Using Consumers To Fuel Your New Product
Generation
Pipeline: The Role of Idea-Centric Creativity
by
Gwen Ishmael & Leyla Namiranian
The Case For New Product Innovation
We live in a world in which the ability of an organization to survive is defined
by its capacity to innovate. Companies must bring successful new products to
market almost constantly. In fact, the speed at which innovation takes place
today is faster than ever, a trend that may have started in the high-tech
industry, but is now a fact of business life for all industries. The average
consumer packaged goods company now introduces 70 to 80 new products per year;
Procter & Gamble offers 46 different types of Tide in the U.S. [1] And
shorter product lifecycles and an increasingly competitive environment are
global trends, not limited to the United States.
Competitive environments and shorter product lifecycles also mean that, first, a
company needs to have the various versions and extensions of its current
products ready to release quickly. Second, in order to maintain competitive
advantage, a company must also have its next-generation products-the next "new
thing" that customers will want to buy in a year or two or three-in the
pipeline while its current successful products are still selling well.
Companies must also be able to spot opportunities for, and then be able to
develop, truly disruptive innovations-the breakthrough products that may
reshape their entire market and product category. To miss these opportunities
would mean losing category leadership position. For example, skincare consumers
are accustomed to seeing new creams continuously introduced, each of which
promises a definite improvement in the fight against aging skin by virtue of
the addition of a new ingredient. But consumers are not accustomed to the
emergence of a new product that will actually replace conventional skincare
routines. However, the march of progress demands that such breakthrough
products be developed, and the company that successfully develops them will
have a competitive edge.
It Takes A Lot Of Ideas To Create A Successful New Product
So how does a company keep on top of this punishing innovation agenda? First, it
is vitally important to keep the new product pipeline filled with potential new
product ideas to develop, because many, many new product ideas either do not
see the light of release day or are not successful. How full does the pipeline
need to be? A Dun & Bradstreet study revealed that for each successful new
product introduced, a company needs between 50 and 60 other new product ideas
in the pipeline. [2] Or, one in every 60 or so new product ideas a company
generates will go on to become a successful new product.
So clearly the first step in succeeding at today's innovation agenda is to get
lots of new product ideas into the pipeline. Having lots of ideas here, in what
some refer to as the "fuzzy front end" of new product development-where it is
appropriate to generate and expand on ideas before converging on the best
prospects and continuing through the development process-can make the
difference between success and failure at innovation.
However, generating new product ideas is no easy thing to do. First, generating
ideas is not a linear process, which means the usual, logical problem-solving
approaches don't always work well when it comes to generating ideas. And
companies can get sidetracked by the sheer pressure-to find the "perfect" idea,
to find the "big" idea, and to move quickly. Finally, companies may find it
difficult to get past their own unwillingness to take a risk on a new product
idea.
Generating New Product Ideas Internally
Companies that truly want to generate new product ideas address those challenges
in different ways. Quite often companies use internal ideation sessions with
R&D and product development groups. And some companies solicit employee
suggestions for new product ideas. But there are two things internal groups
sometimes don't do well. First, they are busy. They can't always keep up the
needed pace in the face of such a punishing innovation agenda. Second, their
heads are (of necessity) stuck firmly in the company's culture, current product
lines, and customer opinions. Because they are rooted in the present, they may
have trouble envisioning truly innovative leaps beyond the current product line
to the breakthrough products.
Many companies handle these limitations by bringing in outside talent, and
this has (in fact) been shown as an effective method to inject innovation into
a company and to revitalize a brand. Quite often this has meant hiring full-time
personnel or consultants.
Leveraging Consumer Ingenuity And Creativity
Another time-honored method for bringing outside energy and new ideas into the
product innovation process is to use consumer needs as a starting point. After
all, many new product ideas are first envisioned in an effort to meet a defined
consumer need. More often than not this is accomplished by mining customer
satisfaction research results for new ideas, or by soliciting information
collected by sales representatives in the field, who are in constant contact
with actual and potential customers. Another method is to hire consultants or
advertising agencies to run focus groups with customers.
