All of these are sources for new-product ideas except which

Can these sources of ideas for new products for mid-market businesses

Learn how these sources of ideas for new products for mid-market businesses can drive innovation and new sales products.

Coming up with new product ideas can seem daunting, but it’s not as hard as you might think. 

There are many different sources of inspiration, and all you need is a little creativity and imagination. So don’t be afraid to try something new – here are 10 sources for new product ideas that will get your creative juices flowing.

Are you looking for new product ideas?

Check out this article for 10 sources of inspiration that will help get your creative juices flowing. You’ll find everything from classic products that have been revamped to new and innovative ideas that are sure to wow consumers.

So what are you waiting for? Start brainstorming today! With so many great options, you’re sure to find something that will inspire you to create a new product that will revolutionize the industry.

Finding promising new product ideas is the starting point in idea generation’s new product development process. New product ideas trigger planning for new products. The ideas of new product are evaluated as it moves through the process, and new product planning expenses accumulate.

There are variously internal and external sources of new product ideas. Ideas can be generated by information search, marketing research, research and development, incentives, and acquisition. 

I’ll be discussing the screening, evaluation, and business analysis to help determine if a new product concept is sufficiently attractive to justify proceeding with development.

Sources of ideas for New Products for Mid Market Businesses

Limiting the search for new product ideas to internal research and development activities is far too narrow an approach. Both solicited and spontaneous ideas may emerge from sources.

Sources of new product ideas include company employees, customers, competitors, outside inventors, acquisitions, and channel members.

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The essential issue that management must face is establishing a program for generating and evaluating ideas that will meet the company’s needs. Several questions must be answered in developing such a program:

• Should ideas searches be targeted or open-ended?
• Should the search for new product ideas be restricted to those ideas that correspond to the mission, target market, and the company’s strategy?
• How extensive and aggressive should the company’s idea search activities be?
• Should search be an active or passive function within the firm?
• Where will responsibilities for new product ideas search be placed?
• How will new product planning activities be directed and coordinated?

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Companies that focus on their product strategy perform much better over a long period than those that do not. These findings came from a study of 246 products across 26 small and medium-sized companies.

The idea search program should be aligned with most companies’ corporate mission and objectives.  While some far-out new product ideas may change a company’s future, open-ended ideas often search for the disparates resources and misdirect efforts.

It is impossible to generalize the other three questions since they depend on many factors. Factors like size and type of company, technologies involved, new product needs, resources, management preferences, and corporate capabilities. Top management should develop a plan for idea generation that will satisfy the company’s requirements.

Many new product ideas start with customers, particularly ideas for industrial products. Both industrial and consumer buyers are useful sources of new product ideas. The use of a lead user analysis offers promising potential for developing new industrial products.

Lead users are those companies whose current needs and requirements anticipate marketplace needs.

The approach is to identify these market leaders and analyze their needs to improve the productivity of new product development and product markets that change rapidly. The objective is to satisfy the lead users’ needs, thus accelerating new product planning.

Methods of Generating Ideas

Several alternatives for generating ideas are investigated. Typically a company uses more than one of these options.

Search. 

Systematic monitoring of various information sources may help identify new product ideas. New product idea publications and online sources are available from companies that wish to sell or license ideas they do not wish to commercialize. 

New technology information is available through computerized search services.  New sources may also yield information about the new product activity of competitors. 

Many trade publications contain new product announcements. Kickstarter and Indiegogo provide a good area to look for new ideas. Marketing management must identify the relevant search areas and assign responsibility for a search to an individual or group.

Marketing Research.  

A Survey of product end-users can be useful in identifying needs that new products can satisfy. One useful technique to identify and evaluate a new product concept is the focus group, which can be used for consumer and industrial products. 

A small group of 8 to 12 people is invited to meet with an experienced moderator to discuss new product ideas. Idea generation might start with discussing product requirements for some product use. Subsequent focus group sessions can evaluate product concepts formulated to satisfy the needs identified in the initial session. 

More than one focus group can be used at each stage. Focus groups may include channel members and company personnel as well as customers. 

Another consumer research technique is the advisory panel. It’s selected to represent a target market. A producer of computer accessories would include computer users on the panel. Companies are using customer advisory groups. These groups provide insight and evaluate new products.

