Novuconcept®: Customer based development

The problem:

Is it really profitable to have an engineering team with 50 researchers spend three years developing a new pen for space if the astronaut ends up using a simple pencil? Often, cheap and simple substitutes for elaborate inventions are already well established or the developers are not aware of important factors which influence the buyers' decision. Old market segmentations are not re-evaluated and the developers get insufficient information about the true requirements of a new product concept.

The solution: Customer based development with Novuconcept®

Novuconcept® is a method to develop market oriented product concepts. With this method, the innovation is generated by the future user and translated into new, attractive product alternatives through a structured process. Customer needs are identifed, analyzed and ranked by a variety of methods. The users themselves combine several requirements to different product suggestions and rank them. Potential risks and different business models are simulated, before the expensive technical realization is started.

The Novuconcept® method is structured into three phases:

  1. Identification of customer needs
  2. Development of product concepts
  3. Analysis of product potential
The benefits:

Novuconcept® delivers the basis for management decisions as well as building a framework for technical development:

  • Product concepts developed and ranked by users
  • Early transparency of user acceptance of a future product
  • Comprehensive segmentation
  • Detailed workflows
  • Identification of customer needs [aware and unconscious]
  • Ranking of needs [purchasing criteria]
  • USPs of substitutes and competing products
  • Discovery of potential risks
  • Estimation of contribution margin before further development decisions are taken