market researchers regularly observe spine surgeons who use their products and competitive products to learn how

theirs can be improved. After living with lower-middle-class families in Mexico City, Procter & Gamble
researchers devised Downy Single Rinse, a fabric softener that removed an arduous step from the partly manual
laundry process there.
2. Ask customers about their problems with your products. Komatsu Heavy Equipment sent a group of engineers and
designers to the United States for six months to ride with equipment drivers and learn how to make products better.
Procter & Gamble, recognizing consumers were frustrated that potato chips break and are difficult to save after
opening the bag, designed Pringles to be uniform in size and encased in a protective tennis-ball-type can.
3. Ask customers about their dream products. Ask your customers what they want your product to do, even if the
ideal sounds impossible. One 70-year-old camera user told Minolta he would like the camera to make his subjects
look better and not show their wrinkles and aging. In response, Minolta produced a camera with two lenses, one for
rendering softer images of the subjects.
4. Use a customer advisory board to comment on your company’s ideas. Levi Strauss uses youth panels to discuss
lifestyles, habits, values, and brand engagements; Cisco runs Customer Forums to improve its offerings; and
Harley-Davidson solicits product ideas from its one million H.O.G. (Harley Owners Group) members.
5. Use Web sites for new ideas. Companies can use specialized search engines such as Technorati to find blogs and
postings relevant to their businesses. P&G’s corporate global Web site has a Share Your Thoughts section to gain
advice and feedback from customers.
6. Form a brand community of enthusiasts who discuss your product. Harley-Davidson and Apple have strong
brand enthusiasts and advocates; Sony engaged in collaborative dialogues with consumers to codevelop its
PlayStation products. LEGO draws on kids and influential adult enthusiasts for feedback on new-product concepts
in early stages of development.
7. Encourage or challenge your customers to change or improve your product. Salesforce.com wants its users to
develop and share new software applications using simple programming tools; International Flavors & Fragrances
gives a toolkit to its customers to modify specific flavors, which IFF then manufactures; LSI Logic Corporation
also provides customers with do-it-yourself toolkits so customers can design their own specialized chips; and
BMW posted a toolkit on its Web site to let customers develop ideas using telematics and in-car online services.

Source: From an unpublished paper, Philip Kotler, “Drawing New Ideas from Your Customers,” 2013.

Customer needs and wants are the logical place to start the search.60 Griffin and Hauser
suggest that conducting 10 to 20 in-depth experiential interviews per market segment often
uncovers the vast majority of customer needs.61 But other approaches can be profitable (see
“Marketing Memo: Seven Ways to Draw New Ideas from Your Customers”). One marketer-
sponsored café in Tokyo tests products of all kinds with affluent, influential young Japanese
women.62
The traditional company-centric approach to product innovation is giving way to a world in
which companies cocreate products with consumers. At BlankLabel.com, you can design your
own unique shirt by specifying the cut, size, collar, buttons, cuffs, and pockets you want.63
As noted above, companies are also increasingly turning to crowdsourcing to generate new
ideas. One form of crowdsourcing invites the online community to help create content or
software, often with prize money or a moment of glory as an incentive.64 When Baskin-Robbins
ran an online contest to pick its next flavor, 40,000 consumers entered. The winning entry—from
a 62-year-old grandmother of four—combined chocolate, nuts, and caramel and was launched as
Toffee Pecan Crunch.65 One recent convert to crowdsourcing is Cisco.66

CISCO The Cisco Internet of Things (IoT) Grand Challenge (formerly the Cisco I-Prize) is a
worldwide initiative, aiming to bring the industry together and accelerate the adoption of
breakthrough technologies and products that will contribute to the growth and evolution of
the Internet of Things. Awards of U.S. $250,000 in cash prizes are to be shared among three
winners, and can be used to jump-start ventures. Cisco also provides winners with mentoring,
training, and access to business expertise from Cisco and other supporting organizations.
From the inception of I-Prize, Cisco’s rationale for these challenges—which drew 2,500
entrepreneurs from 104 countries in its first iteration—was simple: “In many parts of the
world, you have incredibly smart people with incredibly great ideas who have absolutely no
access to capital to take a great idea and turn it into a business.”

