1. Product Planning
Chapter 5

2. Concept Generation
Generate a bunch of ideas, pick out the few good ones, and toss out the rest!
Six main techniques for generating concepts

3. Creativity About 4% of people are “highly creative”
Creativity, per Maslow, is correlated with “the ability to withstand the lack of structure, the lack of future, lack of predictability, of control, the tolerance for ambiguity, for planlessness”

4. Product Concept Statement
Foundation for further development effort
Three elements of a product concept statement
Form
Technology
Benefit
Benefit is the most important – customers buy benefit, not form or technology

5. Concept Generation Techniques
Six major techniques to generate ideas
Needs assessment – what does the customer need
Scenario analysis – where do trends take us
Group creativity – getting creative people together
Attribute analysis – very mechanical approach
Relationship analysis – look for new connections
Lateral research – look sideways at the product

6. Needs Assessment
Understanding marketplace needs – customer pain points
McQuarrie’s seven step methodology to do this (listed on pages 70-71)
Can also use experts or publications or market research companies (I prefer the latter)
Ethnography, role playing, asking your employees, lead user analysis

7. Scenario Analysis Extend approach and leap approach
Extend takes current trends and stretches them into the future
Leap begins in the future and paints a picture of what that future looks like

8. Group Creativity Brainstorming is commonly used
Delphi approach also used
New techniques are evolving
Consumer-centric innovation
Ideation
Sentence completion
Personification

9. Attribute Analysis
Look at product characteristics to generate new ideas
Three typical approaches
Determinant gap analysis – attributes are known, key drivers are extended; attribute rating (AR) approach
Perceptual gap analysis – attributes are not known or not easily identified; used paired comparisons and create perceptual map; overall similarity (OS) approach
Similarity/dissimilarity analysis – concepts evaluated on similarity or dissimilarity to each other; can use cluster analysis for this type of work

10. Relationship Analysis
Forces examination of relationships between unrelated issues to find ideas
Three main techniques
Two-dimensional matrix – Identify two key elements and generate new ideas
Morphological analysis – Identify different levels of attributes and compare different combinations (conjoint models used here)
Analogies – proxies that are similar to the product

11. Lateral Search Attempt to create “out of the box” thinking
Four main techniques in this area
Competitor review – what are they doing
Avoidance technique – challenging ideas
Big Winner technique – iterate reasons why the consumers like the product area
Creative stimuli technique – for a given noun or adjective, brainstorm ideas