A REPASS Client Story: 3 Strategies for Product Innovation Under Pressure

The American living room. Not just a gathering place for Netflix groupies, discarded shoes and wayward nacho crumbs. It’s also the center of the universe for an über-competitive, unforgiving consumer technology industry.

Their $64,000 question – maybe their $64 billion question – is what does the living room of the future look like? How does it connect? Entertain? Communicate? How does it merge very human habits and lifestyles with an increasingly intelligent library of devices?

The question is so transforming, and the stakes so high, that even one of the industry’s heaviest hitters was looking for answers. The company was under pressure to launch a new product for the connected living room – FAST. Within six months, in fact.

Problem was, they didn’t have a clear vision for what product to launch.

That’s when Repass got involved. By the time our research project was done, the client had 50 product ideas in hand and three fully-developed product pitches. One product launched before the six month goal, and later a new category of products developed.

The secret was a three stage “insight to innovations” study that was efficient, got maximum impact and provoked rich, meaningful answers. We didn’t have a lot of time to gather and crunch numbers. So we went straight to the source – consumers – with quick and personal qualitative interaction.

If you need to quickly develop a new product, any or all of these three techniques could help.

Online Video Diaries: Gave a snapshot of how people live, their preferences and how they use products. Flexible and low investment of time. National or global reach with easy-to-edit video at the ready. Effective for supporting findings during internal evaluations.

In Home Interviews: Provided a deep understanding of day-to-day home life, with plenty of context. Painted a realistic picture of how people were connecting devices and TVs throughout their home (especially the living room).

Ideation Workshop: For two days, the team used these insights to dig, investigate and experiment. We brainstormed. We prototyped. We tested ideas in the moment. Then we did it again.

And that’s how you get 50 ideas when you need them now.

The techniques alone weren’t the entire story. The process was a quick success because participants:

* Were willing to explore new territory; every avenue was open for a look.

* Used research findings to sell their ideas to leadership.

* Relied on an agile and iterative process, building on ideas and gaining feedback all along the way.

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