New Product Blueprinting
Innovating for B2B organic growth
The key to growth-propelling innovation is customer insight.
Most B2B companies are unaware of how much untapped potential they have. Leading B2B firms are upending markets with the science called New Product Blueprinting. Want to join them?
Innovation is a skill and a science
1. Segment your markets
Good segmentation helps you focus resources on markets that are winnable and worth winning. At AIM workshops, teams learn internet research skills and how to engage retired industry experts to scope out new markets.
2. Interview your customers
To truly hear the “voice of the customer” (VOC) a team conducts customer tours and Discovery Interviews, generating scores of potential needs to pursue. Later, the team conducts Preference Interviews to gather hard data about customer needs.
3. Benchmark your competitors
In this phase, side-by-side testing is done to gauge competitive offerings, using customers’ preferred test procedures, product outcomes and acceptability criteria. This engages customers in the new product research and design process, builds their confidence in your results, and gives you pricing insight so you don’t leave money on the table.
4. Plan New Products
The team now has a wealth of customer and competitive data visually displayed in Blueprinter. The Market Satisfaction Gap indicates customer eagerness for each unmet need. The team predicts market response to “what-if” product designs, and uses Blueprinter for new product planning and to create a compelling Business Case… before proceeding to product development stage.
With Blueprinting, the supplier becomes the code-breaker for customer needs
... Blueprinting not only helps suppliers learn; it helps customers think. B2B customers have this vast knowledge, but it’s scrambled, scattered among job functions, and encrypted. Blueprinting helps crack that code…it’s the Socratic method for mining the deep expertise of B2B customers.
Mike McCalley, GE
The Dow Chemical Company has been using AIM’s Blueprinting and LaunchStar processes since 2006
...and has found these disciplines to be extremely effective in truly understanding customers unmet needs and monetizing Innovation inside Dow!
Jim Gurnee, Dow Chemical
DuPont had a pretty good run at innovation in the 20th century
… nylon, Teflon®, Kevlar®, Tyvek® and more. We plan to keep that run going this century with Market Driven Innovation … using tools like New Product Blueprinting, implemented through TEAM e-MMERSION.”
Michael Kullman, Global Marketing Director, DuPont CompanyFront line innovation. Bottom line results
Email: browan@bluspecs.com
Website: www.bluspecs.com
Location: Europe- US
Twitter: @bluspecsinnova