Cisco’s I-Prize innovation competition, now called IoT, draws entries from around
the world, like this winning team from Russia, and has generated numerous new
product ideas.
In the first year, high-potential technology start-ups aimed to meet five main criteria with
their submissions: (1) Does it address a real pain point? (2) Will it appeal to a big enough
market? (3) Is the timing right? (4) If we pursue the idea, will we be good at it? and (5) Can
we exploit the opportunity for the long term? The public judged the entries online, where
Cisco found the detailed comments even more useful than the actual votes. The winning
entry in the first competition was a plan for a sensor-enabled smart-electricity grid. The
second competition drew 3,000 participants from more than 156 countries. The winning entry
was from a team of five university students from Mexico and based on the idea of a “Life
Account” that gathered information about users through connected devices in the physical
world and online data from the virtual world. The next two IoT Grand Challenges targeted
 Russia where Cisco has massive investment plans. One of the winning Russian IoT Grand
Challenge teams developed a system that uses a mobile phone as a mediator for transmitting
data from sensors to healthcare systems and is compatible with all major mobile phone
platforms, as well as more than 40 medical devices.
As the Cisco I-Prize has evolved into the form of the Cisco IoT Grand Challenge,
submissions are now entered into one of six categories: Applications and Application
Enablement, Analytics, Management, Networking, Security or Things. Each submission must
map to one of a variety of industries Education, Energy, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Oil and
Gas, Retail, Smart Cities, Sports and Entertainment or Transportation.

Besides producing new and better ideas, cocreation can help customers feel closer to the
company and create favorable word of mouth.67 Getting the right customers engaged in the right
way, however, is critical.68
Lead users can be a good source of input, even when they innovate products without the
consent or knowledge of the companies that produce them. Mountain bikes developed as a result
of youngsters taking their bikes to the top of a mountain and riding down. When the bikes broke,
the youngsters began building more durable bikes and adding motorcycle brakes, improved
suspension, and accessories. They, not bike companies, developed these innovations.
Some companies, particularly those that want to appeal to younger, leading-edge consumers,
bring their lead users into their product-design process. Technical companies can learn a great
deal by studying customers who make the most advanced use of the company’s products and
who recognize the need for improvements before other customers do.69 In a business-to-business
market, collecting information from distributors and retailers who are not usually in close contact
can provide more diverse insights and information.70
Not everyone believes a customer focus helps create better new products.71 As Henry Ford
famously said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Some still caution that being overly focused on consumers who may not really know what they
want, or what could be possible, can result in shortsighted product development and miss real
potential breakthroughs.72 Apple and IKEA have reputations for incorporating user input with
some caution, and others believe focusing on lead users leads to incremental and not
breakthrough innovation.73
STUDYING COMPETITORS Companies can find good ideas by researching the products and
services of competitors and other companies. They can find out what customers like and dislike
about competitors’ products. They can buy their competitors’ products, take them apart, and
build better ones. They can ask their own sales representatives and intermediaries for ideas.
These groups have firsthand exposure to customers and are often the first to learn about
competitive developments. Electronic retailer Best Buy even checks with venture capitalists to
find out what start-ups are working on.
To establish the optimal brand positioning for the new product and the right points-of-parity
and points- of-differences, marketers need a thorough understanding of the competition.
Consider how the fierce video game console battle among Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo has
spurred innovation as each firm attempts to break loose from the pack.74

VIDEO GAME CONSOLES Makers of video game consoles fight tooth-and-nail for the
minds and hearts of the 1 billion gamers worldwide, 220 million of whom live in the United
States. For the 2013 holiday season, Microsoft’s new Xbox One went head to head with
Sony’s new PS4. Although the two game consoles both added many new features—from
motion-detection cameras to allow gamers to play using gestures to technology linking the
gaming console to a smart phone or tablet—the Xbox One was priced $100 higher than the
PS4’s $399 list price. Microsoft also lost the early PR battle when it announced policies that
angered customers, such as restrictions on the process of gaming and sharing games. And the
company had a tough act to follow. Its earlier model, the Xbox 360, brought significant
power and online functionality to gamers, introducing Achievements and the gamer score to
facilitate competition. With sales of more than 75 million units, Xbox 360 also drew more
than 40 million users into Microsoft’s Xbox Live connected gaming service. The third major
player, Nintendo, found great success in 2006 with its Wii gaming system. Bucking industry
trends, it chose a cheaper, lower-power chip with fewer graphics capabilities, creating a
totally different style of play based on physical gestures. A sleek white design and motion-
sensitive wireless controller also made Wii much more engaging and interactive, and
Nintendo’s decision to embrace outside software developers meant new titles quickly became
available. Its collaborative nature made Wii a hit with non-gamers drawn by its capabilities
and with hard-core players seeking to master its many intriguing games. The 2012 follow-up,
the Wii U, did not attract the same interest, putting Nintendo in a tough spot against its two
chief competitors.

