To improve the speed and success rate for your New Product Development (NPD) and innovation activities, you need to:
- Start with a good idea (customer need)
- Successfully develop the solution
- Successfully implement the solution
Since there are no guarantees as to which ideas are the “good ones,” the challenge is to evaluate the various ideas and determine which ones we should resource.
You should create an Idea Generation Checklist to help with this assessment.
The secret isn’t filling out an idea generation checklist – it’s step #2: Write an ad
The checklist has four key areas:
1. Description of the Idea
Briefly describe the suggested idea and its benefits.
2. Write an Advertisement
This is a unique section and the secret to success. As soon as you have an idea, turn it into an ad. Every new idea should start with an ad or a picture.
An ad is the language of marketing. It literally paints a picture. You don’t have anything to talk about until you put your ideas into an ad.
In the act of writing the ad, you force yourself to start developing the idea. What is the main benefit of the product? You can’t write a headline without answering that question. What about name? Package? Main selling points?
This ad isn’t meant to be polished or a test of anyone’s creative or artistic ability. It can be a hand sketch, or a cut & paste from something, it doesn’t matter.
3. Assessment of our Technical and Commercialization Capabilities
This section is a checklist of items. The objective is to estimate of our “Probability of Success” both technical and commercialization, as well as how much effort it will require.
Here’s a way to create an overall evaluation for initial screening.
Commercial High Medium Low
Probability of Success
Amount of Effort
Cost to Implement
Technical High Medium Low
Probability of Success
Amount of Effort
Cost to Develop
4. Assessment of Financial Viability
At this early point, the analysis is simplistic: what’s the current market pricing for competitive products. Next determine the margin level need by your customers. Layer in your margin requirements and customer loads to quickly back into a cost target. If it passes the sniff test, there is still a green light at this initial stage.
Turn your innovation concept into an ad to powerfully share your vision
A picture is worth 1000 words. Nowhere is that more true than when you are trying to powerfully communicate a new product concept.
It articulates the vision of the idea clearly for everyone at the screening stage and sets the stage for a more compelling commercialization.
Good Selling!
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