Sellion

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brand development specialists

Idea Screening
If you have generated plenty of ideas for a new product, youll need to evaluate them for viability, score them, and decide which ones youll want to further investigate. This is the objective of the Idea Screen.

Winning Criteria
First, youll want to establish criteria to judge each idea against. The criteria will often involve the following: Alignment with your Product Innovation Strategy Degree of compatibility with the companys values & principles (ex: moral, health, environmental) Market attractiveness / opportunity Project feasibility Degree of product advantage over other options Ability to leverage existing company resources

Here are some great questions to ask when evaluating your ideas. A number of Nos should indicate the idea needs some work or should be scrapped. 1. Does the product represent something completely new and different from anything out there in the marketplace? Would it likely appeal to a specialty/niche segment of people? 2. Does the idea have a unique design to it, thatll make it appeal to more people than a comparable product does now? 3. Will this idea offer a noticeably superior quality in comparison to competitive offerings? If so, can it remain in the same price range as those competitive products? 4. If its a popular item (in terms of category volume), would you be able to noticeably lower its price without affecting its quality? 5. Is the idea able to offer enough new features to differentiate it from the competition? If so, to what degree would these additional features be of value or seen as advantageous? 6. For popular products, will your idea enable you to produce and distribute it faster than the competition? Importantly, will this matter? Popular competitive products may carry a strong brand appeal which may be too high a hurdle. However, if the product category is a bit more commoditized, then speed to market will denitely be a strong advantage. 7. How much longevity does your product idea have? Is it part of an established category of products, a trend, or a fad? Having a grip on this is crucial. Im not saying some product categories are no-growth, sometimes it depends on the sales channel. But obviously you dont want to base a lot of business on a me-too product whose lifespan may only last a few years. 8. Similar to #7, how new is this idea compared to existing products in your portfolio or pipeline? Buyers are likely to be approached next season by similar products with the additional features and attributes youll be pitching. If youre redesigning a SKU to extend its lifespan, that may be ne. But ultimately, you should try and have additional, newer concepts in your development pipeline.

Sellion

brand development specialists

The Review Session

The format for the review session and how its conducted is up to each rm. Here are some tips: Allow transparency into the presentations and foster open discussion. The more people that feel they are a part of the process, the larger the buy-in will be. Personnel from Sales, Marketing, R&D, and PDD (Product Design and Development) are the key attendees to these sessions. Communicate to them the decision-making criteria and the primary aspects of the Product Innovation Strategy. Create standardized idea forms for presenters to ll-out and distribute. Fields include: product denition, target market, explanation of user benets, and criteria against which the ideas are judged, and a sketch (if applicable). With a large number of ideas and participants, create voting schemes. This could involve having idea cards/boards set up around the presentation room, and giving every participant a number of votes. Voting by raised hands can work, but perhaps it might be best to give people post-its to place on the ideas they like, then tally the votes. Techniques may vary - the idea is that participation is important.

Once youve selected your winning ideas, place them into an idea portfolio. Any ideas leftover that had some terric potential, but for some reason couldnt make the cut, should be stored in an idea bank for future review. There might be a new sales channel opening at a future date, through which these older ideas may be of value. The next phase is Scoping, which involves assessing the market, technical, and business / nancial merits of your selected ideas.

About Us
Sellion is a brand development company specializing in bringing health, beauty, nutritional, and homeopathic products to market. Our multi-disciplinary team can help you in the ideation and screening process, and investigate the merits of your concepts, build a business case, development strategy, and launch plan for marketing and distribution across the US retail landscape.

For more information, give us a call at: (401) 294-2660