations starts with the statement, ‘So I’ve got this idea.’ As an innovation consultant and industrial designer by training, these words spark an engaging discussion that gives me a chance to not only share my expertise, but also to learn something new about my field. When someone forms an idea for a new product, there is a tangible thrill and excitement that I find infectious, and I always welcome the discussion.

Having recently spoken with several inventors, pre-funded start-up ventures, and generally creative people, it has struck me that many of the conversations start with a request for validation of their ideas, but ends up with a discussion of process. The discipline of industrial design teaches that the first iteration of an idea is rarely the best idea. 

This concept may seem counter-intuitive, but the merits of an idea depend on the customer’s problem the idea is trying to solve:

• Is this problem a real point of pain or frustration for a segment of the population? 
• How large is that population segment?
• Is the pain or frustration strong enough that people are willing to purchase a solution?
• What is the process that customers follow to seek out a solution to this problem?

Answering these questions is a critical part of the due diligence that will be required of any investment in your idea, whether you’re pursuing a license deal or full commercialization. A number of research tools help us find the answers to these questions, including customer mapping and concept validation studies. Ultimately, these tools all fall back on the overall concept of Kenichi Ohmae’s 3C Model—the corporation, the customer, and the competitors.

While the aforementioned questions address the customer aspect of the 3C Model, people with ideas must also examine their competitive landscape. When we engage in this type of work, the odds are highly likely that someone else has observed this problem and launched his own solution. How many competitor or substitute solutions currently exist to address that same pain point?  It certainly makes sense to know what the patent landscape looks like for your particular domain.

In my conversations with investors, be they venture capital firms, angels, or otherwise, I find that their initial focus is on “who” versus “what.” That is, investors focus their first-pass screening criteria on the corporation aspect of the 3C Analysis, because this typically overlooked by start-ups. Investors are just as interested in placing their bets behind a talented leadership team that is committed to their vision as they are in the details of a specific business opportunity. Launching a product takes an enormous amount of energy, and, to be successful, it ultimately takes a team of tireless, talented people. Of the many decisions you face when pursuing your idea, your ability and willingness to organize a team around your vision should have the greatest impact on the decision to license or commercialize.

As you evaluate how to best develop your idea, you should assess your capabilities at the very beginning of the process.  Full commercialization takes a lot of fortitude, determination, and the ability to recruit the right mix of talent to clear the initial hurdles, whereas inventors who want to stick to what they do best—inventing—may choose the patent-and-license route. Regardless of the path you choose to follow, the process of bringing an idea to life is a skill to be developed and you will find there is a whole ecosystem to support you in your creative contributions to the economy.  

Takeaways from the PDMA Innovate Carolina Conference

Ty Hagler and Brian Castle from Trig Innovation attended the Innovate Carolina conference on April 15^th, 2011.

As we fully expected, the Trig team took away many great ideas from the annual Innovate Carolina conference hosted by the North Carolina chapter of the Product Development and Management Association in Charlotte, NC.  We view innovation as a process of generating commercially viable ideas and refining them for our clients.  We can honestly say that all of the conference speakers inspired new thinking for our next generation of projects.  In addition, we discovered new colleagues who belong to our same tribe, making the conference a definite success all around.

Some of the presentations really stood out, as the speakers opened up for all of us to have a peek and see why they are so great at what they do.  The conference kicked off in grand fashion, with Louis Foreman, CEO of Charlotte-based Enventys and the PBS series, “Everyday Edisons,” laid out his multi-pronged vision for fostering invention for small inventors and big companies alike, opening up innovation by reducing the barriers to entry.  It’s not too hard to see how Louis has had such a huge impact on our industry and is such a mentor to many of us, whether he knows it or not.  The conference theme was open innovation, and Louis has built an inspiring business model around that concept.

Next up was the equally charismatic Dr. Gene Slowkinski, a Rutgers University professor, Director of Strategic Alliance Research, and veteran consultant from Alliance Management Group. He outlined the “Want-Find-Get-Manage” model for seeking innovation partners by drawing a simple, yet powerful equation:  internal assets plus external assets= meeting customer needs.  As Dr. Slowinski pointed out, the challenge of a successful alliance depends on getting that equation correct.  It never hurts to have someone of his stature to remind us that the value of any business activity depends on being able to meet customer needs.

We joined the afternoon session led by David Burney, CEO and partner at RTP firm New Kind.  A pioneer from his open-source days at Red Hat, David was quick and often to announce himself as “just a designer,” but his talk revealed him to be so much more than that.  Better than anyone else we’ve read or heard in quite some time, David outlined some real paradigm shifts in the business world, predicated upon emerging trends in social dynamics.  Drawing upon his deep experience in open-source and coupling that with lessons learned from emerging social networks and sparking community-driven innovation at New Kind, David gave us multiple examples of designers capturing the wisdom of the crowd.  David also showed an emerging dynamic of “mission-based” businesses like Tom’s Shoes and Starbucks, who proudly wear their ultimate mission of creating a better world with their products as vehicles to drive their respective missions.  The Tom’s example—for every paid customer pair, Tom’s donates a pair to needy people in Third World countries, was especially thought-provoking.

Finally, David Magellan Horth of Greensboro’s Center for Creative Leadership showed why his organization has its well-burnished reputation for cutting-edge executive education.  Horth utilized visual techniques designed to inspire and engage creative thinking from the audience and then applied those tools to a methodology for bringing cross-functional teams together in a cohesive culture of innovation.  Horth’s talk speaks mightily to the Trig Innovation collaborative approach to product development, where we strive to include voices from across the organization for the most cohesive representation of ideas and contributions to the complex process of delivering a new product to market.