While these approaches offer some success, there is a much better way to bring
the consumer into the new product innovation process-a better way to leverage
consumers' ingenuity and category usage experience to generate a large number
of new product ideas for a product category. A better way to involve consumers
in the new product development process is to use highly creative consumers to
help generate new product ideas.
In order to understand how best to use consumers in the new product idea-generation
process, it helps to review some of the research on human creativity. What is
creativity, and what is the best way to assess an individual's creative skills?
Considerable research has been conducted in this area. Dr. Teresa Amabile, an
authority on individual, team, and organizational creativity and author of Creativity
in Context, defines creativity as a "process that results in the creation
of a novel idea or product that is appropriate, useful, or satisfying to a particular
group at a particular time." [3] Like most of the creativity experts and researchers
we've studied [4], we believe that everyone is creative and that people demonstrate
different kinds of creativity and different levels of creativity. That means
one should be able not only to test for creativity, but to test for specific
kinds of creativity. Further, once these creative individuals have been identified,
it is possible to train them to further enhance their creativity skills. [5]
In particular, Foy Conway, originator of the "Super Group" creative consumer
panel model, determined the best methods of testing everyday consumers for the
specific ability to create new product ideas, as well as the best methods of
training to enhance that particular creative skill.
Idea-Centric Creativity = Lots Of New Product Ideas
Decision Analyst's Innovation Services has worked with several of these creativity
experts and has developed proprietary methods for testing consumers for creativity
and using consumers in new product ideation. In the process of screening and
testing a large number of consumers for creativity, we have determined that
the best kind of creativity for generating new product ideas is "idea-centric
creativity," expressed in the ability of the individual to use unique and divergent
patterns of thought to generate and share a large number of new product ideas.
Everyone has some degree of idea-centric creative ability, but at varying levels.
We screened and tested approximately 65,000 people for idea-centric creativity.
While our testing was done with people from the U.S., we believe that since we
tested for abilities as opposed to demographic profiles, our results will hold
true internationally. In fact, one of the most important findings of our
testing was that most demographic indicators don't correlate at all with
incidence of idea-centric creativity.
For example, idea-centric creatives live all over, and don't appear to cluster
exclusively on the East and West Coasts, as the media might lead one to
believe. Secondly, younger people tend to be more creative than older people,
but surprisingly the fall-off in creativity as one ages tends to be minimal
until the age of 54, after which "creativity decay" appears to accelerate, as
our data show:
| Age Range |
Idea-Centric Creativity Index |
| 18-24 |
114 |
| 25-34 |
109 |
| 35-44 |
106 |
| 45-54 |
93 |
| 55-64 |
77 |
| 65 or older |
53 |
Also, gender is a poor predictor of idea-centric creativity. Men and women
appear to be roughly equal, although each sex does better in product categories
where their interests and relevant experiences are concentrated. Similarly,
ethnicity is a poor predictor of exceptional creativity. Education does tend
to positively correlate with exceptional creativity, but the degree of correlation
is not strong. That is, the college-educated tend to score higher than high
school graduates, but the difference is not great. Many consumers with high
school or less education tend to be very creative.
Other types of creativity (artistic, musical, literary, theatrical) are not
very predictive of "idea-centric" creativity. No matter how we manipulated the
regression techniques, the other types of creativity (musical, literary, artistic—alone
or in combination) never showed up as significant variables in predicting idea-centric
creativity.
These new-product creatives look like everyone else, dress like everyone else,
and talk like everyone else. But, they are unique in one special way: Ask them
to come up with new product ideas, and they (on average) are more than 10 times
as productive as the average person. They are also intrinsically motivated to
offer new ideas, as opposed to being motivated by extrinsic factors such as
financial reward. Coming up with new product ideas is fun for them, and it's
something they enjoy spending time doing.
Imaginators®-An Online Panel Of Idea-Centric Creatives
As a result of our initial testing, we have built a consumer panel called Imaginators®,
comprising of more than 2,000 idea-centric creatives in the U.S. and Europe
who can help generate new product ideas. Imaginators® panelists represent
the top four percent of the population in terms of idea-centric creative ability.
