Even big companies struggle with innovation. Take, for example, Gerber’s 1970's attempt to penetrate the adult food market. Instead of developing a new line with its own unique distribution strategy, the baby food brand re-labeled existing pureed products and simply placed them in a different aisle. Or, more recently, look to the flop of Pizza Hut’s ill-fated “Flavors of Now” campaign, which failed spectacularly to drive sales. Many entrepreneurs strike gold with their first line of products, only to run out of steam when it’s time to expand. Companies that continuously get product innovation right have a certain number of factors and resources in place to encourage free thinking. Sometimes, it just takes the right partner to bring an idea from a rough concept to full design. Here are some ways to improve product innovation in your business. CREATE A CULTURE THAT CELEBRATES FAILURENo one wants to fail, but fear of failure prevents employees from taking risks and pushing boundaries of product innovation. “A recent Gallup study found that only 18% of U.S. employees strongly agree they can take risks at work that could lead to important new products, services or solutions. When the remaining 82% of employees cannot take individual entrepreneurial action, it prevents companies from realizing the benefits of their innovation agenda,” write the Gallup experts. It’s often said that there are no bad ideas, and that’s a great rule of thumb for sparking innovation. McKinsey advises to take this thinking a step further: “you should also encourage the truly impractical in some situations—for example, when conducting scenario-planning exercises to unearth potential competitive threats.” Pie-in-the-sky ideas can lead to actionable and innovative ideas that can be executed. Just look at how dozens of products we use each day came from NASA’s space exploration research and experimentation. CREATE SPACE FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION BRAINSTORMINGIt’s difficult to think creatively while working in the same routine day in and day out. Companies that don’t make time and space for product innovation will continue running a business as usual. A hackathon is one way to encourage employees to set aside their day-to-day tasks in favor of product innovation. “Companies far outside the tech world are using these intense brainstorming and development sessions to stir up new ideas on everything from culture change to supply chain management,” writes Harvard Business Review. Involve members from all teams in your company, not just your product team or tech team. Some companies choose a particular topic to inspire innovation; others see what their employees choose to work on, and learn insights from their approach. Other companies encourage product developers and scientists to pursue passion projects on company time. They invest in their employees by offering training, workshops, and professional development. Google, for instance, follows the 70/30/10 model: 70% of projects are dedicated to Google’s core business 20% of projects are related to Google’s core business 10% of projects are unrelated to Google’s core business The 10% of projects that are unrelated to Google’s core business inevitably lead to some insight, invention, or innovation that impacts the brand’s bigger goals. And, their employees are happier and more engaged with their work in the process. GET SOME OUTSIDE HELPSometimes, all it takes to spark a new idea is an outsider’s perspective. Find a partner like Gembah who can review your initial designs and take them from a quick sketch to a full mock-up and 3D model. They can also advise on factors such as manufacturing feasibility, budget, sustainability, and import/export. Outside help can also come from your customers. Don’t be shy about asking your loyal customers for their input on what products to develop next. Turn to your social media channels to ask your followers what they want to see next. If you have a rewards program or loyalty program, invite your best customers to an exclusive event where you can get their feedback about your brand. If you’re not comfortable or willing to go to your customers, mine their data for behavioral insights or buying patterns that can indicate where the market is going next. Trend watchers like Mintel can help you innovate based on data from your target audience. This article is originally posted on Gembah.
