Faster innovation and “Stealing with pride”

When it comes to product innovation, especially in the FMCG sector, very few ideas we see are truly new.

The vast majority of new product launches globally, are an extension of an existing idea from another category or country.

This underlines why stealing with pride is such an effective strategy for anyone trying to innovate faster, especially when R&D budgets are limited.

In 2015, we have seen an exponential increase in the number of manufacturers, both large and small, who are using our platform to steal with pride faster.

I thought a few folks might be interested in learning how this simple and yet incredibly impactful approach works.

Desk research and scan sales data can both quickly identify which new product introductions are flying off the shelves all over the world.

Our clients scan the world for these success stories, whether it is a product, packaging or communication innovation. They then ask us to place that product, packaging or communication into the hands of target consumers, in new potential markets, to see how they respond.

The idea of concept screening new products from overseas is not new, it has been around for decades.

The difference is that technology now enables the entire organisation to actually observe the behaviour and emotion the products generate, when they are used in a natural “in context “situation

This achieves a few things simultaneously.

• It provides an opportunity for everyone to learn what seems to work and not work and more importantly why?
• It helps build and shape hypothesis very quickly without the need to build expensive prototypes.
• It helps shape communication hierarchies.
• It builds internal and external stakeholder engagement.

It is incredibly simple but very effective.