In addition, Imaginators® members receive ongoing training to enhance their
natural creative skills, and their performance on projects is continuously assessed
to ensure that for any given project, we are only using the top performers.
How do we use these top-performing creatives? First, most of our projects take
place in an online environment. While demographics are not important in terms
of determining levels of creativity, they do take on some importance when it
comes to generating new product ideas. Consumer creativity pioneer Foy Conway
put it best: "Creativity anchored in real-life experiences and real consumer
needs produces more ideas-and more relevant ideas." [6] Dr. Teresa Amabile's
model of the creativity process includes "domain-relevant knowledge" of the
subject at hand is an important part of the creativity process just as creative
skills are. [7] In terms of new product ideation, domain-relevant knowledge
translates into product-category usage experience. Our 2,000+ member Imaginators®
panel is designed so that we can select project participants based on factors
such as product category usage or demographics. By making the ideation session
online and not in a specific geographic location, we have a larger number and
variety of panelists available for projects.
A Creative Process Results In Lots Of Creative Ideas
Another important component of the creative process is the environment in which
creativity takes place. Among the important factors are stimulation, a
process-oriented approach, and a sense of community. [8] Building on this
research, we have created an online environment that encourages creativity. We
use proven creativity techniques that we have adapted to online use. Our
trained Innovation Services facilitators guide the creative process to maximize
the number and quality of ideas generated. The end result is hundreds of
innovative new product ideas that are rooted in consumer needs and wants.
Once the online session is over, the Innovation Services team spends days filtering
and focusing on these hundreds of ideas and idea fragments, which can also be
used to complement any internal ideation efforts. After the development phase,
generally 10 to 20 of the resulting ideas will have been developed into full-blown
new product concepts, ready for marketing research testing. Through these sessions
some major new brands, such as Purina One®, disposable Polaroids, and many
others have come to life.
Just one ideation project with Imaginators® consumer panelists can result in
20 new product ideas in development. This process can surely help fill a
company's new product ideas pipeline. And filling that pipeline with ideas that
can be honed through development into new products that have as great a chance
at success as possible is the way to stay on top of today's innovation agenda.
That innovation agenda demands that companies generate enough new product ideas
to develop successful new next-generation products, as well enough ideas to
give the company a reasonable chance of being the one to come up with truly
disruptive innovations-the breakthrough products that may reshape their entire
market and product category. Decision Analyst's Innovation Services and
Imaginators® brings the benefits of consumer-driven, idea-centric
creativity to today's innovation agenda.
Notes
- Forrester Research (2002), "Demand Forecasting Done Right."
- Dun & Bradstreet (1998), London.
- Amabile, Teresa M., Creativity In Context (1996), Westview Press,
p. 38.
- A pioneer researcher in the field of creative studies, Dr. E. Paul Torrance
developed the "Torrance Test for Creative Thinking," which is still often
used to identify individual creative potential. Torrance was also instrumental
in developing methods of creativity skills training. Specific Torrance sources
include Torrance, E.P. (1974), "Torrance Tests Of Creative Thinking: Norms
And Technical Manual," Scholastic Testing Services; and Torrance, E.P. and
Presbury, J. (1984), "Criteria Of Success Of 242 Recent Experimental Studies
Of Creativity," Creative Child Quarterly, 30, p. 15-19.
- Parnes, S.J. and Noller, R.B. (1972), "Applied Creativity: The Creative
Studies Project—Part 11," Journal Of Creative Behavior, vol.
6, pp. 164-186.
- Foy Conway, quoted from a 2002 working session with Decision Analyst.
- Amabile, p. 113.
- Amabile, pp. 231-232.
Presented to the ESOMAR World Congress 2003. Prague, Czech Republic 16
September
Copyright © 2003 by Decision Analyst, Inc.
This article may not be copied, published, or used in any way without written
permission of Decision Analyst.
About the Author
Gwen Ishmael (gishmae@decisionanalyst.com)
is a Senior Vice President and Director of Insights & Innovation at Dallas-Fort
Worth based Decision Analyst. She may be reached at 1-800-262-5974
or 1-817-640-6166.
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