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If you are looking to develop stronger ideas and concepts for new products; this blog covers thoughts and "top-tips" on how we run more effective Product Innovation Hothouse workshops, and how we look to maximise the creative talents of cross-functional teams. For further information, check out the following Hothouse™ workshop video to generate, refine and identify new product ideas with greatest potential.
Top Tip 1 - An Objective that Inspires Product Innovation
Our most successful Hothouse™ workshops have innovation objectives that inspire and provide focus for creative thinking, and importantly, where all key stakeholders are fully aligned. For example, take a sun lotion company that wants to generate new product ideas – where do they start? Looking at their annual business, the team agreed to focus product innovation on how to “win on the beach with young adults and their kids”. The idea of "winning on the beach" provides a much clearer strategic and creative focus for the workshop and the project overall. The focus for product innovation can be further enhanced with different teams focusing on the specific needs and insights of "different sun lotion users who might be on the beach".
Top-Tip 2 - Build New Product Ideas from Deeper Insights and Pain Points
Once the innovation focus has been defined, look to build new product ideas that are inspired by deeper insights and consumer pain points. These should be identified BEFORE the workshop and linked to different themes and the overall objective. With the example of the sun lotion brand that wants to "win on the beach with young adults", get different teams to focus on specific and deeper insights for different sun lotion users e.g. the mum who wants greater protection and doesn't want to tan; the dad who wants protection but just wants to keep it simple; for kids who just want to have fun. Get different teams to focus on different insights linked to these different consumer profiles. If the insights are good, the ideas will flow. Rotate the insights and rotate the small teams to keep things fresh. Take a look at the following video with techniques to quickly gather and identify relevant insights.
Top-Tip 3 - Use Different Creative Idea Generation Techniques
To refine and develop new ideas, get ready to use a wider range of creative thinking techniques to help inspire fresh thinking. Simple techniques include role play; focusing on random words; role play but from the perspective of different animals; thinking like a start-up; giving the group a box of random objects; ideas inspired by music and sounds; ideas inspired by random newspaper headlines. For more details, take a look at our top 10 best idea generation techniques for product innovation.
Top-Tip 4 - Use Creative Agents and Creative-Thinking Consumers
It might make sense to bring in some fresh external thinking. For our product innovation Hothouse™ workshops, we use either Creative-Thinking Consumers or our network of Creative Agents and Trend Scouts. Creative-Thinking Consumers should be carefully recruited with both a passion for the category, and an ability to think in fresh ways. Working in pairs, they can be used to either refine existing ideas or to build new ideas. Creative Agents and Trend Scouts may not be users of the product but are often challenged to kick-start idea generation tasks by focusing on agreed insights, combined with different out-of-the-box thinking techniques. Take a look at the following video of a product innovation workshop with creative-thinking consumers.
Top Tip 5 - Get Fast Feedback from Target Customers
Once you have developed a range of early ideas, look to quickly identify the ones with greatest potential, to identify the top 4 or 5 ideas to take into more detailed development. Our overnight fastSCREEN™ consumer panels are run with Zip-Zap Ideas®, for a faster and more cost-effective way of screening "leading ideas" with target consumers and key stakeholders. Available in all major markets, they are normally run overnight to screen between 24 and 48 mini-concepts that appear in random order.