stage 3: conceptualizing the opportunity stage overview and high power brainstorming

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2011 - 2012 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

Stage 3: Conceptualizing The OpportunityStage Overview and High Power Brainstorming

Robert Monroe

Innovative Product Development

March 12, 2012

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2011- 2012 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

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 brainstorming session

• Have generated a significant number of promising ideas for new products, services, or experiences to meet your customers' identified needs and desires


Phase 3 Overview: Conceptualizing The Opportunity

Phase 3Product Concepts

Gate2

Gate3

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


Phase III Process Overview

ValueOpportunityAssessment

RefinedPOG

ProductAttributes

Brainstorm lots of concepts

Quickeval

Select 3-10most promising

concepts

Select one concept

for Phase IV

DetailedEval:

DefineTest

Refine,Repeat


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


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


Paper Fastening Example: Initial Concepts

Images source: http://www.officemuseum.com/


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/


Concept Filtering In Phase III

VOA

RefinedPOG

ProductAttributes

Brainstorm lots of concepts

Quickeval

Select 3-10most promising

concepts

Select one concept

for Phase IV

DetailedEval:

DefineTest

Refine,Repeat


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?


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


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


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

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2011 - 2012 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

Conceptualization Exercise:High Power Brainstorming


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


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


Value Opportunities and Product Attributes

Prioritized Value Opportunities

1. Reduce hassle of taking a picture:– Reduce time to set up the camera – Improve convenience of holding

camera

2. Improve photo quality for non-experts taking pictures quickly

3. Quicker and easier sharing

4. Enhanced durability and flexibility of device (hard to break)

5. Easy to take a picture with just one hand

Prioritized Product Attributes

1. Easily attachable to surrounding objects

2. Has auto focus plus automatic help for amateurs to take higher quality photos

3. Supports Wi-Fi and connects to social networking sites

4. Should be able to bounce around all day in handbag and occasionally be dropped on the ground

5. Should work in rainy conditions


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


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?


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


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.

stage 3: conceptualizing the opportunity stage overview and high power brainstorming

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