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With CES 2020 wrapping up a few weeks ago, there’s a lot to digest. We saw tons of innovative products in fitness tech, TVs, self-driving vehicles, and even basics like Bluetooth technology. CES is a spectacle that never fails to impress, and while some products might be more realistic than others, the showcase can be a source of inspiration for product developers and entrepreneurs. Designing a great product doesn’t happen overnight. Many of the over 45,000 companies that introduced products at CES built on emerging trends from the past few years. But for entrepreneurs working on the next big idea, it could be something as simple as a napkin scrawl and the right partner to move your design a leap ahead. Read on for the most innovative products at CES 2020 – and take inspiration from their example. FOLDABLE TABLETS AND LAPTOPSCES 2019 featured foldable phones, like Huawei’s foldable Mate X – inspired by Intel’s “Horseshoe Bend” reference design. This year, the foldable trend expands to laptops and tablets. Analysts are buzzing about Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold, a foldable display that combines the best features of a laptop and tablet in one sleek design. Lenovo’s tablet features a 13.3-inch screen that folds in half and supports a stylus with Windows Ink and a magnetic keyboard that can be attached for use as a normal laptop. Dell also debuted two foldables, the Concept Ori and the Concept Duet. This next evolution in foldable screens promises to “offer laptop users more immersive movies, generously large spreadsheets and better tools for editing photos and videos,” according to CNET. WITHINGS SCANWATCHFitness trackers have come a long way since the first Fitness entered the market in 2008. Withings’ ScanWatch was lauded as the best digital health product of CES 2020, largely due to the addition of the built-in SpO2 sensor. This feature can help you determine whether or not you need to be tested for sleep apnea, bridging the gap between fitness tech and medical health tracking. The ScanWatch looks like an analog watch, but it can track your heart rate for abnormal cardiac activity, has a battery life of 30 days, and includes a wide range of fitness activity tools. AMAZFIT HOMESTUDIOHuami, a wearable company, and Studio, a fitness startup, have teamed up to reinvent the treadmill, debuting the Amazfit HomeStudio at CES 2020. The smart treadmill promises to compete with existing products from Peloton as well as new market entrants like Mirror. “The most notable feature of the Amazfit HomeStudio is its lack of a traditional treadmill front. Instead, you control the device using your smartphone, while content is delivered to a separate, vertically oriented 43-inch HD screen that the companies are calling the Glass,” describes TechCrunch. The Amazfit HomeStudio combines expertise from both brands: the treadmill tracks metrics such as time, heart rate, distance, and calorie consumption, and even measures your form to offer tips to improve your running. The “Glass” screen in front of the track offers classes from Studio’s more than 1,000 online fitness classes, with a focus on treadmill running. HYDRALOOP WATER RECYCLERGreen-tech found new prominence at this year’s CES, and one of the best products was Hydraloop’s Water Recycler. “The large appliance, which filters and purifies grey water from baths, showers, and washing machines, employs a series of six maintenance-free filtration techniques, and can recycle up to 85% of the water used in the home for re-use in toilets, pools, and irrigation systems (your toilet and kitchen sink are safe from filtration, so don’t fret),” writes a reviewer from Time Magazine. Hydraloop recyclers are already in use in Africa and Europe; not only do they save the planet, but they can save money. By company estimates, a four-person household can save up to 20,000 gallons of water per year. MOTION PILLOWWater is just one scarce resource that tech is aiming to save in 2020. Sleep is another. The Motion Pillow is a consumer good that helps reduce snoring. “A box on your nightstand records audio as you sleep, then sends it to your phone for analysis. When the app detects snoring, the pillow inflates in various positions, gently juggling your head around until you quiet down,” describes Fast Company. A lack of sleep affects more than 45% of Americans, with serious health implications; it’s no wonder that the Motion Pillow was an honoree in this year’s CES Innovation Awards. This article is originally posted on Gembah.
