Tools for Early Innovation
What you'll learn
- Learn a simple process for the early stages of innovation
- Show the importance of customer insights to eventual new product success
- Know the customer insight tools to use at each step
- Increase the odds that your innovations will be successful
Requirements
- Handouts require a .pdf reader
Description
Most new products & services fail. The #1 reason is that their developers failed to do the necessary customer research. What are customers' top unmet needs? What ideas are most appealing to customers? What is the optimal product design? This course teaches four tools that ALL innovators can use: the product innovation charter, ethnography, concept testing and conjoint analysis. These tools get used during the critical early phases of innovation.
COURSE FORMAT
This course consists of 46 minutes of videos, broken into thirteen 1-6 minute lectures. There are four downloadable .pdf's with templates students can use on their own projects. Four quizzes test comprehension. The primary method of teaching is case studies illustrating the use of the four tools.
INSTRUCTOR
Instructor Brian Ottum has a Ph.D. in market research, focused on the innovation process. After starting his career as a chemical engineer at Procter & Gamble, Brian has supervised hundreds of customer insight projects for clients in many industries.
COURSE OUTLINE
This course begins with the instructors bio, then shows how early innovation fits in with the entire innovation process. Actual research data is cited to justify spending the time and money on customer research. Then a simple 4-step early innovation process is described. The best tool to use at step is covered. Case studies and a quiz complete each of the four steps. At the end, students are given suggestions on where to go for deeper learning.
WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE?
This course is for product developers, product managers, marketers, engineers, scientists, designers, market researchers, customer insights managers, market analysts, and business leaders who need to know what tool to use when.
Questions? Email Brian at ottum@comcast.net or call him on his cell: 1-734-260-0597 (9am-9pm US Eastern Time)
Who this course is for:
- This is a market research course targeted to business professionals who have responsibility for developing new products or services.
- Product managers, product developers, project leaders, marketers, engineers, market researchers, customer insights managers and business leaders will get the most out of this course.
Instructor
For 20 years, Brian has helped companies gather the insights they need to create successful innovations.His consulting practice is focused on the proper market research methods & analytics to create new product ideas, screen concepts, optimize product design, and set price.Because similar tools apply across all industries, Brian has participated in hundreds of projects spanning consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, medical devices, chemicals, high tech, law, energy, automotive, publishing, finance and consumer durables.
Brian started his career as a chemical engineer at Procter & Gamble, and also earned an MBA. His Ph.D. was focused on market research during new product development.His dissertation found what separates success from failure by studying 60 new product projects. The #1 factor was market research insights.
Brian has an encyclopedic command of the full range of market research & analytical tools.He has developed state-of-the-art research methods in consumer needs identification (using KJ analysis), catching online survey cheaters (using four programming changes), and product optimization/pricing (using Van Westendorp, conjoint analysis, & discrete choice modeling).
Brian is frequent speaker on innovation topics at national conferences and at company sites.He has written chapters in four books on new product development tools.