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Innovation Services—Worldwide Interactive Innovation
Innovation Imperative
An organization's ability to survive is defined by its capacity to innovate. Companies must continuously adapt to changing markets, changing technologies,
and changing consumer habits and preferences. That's where we can help. Innovation is what we do.
More Than New Products
Innovation is more than just coming up with ideas for new products. We help companies apply the creativity process to improve their marketing, including:
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Enhancing the Open Model Through the Use of Community
by
Michael Richarme, Ph.D. and Gwen Ishmael
Communities can be a viable open innovation source. This article contains six simple steps to making an innovation community effective.
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- New service concepts
- New branding strategies
- New customer experiences
- New brand names
- New positioning concepts
- New promotion ideas
- New packaging ideas
- New display and point-of-sale ideas
The Right People—Consumer-Led Innovation
The process begins by involving individuals who are exceptionally creative. The Imaginators®, Decision Analyst's online consumer creativity panel, is
comprised of everyday people who have been tested for high levels of "idea-centric creativity"—the ability to generate large numbers of highly original
ideas for new products and services. To date, more than 220,000 people have been tested using our proprietary testing system. Each panelist ranks in the
top 4% of the general population in terms of idea-centric creative abilities. As a result, the Imaginators' ideas are truly unique and often breakthrough in nature.
Idea-centric creativity can be identified among nonconsumer groups as well. To date, nearly 75,000 business and trade professionals have been evaluated for idea-centric creativity.
The Right Setting—It's Not A Focus Group
The typical focus group setting—ten chairs arranged around a long table—is excellent for gathering respondents' opinions and reactions, but it is not the
right environment for innovation. Innovation flourishes in an environment that stimulates the brain's right side.
That's why our ideation sessions involve creativity exercises, games, associations, unstructured environments (no tables or chairs), spider mapping, guided visualization,
and a variety of proprietary techniques developed by Decision Analyst, including "Zoom Out" and "A Picture Is Worth ...Lots."
The Right Amount Of Time—Innovation Isn't Instantaneous
Often the most creative ideas take a while to surface, or they develop as a
result of several smaller ideas coming together. The more time participants
have to think about a problem and build on the ideas put forward by others,
the more likely it is that the end results will be truly unique and innovative.
Innovation sessions are conducted over relatively long periods of time. In-person
sessions last six to eight hours, while an online session can extend over a
period of ten business days.
The Right Process—Not Just Brainstorming
Decision Analyst's approach to innovation is a bit different; we use a systemized,
creative, problem-solving model based on Socratic inquiry. Our sessions follow
a proprietary creativity guide that is objective- and exercise-oriented rather
than discussion-oriented. This guide provides the subtle structure that is critical
to generating highly unique ideas and suggestions.
Next, Decision Analyst sorts through, combines, and builds on the raw ideas generated in the sessions, and develops a set of first-stage concepts—working
names, written descriptions of features and benefits, and supporting illustrations (as needed). Then we hold a first-stage concept review meeting with our client
and jointly identify which concepts warrant further development. The selected concepts are reviewed by a small sample from Decision Analyst's consumer panel
to identify how each one can be improved. Then each concept is polished and honed until it is a true and accurate rendition of the product idea.
Applied Creativity Process®
We also facilitate internal innovation sessions for clients and conduct Applied Creativity Process® training sessions—Decision Analyst's unique approach
to creative problem solving.
Innovation Services
Decision Analyst has been involved in new product concept development and service development for 30 years. We have helped to develop electronic educational toys,
electronic games, cellular phones, customer loyalty programs, retail environments, and numerous new food, beverage, and household products. With our targeted innovation
processes we can bring transformational change to your new product development efforts.
Innovation services is the culmination of our new products learning to provide
innovation for competitive advantage. We have evolved traditional qualitative
research into nontraditional, breakthrough ideation services, based on a worldwide
Internet platform. We are a global leader in ideation services.
For more information on our Innovation Services, please contact Gwen Ishmael by emailing gishmae@decisionanalyst.com
or calling 1-800-ANALYSIS (262-5974) or 1-817-640-6166.
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