From insights to impact: How early innovation strategy boosts product success

In today’s rapidly evolving market landscape, successful innovation requires more than just a great idea. It demands a deep understanding of consumer needs. By integrating consumer insights into the early innovation stages, you can anticipate those needs, address pain points before your competitors, and ultimately create products that truly resonate. 

Read on to discover how SKIM’s approach has helped leading companies like Whirlpool and Indeed become innovation leaders – and how your business can do the same. 

Why early innovation matters in product development

The early stages of innovation are critical, laying the foundation for future success. We’ve found that many companies rush into ideation without truly understanding underlying consumer behaviors, which can lead to poor product performance and inefficient use of resources. 

The advantages of prioritizing a deep understanding of consumer behavior from the outset include offering products that truly resonate with your audience, increasing brand loyalty, and gaining a competitive advantage.

The challenge: How can focusing on the early innovation stages improve new product development? 

The early product innovation process has two phases that are integral to crafting a comprehensive new product strategy, backed up by actionable insights.

1. Discover. In this critical phase, consumer needs and challenges are uncovered, leading to ideation. Detailed insights into expressed and latent needs can serve as the foundation for the subsequent phases of new product development.
2. Define. While many companies begin with ideation, we’ve found it’s truly valuable to take the time to understand underlying consumer behaviors. That’s why our ‘Define’ phase is crucial. By assessing early-stage ideas through the lens of consumer psychology and market realities, we help our clients win. Using advanced analytics-based solutions like Opportunity Mapping or Unspoken™ that provide validation even in early development phases, early-stage ideas are evaluated and screened to focus on those with the highest potential. Full concepts are also crafted via SKIM’s Concept Builder solution before moving on through the development pipeline.

The approach: 3 distinctive elements to maximize your impact

SKIM’s recommended approaches for early innovation are to:

1. Disrupt behavior: For a new product to be successful, it needs to change people’s patterns or behaviors. It has to become a regular part of their lives. A deep understanding of current consumers behavior and pain points helps inform potential success.
2. Test in context: To ensure your innovation thrives in the real world, replicate real-life consumer choices using specialized tools such as SKIM’s Unspoken™ mobile app to test in context. This approach yields accurate insights and reduces risk by measuring if a product idea is strong enough to create implicit attention in a competitive context. 
3. Incorporate behavioral science: Behavioral research solutions are critical to effectively capture consumer decision-making. SKIM utilizes intuitive mobile survey designs that balance less-conscious (System 1) and rational (System 2) exercises to trigger natural behavior to capture implicit and conscious decision-making.

The solution: How Indeed and Whirlpool fuel their strategies

Indeed and Whirlpool have consistently proven themselves to be pioneers in their respective industries, always pushing the boundaries of innovation. A key factor in their success has been their strategic partnerships with SKIM. 

By embracing SKIM’s consultative and insight-backed approach to innovation, these forward-thinking companies have deeply embedded consumer insights into their early-stage development processes. This commitment to understanding and anticipating consumer needs has not only fueled their impressive growth but also solidified their positions as true innovation leaders.

Indeed, the world’s #1 job site, prioritizes meeting customers’ primary and evolving needs as a crucial aspect of developing new products and improving upon current offerings. However, Indeed aims to go further, seeking to anchor its innovation approach in untapped market opportunities by addressing customers’ latent needs. Partnering with SKIM, Indeed explored the nuanced, often “invisible” needs and desires of their target customers. This approach allowed them to tailor their products and demonstrate a deep understanding, resulting in a more relevant and impactful offering. Through this partnership, they also leveraged advanced tools aligned with these underlying forces and conducted collaborative workshops to integrate customer insights directly into their product development strategy. This approach provided a comprehensive view of the most promising innovation opportunities. 

“We see SKIM as a partner who helps us synthesize data and market dynamics that shape our customers’ preferences into clear, action-oriented insights that keep our innovation pointed in the right direction.”

– Angela Kesselman | Sr. Manager, Brand Research & Insights | Indeed

Whirlpool stresses the importance of co-creation within their new product development, implementing a full-circle approach that involves consumer insights, marketers, engineers, experts, and creatives. However, even with a fully involved approach to ideation, brands often face the challenge of identifying which ideas should be pursued further. A key aspect of SKIM’s collaboration with Whirlpool has been the development and curation of an interactive online database, allowing team members to effectively keep track of idea performance and cross-reference new ideas with consumer sentiment over time. Before partnering with SKIM, Whirlpool’s idea testing efforts were siloed and inconsistent across rounds of testing. By introducing new tools and rigorous testing methodologies that aligned feasibility with consumer needs and desires, SKIM enabled Whirlpool to create a more cohesive and innovative development process, leading to successful product launches like the WipeClean™ coating for electric ranges, showcased at KBIS 2024.

“SKIM brings a positive attitude to the innovation process and remains open to handling our most difficult business questions. They help us determine the right approaches to answer our questions.”

– Wendy Uhlman | Consumer Insights Manager | Product at Whirlpool Corporation

4 key takeaways to unlock your innovation potential

Embracing these expert tips to create products that your customers love:

1. Start with the consumer. Ground your innovation efforts in a deep understanding of consumer needs and pain points. Prioritizing consumer insights ensures innovations are driven by real-world needs and preferences.
   
2. Iterate and validate. Use insights to test in context and refine your ideas. This iterative process helps ensure that your innovations are market-ready and well-received by consumers.
   
3. Balance emotional and functional needs. Successful products address both the practical and emotional aspects of consumer behavior. An insights-based innovation strategy can help capture and integrate these dimensions into new product development.
   
4. Monitor over time. Continually collect and analyze consumer data to stay ahead of market trends and shifts. This proactive approach enables you to seize innovation opportunities before your competitors.

If you’d like to learn more, schedule a consultation with one of our experts. To hear more about the later stages of the innovation process, read the story of snack food start-up, El Origen.