Internal and External Department.  

The company’s research and development generate many new product ideas. New product ideas may also originate from development efforts outside the company. Sources include inventors, private laboratories, research universities, and small high-tech firms.

Other Idea Generation Methods.  

Incentives may be useful to glean new product ideas from employees, marketing intermediaries, and customers. The amount of the incentive should be high enough to encourage submission. 

The company should also guard against employees leaving the company and developing a promising idea elsewhere. For this reason, many companies require employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement. 

Consumer product funds are an interesting concept for generating new products, developing them, and moving their ideas to commercialization.

While the objective of consumer product funds is to provide a return to investors, corporate participants may gain access to new products without the high cost of internal development. 

However, critics of the funds argue that small venture firms do not have the experience to plan and introduce new products successfully. There’s also the possibility that two or more corporate investors will try to compete for a good new product or perhaps the entire company.

Finally, acquiring other firms offer a way to obtain new product ideas.  This strategy may be more cost-effective than internal development and substantially reduce the lead time required for new product planning.

Idea generation identifies one or more product concepts to be screened and evaluated. And an idea for a new product must be transformed into a defined product concept. 

The complete product concept is a statement about selected anticipated product attributes that show how they will yield selected benefits relative to other products or problem solutions already available. For example, the pump toothpaste dispenser (attribute) offers a simple and quick alternative (benefit) tube.

SCREENING, EVALUATING, AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Evaluating new ideas is essential for new product planning. Assume that a successful new product specifies criteria for commercial success (e.g., sales, profit contribution, and market share).  

While keeping the risk or rejection of good ideas at an acceptable level. If the level of risk for rejecting an idea is set too low, then too many ideas will be developed that later must be rejected. 

Moving too many ideas too far into development and testing is an expensive mistake. Management must establish a screening and evaluation procedure that will kill unpromising ideas as soon as possible. 

Expenditures buildup from the idea stage to the commercialization stage, or the risk of developing an alarming new product, declines as more and more information is obtained about the product and the market. Thus, the best screening procedure is one that is not too tight. 

The objective is to eliminate the least promising ideas before too much time and money are invested. The tighter the screening procedure, the higher the risk of rejecting a good idea. Based on the specific factors involved, management should have established a level of risk appropriate for the situation.

A new product idea should be evaluated regularly through the new product planning stages. The evaluation techniques appropriate to each stage in the planning process are matched to the evaluation task. Ideas may be rejected at any stage, even though the objective is to eliminate the poor risk relatively early in the planning phase before major product development expenditures occur.

Screening

 An idea for a new product should receive an initial screening to determine that strategic fit in the company. Two important dimensions should be evaluated:

1. The strategic capability of the idea
2. The commercial feasibility of the venture

 Several specific factors in each category are shown in Exhibit 2.

The purpose of screening is to eliminate ideas that are not compatible or feasible for the company. These assignments or somewhat subjective since management must establish how narrow or wide the screening boundary should be. For example, the management of two otherwise similar companies might have very different missions and objectives. Thus, an idea that involves a new product market area could be strategically compatible in one company is not in another. The dimensions on which management evaluates ideas/concepts/products included all key management areas. 

Some firms develop screening procedures using scoring and rating techniques for the factors shown in Exhibit 2.  the result is a score for each idea being screened. Management can set ranges for passing and rejecting. The methods are effective only if managers agree on the relative importance of the screening factors.

 Evaluation

The boundaries between idea screening, evaluation, and business analysis are not drawn. Some firms combine two of the evaluation stages. Nevertheless, the distinction seems appropriate. After the initial screening, the surviving ideas are subject to a more comprehensive evaluation. Several of the factors shown in Exhibit 2 may be evaluated in greater depth, including the buyers’ reaction to the proposed concept. Concept tests are useful in evaluating and refining new product ideas.

Concept testing

Concept testing aims to obtain a reaction to the new market concept from a sample of potential buyers before the product is developed. The product concepts are presented to the test participants in various forms, such as a written description, a drawing, a model, or a package. Typically, a statement of a concept is part of the testing procedure. The statement should be brief, consisting of one or two paragraphs. Bias must be avoided in the wording of the statement.

