At The Garage Group, we tout building consumer-first innovation – starting by falling in love with the problem we’re solving before ideating on solutions. In reality, that isn’t always how things go.
What if your R&D Team has proactively stayed ahead of an emerging trend, tinkered with a new technology, or found a way to make your existing product better? Being consumer problem led doesn’t mean you should slow your R&D teams down. Instead, use the “clues” they are uncovering as a springboard for consumer-first innovation.
Channel Your R&D Team’s Proactivity into Results
Often, R&D leaders are vetting long-term development bets based on strategic priorities and a keen understanding of the landscape. These product improvements can create competitive advantage. Or, they can address internal feasibility or viability challenges in manufacturing or supply chain. The key is to avoid investing too much time, money, and resources into developing an idea without visibility into the problem(s) it could solve.
Each year, our TGG team tackles 6-8 challenges like this with our F1000 partners. Under time pressure to solve business problems, R&D teams expertly identify product solves. Next, the team spins their wheels for the next 3 months trying to build the consumer proposition.
That’s when we get the ask:
“We know we have a breakthrough new product, but none of our concepts are landing with consumers. Can you help?”
In every scenario, we design a slightly different approach – based on context and the unique demands of the project. But, each approach follows the same overall steps:
The risk of not operating this way is getting stuck in endless cycles of premature “optimization” without clarity on what success looks like. Or worse, forcing something to market that makes sense internally, but misses the mark with consumers so it’s discontinued a year later.
Through our product-led workstreams, F1000 leaders have been able to reframe their solution exploration into “clues”. These “clues” help to iteratively reveal consumer problems available for solving. The team spends the rest of our engagement refining key attributes of the product based on more clearly understanding “what would need to be true” to get hired vs. other solutions.
3 Tips When You Have a Product Before a Problem:
- Seek to Understand Before Forcing Optimization – It’s easy to fall in love with our ideas and start to optimize them too quickly. But how do you know what features to prioritize if you don’t know what the solution is supposed to accomplish? Instead, use the product idea to engage in a more thorough discussion with consumers about how they envision it working, the benefits it might offer, and its relevance to what they do today.
- Don’t Develop the Idea too Far – R&D development can quickly become resource-intensive. Find small ways to experiment on the key feasibility assumptions for an early “proof of principle” and learn on consumer desirability assumptions (e.g., is it solving a problem in a meaningful way?) as early on as possible. Iterating between these two types of assumptions will decrease your time and cost investment, while increasing your understanding of what will need to be true to win in the market.
- It’s an Opportunity to Drive Differentiation – When creating a description of “What the Idea Is” and “How it Works”, you put the pieces together in a tangible way that makes the idea more real for consumers. This “realness” invites a deeper discussion of how this is or isn’t different than current solutions, and where more meaningful differentiation could be built in.
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Does your team have a great idea that needs clarity on the consumer problem to solve? Reach out. Our TGG Team can help!