ADOPTING CREATIVITY TECHNIQUES Internal brainstorming sessions also can be quite

marketing memo

HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL BRAINSTORMING SESSION

If done correctly, group brainstorming sessions can create insights, ideas, and solutions that
would have been impossible without everyone’s participation. If done incorrectly, they are a
painful waste of time that can frustrate and antagonize participants. To ensure success,
experts recommend the following:
1. A trained facilitator should guide the session, and the right physical environment must be used.
2. The right participants must be chosen. Sometimes it is useful to have a real mixture with many different points of
view.
3. Participants must see themselves as collaborators working toward a common goal.
4. Rules need to be set up and followed so conversations don’t get off track. Some structure is needed, though
 flexibility is desired too.
5. Participants must be given proper background preparation and materials so they can get into the task quickly.
6. Individual sessions before and after the brainstorming can be useful for thinking and learning about the topic ahead
of time and for reflecting afterward on what happened.
7. During the session, each participant must be encouraged to participate and think freely and constructively. It may
be useful to give participants time to think and gather their thoughts based on what they have heard.
8. To help stimulate thinking, participants may be told to identify and challenge existing assumptions, role-play some
aspect of the situation they are analyzing, or consider borrowing ideas from other firms, even outside the industry.
9. Brainstorming sessions must lead to a clear plan of action and implementation so the ideas that materialize can
provide tangible value.
10. Brainstorming can do more than just generate ideas—it should help build teams and leave participants better
informed and energized.

Sources: Anne Fisher, “Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Fail,” Fortune, August 23, 2013; “7 Ways to Enliven Your Next
Brainstorming Session,” Forbes, March 18, 2013; Natalie Peace, “Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Are Useless,” Forbes,
April 9, 2012; Linda Tischler, “Be Creative: You Have 30 Seconds,” Fast Company, May 2007, pp. 47–50; Michael Myser,
“When Brainstorming Goes Bad,” Business 2.0, October 2006, p. 76; Robert I. Sutton, “Eight Rules to Brilliant
Brainstorming,” BusinessWeek IN Inside Innovation, September 2006, pp. 17–21.

Creativity is mostly about making connections in ways that are not obvious. Here is a
sampling of techniques for stimulating creativity in individuals and groups.75
Attribute listing. List the attributes of an object, such as a screwdriver. Then modify each attribute, such as replacing the
wooden handle with plastic, providing torque power, adding different screw heads, and so on.
Forced relationships. List several ideas and consider each in relationship to each of the others. In designing new office
furniture, for example, consider a desk, bookcase, and filing cabinet as separate ideas. Then imagine a desk with a built-
in bookcase or a desk with built-in files or a bookcase with built-in files.
Morphological analysis. Start with a problem, such as “getting something from one place to another via a powered
vehicle.” Now think of dimensions, such as the type of platform (cart, chair, sling, bed), the medium (air, water, oil,
rails), and the power source (compressed air, electric motor, magnetic fields). By listing every possible combination,
you can generate many new solutions.
Reverse-assumption analysis. List all the normal assumptions about an entity and then reverse them. Instead of
assuming that a restaurant has menus, charges for food, and serves food, reverse each assumption. The new restaurant
may decide to serve only what the chef bought that morning, provide some food but charge for the time the person sits at
the table, or design an exotic atmosphere and rent the space to people who bring their own food and beverages.
New contexts. Take familiar processes, such as people-helping services, and put them into a new context. Imagine
helping dogs and cats with day care service, stress reduction, psychotherapy, funerals, and so on. Instead of sending
hotel guests to the front desk to check in, greet them at curbside and use a wireless device to register them.
Mind mapping. Start with an idea, such as a car, then think of the next idea that comes up (say Mercedes) and link it to
car, then think of the next association (Germany), and do this with all associations that come up with each new word.
Perhaps a whole new idea will materialize.

New-product ideas can arise from lateral marketing that combines two product concepts or
ideas to create a new offering.76 Cereal bars are a successful combination of cereal and snacking.
Kinder Surprise combined candy with a toy.

USING IDEA SCREENING