Success factors for new products?
We have been testing innovations for 18 years. Very early on, meta-analyses revealed that a certain promising factor is decisive for the success of innovations: the relevant benefit of a product or service.
What sounds simple at first glance is not trivial. Formulating the benefits of a new product requires a clear view of the market and, above all, comprehensive knowledge of consumers’ needs. So “customer-centricity” gets a new, or shall we say, clear meaning. It’s not just about focusing on the customer and understanding him, but above all about what exactly could convince him about a new product.
Co-Creation Innovation Process
Consistent customer research
Since then, we have consistently expanded our market research services: In the development of customer-centric innovations, the benefit is at the heart of our methods developed in-house. And they work well, as we have already been able to prove many times. A good example is e.GO, the electric car that was designed at RWTH Aachen University and will be on the road as early as 2018. What Germany’s automotive industry has been working on for a long time, the researchers at the RWTH around Prof. Dr. Günther Schuh are making a reality.
The more innovative a product is to become, the harder it becomes to predict what will appeal to which customer. Dialego’s co-creation has helped us to recognize what is really important to potential customers and how they want their requirements to be implemented.
Prof. Dr. Günther Schuh – e.GO Mobile AG – Aachen, Germany
Latest findings with AI
How do we find out the factors that are decisive for the success of an innovation in a quick concept or product test? Based on our experience we now approached this question – and picked out as the most important measure whether a customer would try a new product for the first time. So in the example of the electric car: Is the customer willing to try the car for everything he has seen about the product?
We know the KISS principle from agile software development: “”keep it simple, stupid”. A product or process should be as simple as possible. KISS should also be our guideline for the agile innovation process. We use artificial intelligence methods to determine the three most important factors for success from the many different factors that we collect in innovation research.
Three factors describe success
The result brought clear insights: On the one hand, the enormous importance of the benefit of a product was confirmed. On the other hand, we found out that it is not the classic so-called key performance indicators of an innovation that point the way forward.
The relevant factors are relevant benefit, brand fit and customer feedback VisualConceptMapping. We will be happy to send you the complete (German) article.
planning & analysis 5/2017
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