When designed and implemented, the concept test offers a useful way of evaluating a product idea very early. The cost of concept testing is reasonable, given the information obtained. There are some important cautions. The test, at best, is a very rough gauge of commercial success. The test is somewhat artificial since the actual product and a commercial setting is not present.

The concept test is useful in signaling favorable or unfavorable product concepts. It also offers a basis for comparing two or more concepts. A requirement for concept testing is that the product can be expressed as a concept. Moreover, the participants have the experience and capability to evaluate it.

Concept selection 

The completion of the evaluation stage should yield one or more concepts for business analysis. In general, consumer products firms spend a higher percentage on screening and evaluating ideas than industrial product firms. The time devoted to the actual development of the new product is greater for industrial goods companies than for consumer goods companies.

Business analysis 

Business analysis is normally accomplished at several stages in the new product planning process. The business analysis estimates the commercial performance of the proposed product. Obtaining an accurate financial projection depends on the revenue and cost forecast quality. 

The first assessment is conducted before the product concept moves into the development stage. Financial projections are refined at later stages.

Revenue forecasting

The product’s newness, market size, and competing products influence the accuracy of revenue projections. For SaaS computer software, estimates of total market size can usually be obtained from industry information. Several industry associations publish the industry forecast. Industry and financial analysts such as Gartner, IDC, and Forrester also provide great industry information. The more difficult task is estimating the feasible market share for a new product entry.

Sales of new-to-the-world products are very difficult to forecast. One approach is to identify the potential size of the target market and then estimate the new product’s rate of market penetration. For example, sales forecast for electric cars could be based on the percentage of penetration in the conventional gas-driven car market over a specified time.

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Cost estimation 

Several types of costs or encountered in the planning and commercialization of new products. One way to categorize the cost is to estimate them for each stage in the new planning process. The cost increases rapidly as the product concept moves through the process. The cost for each planning stage can be further divided into functional categories  (e.g., marketing, research and development, and manufacturing). The executive’s experience in new product planning should be able to generate reasonable cost estimates.

Profit projections 

Several profit projections can gauge a new product’s financial performance. Those appropriate for new product business analysis include Breakeven computation, cash flow, return on investment, and profit contribution. Breakeven analysis is useful to show how many units of a new product must be sold before it begins to make a profit. Management can use the break-even level to estimate the project feasibility.

Senior management must determine the appropriate level of time for projecting sales, costs, and profits. Policy guidelines may be specified. 

For example, the product may be required to recoup all costs within a certain period.  Business analysis estimates should consider the estimated flow of revenues and cost over the time used in the analysis. Typically, new products incur a higher cost before they start to generate revenues.

Other considerations 

Several issues must be considered in the business analysis of a proposed product concept. First, management should formulate guidelines for the financial performance of new products. These can be used to accept, reject, or further analyze the product concept. 

Another issue involves assessing the amount of risk. New products substituted for existing products often cannibalize sales. This factor should be included in financial projections or additional consideration beyond the financial estimates.

EXAMPLES OF NEW PRODUCT IDEAS

1. Ring Video Doorbell
2. Car Vending Machines
3. A Solar-Powered Camping Tent
4. The Biolite Camping Stove
5. Ultra-Ever Dry Waterproof Coating
6. PaperKarma: The Junk Mail-Eliminating App
7. Senz: The Stormproof Umbrella
8. Justick: An Electro-Adhesive Bulletin Board

Wrap Up

The new product development process starts with a search for new ideas. The search should not be casual. Senior management should define the products and markets to emphasize. 

It should state the new product objectives, whether cash flow, market share domination, or other objectives. It should state how much effort should be devoted to developing original products, modifying existing products, and copying competitors’ products.

The purpose of idea generation is to create several ideas. The purpose is to reduce the number of ideas to an attractive, practicable few. 

Organizations are recognizing the necessity and advantages of developing new products and services. Newer products must replace their more mature and declining products.

The key to successful innovation lies and developing better organizational processes for handling new product ideas and developing sound research and decision procedures at each stage of the new product development process. New products, however, can fail. The risk of innovation is as great as the rewards.

What are the sources of new product ideas?

Which of the following is least likely source for new product ideas?