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It’s undeniably more affordable to outsource your product manufacturing to a factory in China or India. But, for most entrepreneurs, it’s difficult to discern which factory is the best fit. Instead of learning how to vet a manufacturing partner, many people rely on a sourcing agent to help navigate the process. While it’s easy enough to find a manufacturer yourself or through a third party, sourcing agents and factories on Alibaba too often take advantage of entrepreneurs and new businesses that haven’t learned how to vet a manufacturing partner. Working with the wrong factory can lead to huge amounts of waste and costs: defective and poor-quality products, and missed production deadlines, are all too common when working with a factory that hasn’t properly been vetted. Here’s what entrepreneurs need to know about assessing a potential manufacturing partner. ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONSviously, the biggest question you will have is the cost: how much the factory will charge to manufacture your product. But cost isn’t the only thing you need to consider. There are plenty of factories out there that will charge pennies – to deliver a product with terrible quality and is virtually worthless. In addition to asking for a price quote, Shopify recommends that you ask these questions to vet a manufacturing partner: What is your minimum order quantity? Especially with a new product, make sure the minimum order quantity (MOQ) is a manageable amount of inventory. Dead-stock is costly; so make sure your MOQ matches your business plan and projections. What is your sample pricing? The price of a sample ranges dramatically, depending on the supplier. It could be free, discounted, or the full retail price – so make sure to ask upfront. What is your production pricing? Shopify’s experts recommend that you “ask for pricing for several quantities to get a sense of if and how they do discounted pricing for bulk orders.” What is your turnaround time? Including the time it takes to ship, how fast can a factory get the product to your business? What are your payment terms? It’s common for suppliers to ask for new businesses to make the full payment upfront, which is something you should certainly know ahead of time. See if there’s room to negotiate if your relationship goes beyond the first order. Do you subcontract work to other factories, or is all the work done in-house? This question is a big one: make sure the factory you’re vetting is the one who will be creating your product. If you’re outsourcing to an overseas company, they are likely to run your email through a translating app. Keep your email short and to the point to make sure that nothing gets lost in translation. ASK TO SEE THE BUSINESS LICENSEReputable manufacturing companies in India, China, and elsewhere will have a business license, and if they can’t show proof of legal incorporation and that they are allowed to export, this is a red flag. Not only can a business license help you ensure quality control, but it also “provides valuable information about the company’s business scope and registered capital,” writes The Next Web. A company's business scope tells you the purpose of founding the company. For instance, if a company was founded to focus on distribution, then the business is probably not as experienced or reliable in manufacturing. They could be a trader, meaning they outsource to other factories. Likewise, if the company has a small amount of registered capital – i.e., the investment with which the business was founded – that could also be a sign the company a trader. Look for manufacturers that have a large amount of registered capital. A good manufacturing partner should send you a copy of their business license. If you want to verify the document, check the relevant government website. Alibaba and Global sources both provide automatic business license verification. GET REFERENCES FROM OTHER COMPANIESPerhaps the most critical step in vetting a company is checking reviews from other clients who’ve outsourced to their factory. Ask the manufacturing partner to provide references from other clients. Get in touch with those clients directly to make sure they had a good experience. Ask your manufacturing partner who else they’ve worked with, and to put you in touch with someone at the company who can verify the relationship. This article is Originally Posted on Gembah
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Fast Company’s Innovation By Design award winners in 2019 all have a few things in common: they’re sleek, intuitive, and many have a sustainability focus. From a carbon-negative, algae-based plastic raincoat to a reusable takeaway-cup service for large venues, the winning designs all meld form and function to create a great user experience for the customer and the planet. Designing a great product doesn’t happen overnight. There are many product development strategies an entrepreneur can take to reach a break-through design. The process could start with something as simple as a napkin scrawl and continue with finding the right partner to move your design a leap ahead. Here are the different approaches that many businesses take to designing a new product. TRADITIONAL BUSINESS APPROACHThe traditional business approach considers two factors when designing a product. Will the product be viable, i.e., how does it benefit the business? And, what is the operational and technical feasibility of designing the product? Using the traditional business approach to design, a company would identify a problem, or a set of problems, and then derive what the company thought it could offer as a profitable solution. The traditional business approach to product development strategy seems relatively straightforward, but it often doesn’t lead to success. It focuses on the “how” and “what,” rather than the “why” – why does a customer need a product? The metrics for greenlighting a product design, namely viability and feasibility, are company-centric and don’t consider the needs of the end-user. Hence, the rise of design-thinking. DESIGN THINKING APPROACHDesign thinking incorporates the user experience into the design process, moving beyond the simple look and feel part of product design. Design thinking was popularized by IDEO founder Tim Brown, who describes it as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” One of the aspects of design thinking that makes it so successful is the prototyping phase. Designers can help lower the risk of launching a new product by testing the product design with small groups of users throughout the development process. A prototype helps validate that the product is something a customer can understand, will use, and that the design is appealing before the product goes to mass production. LEAN UX APPROACHThe Lean Start-up and Lean UX approaches take design thinking a step further, putting the prototyping process front and center. Lean Start-up is an approach to starting a business venture that takes an idea, translates it into a product or service, measures how customers respond, and then takes the learnings to pivot or iterate. Lean UX takes that same approach and applies it specifically to design. Lean UX focuses on the human experience behind the design. The deliverables of the entire product development strategy are less important than the learnings the design process delivers. “The core objective is to focus on obtaining feedback as early as possible so that it can be used to make quick decisions,” explains one UX blog. The goal of Lean UX is to get feedback quickly and use it to continuously improve. It’s an approach that is particularly collaborative – as if the customer is designing the product alongside the company. The drawback is that this approach to design can ignore other factors related to development; Lean UX can lead to somewhat of a product design bubble. DESIGN SPRINT APPROACHDesign sprint is a subset of the design thinking approach. There are five phases to the design sprint process that take place on five separate days:
Which approach is right for you? It depends on the maturity of your company and the resources at your disposal. Speak to one of the experts at Gembah to learn how our experts can help with product development strategy. For copyrights and publication, please review each individual article for author's information and contact
Interested in growing your business? There are a variety of ways to do so; but how do you know which strategy is right for your venture? A market product grid helps companies plot out their growth strategy and visualize the risks associated with expansion. It can help key leaders make decisions around product development, distribution, marketing, and even hiring. The matrix was initially published by Harvard Business Review and has since become a core teaching at business schools all over the world. Here’s what you need to know about a market product grid, and how to use one to initiate your growth strategy. WHAT IS A MARKET PRODUCT GRID? market product grid, also known as an Ansoff Matrix or a product-market expansion grid, is a tool that businesses use to develop a growth strategy by considering new and existing markets, new and existing products, and the risks of each possible relationship. The market product grid divides strategic outcomes by four major categories:
HOW TO MAKE A MARKET PRODUCT GRIDThe simplest market product grid uses two axes: the x-axis for products (new and existing), and the y-axis for markets (new and existing). To use the matrix effectively, business leaders must have a firm understanding of where the best opportunities lie given the company’s current position. Recognize how many resources you can expend, as well as what your risk tolerance is. Typically, strategic leaders start in the market penetration quadrant, where they’re bringing an existing product to an existing market. This quadrant is considered the most obvious starting point for any company: it attempts to gain market share in an existing market. This approach “does not require the company to venture into unexplored markets and products. As a result, it provides a lower amount of risk because essentially the organization’s scope remains unchanged.” However, sometimes increased competition or economic and legal constraints prevent a company from pursuing further market penetration. In these instances, a company might choose to pursue product development: bringing a new product to an existing market. This strategy is one level up on the risk scale. It involves diversifying to new products, but not to new markets; often, companies mitigate this risk by using the same core technology, instead of developing entirely new products. Likewise, this strategy is likely to be more expensive as new talent and tools may be needed to create a new product. Some companies prefer to forgo product development in favor of a market development approach. Market development, bringing an existing product to a new market, requires an effort in planning and customer research. But it doesn’t need to be so complicated. A new market can be tapped simply by:
WHAT GROWTH STRATEGY IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS? A product market grid can help you answer this question. But, strategic leaders must factor in costs, risk, and their type of product or customer. A manufacturing or distribution partner can help alleviate some of the burden of expanding into a new market. Mature businesses will have different risk tolerances than a startup, and depending on your industry, it can be hard to find a place that isn’t already fiercely competitive. Do your market research to learn more. This article originally appeared on: https://gembah.com/what-is-a-market-product-grid/ The Misfits Lair, a project by Zinnia Holdings LLC (c) For copyrights and publication, please review each individual article for author's information and contact
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