New Product Development

In today’s market businesses cannot simply rely on existing products to stay competitive. Innovation evolves rapidly and change comes with that. Offering products that can meet customer needs is as important if not more than it’s ever been. There are ways to turn ideas into functioning, deployable products but it takes a thorough process and a dedicated team to do so.

A term called new product development is a term used to describe the complete process of bringing an idea to the market. Product development refers to building a product that has an existing proof of concept, therefore a business can create a new product, add to an existing one or build upon an old product and still be considered new product development.

These five stages guide the new product development process for small businesses: idea generation, screening, concept development, product development and, finally, commercialization.

Stage One: Idea Generation

Idea generation is the initial stage where a business looks at ideas regarding a new product. Some of the sources for new product ideas include the businesses customers, competitors, newspapers, journals, employees and suppliers. This stage is also known as product discovery where a business determines if a product is viable by assessing markets, conducting research, determining users’ desires and products competitors have developed. Small businesses may be limited in the resources necessary to use technical research-based idea generation techniques. This stage is crucial as it lays the foundation for all the other phases, the ideas generated shall guide the overall process of product development.

Stage Two: Screening

The generated ideas must go through a screening process to filter out the viable ones. Screening factors include benefits to your consumers, product improvements most needed, technical feasibility, or marketing potential. The business seeks opinions from workers, customers, and other businesses to avoid the pursuit of costly unfeasible ideas. At the end of the screening process, the firm remains with only a few feasible ideas from the large pool generated.

Stage Three: Concept Development

After the screening phase a product concept is developed. A product concept is a detailed description of the idea that indicates the target market for your product, the features and benefits of your solution that may appeal to your customers, and the proposed price for the product. Research is conducted to find out the potential costs, revenues and profits arising from the product. The market strategy is set out to identify the product’s target group, which facilitates segmentation of the product’s market. Market segmentation enables the company to identify its niche which influences most of the marketing decisions.

Stage Four: Product Development

In this stage the product is created as an MVP and then a beta tested second version. Development brings the concepts to life in tangible form. Demonstrations can be presented to investors and a prototype is manufactured that facilitates market testing. After the tests, the business owner can decide on whether to scale into production.

Stage Five: Commercialization and Rollout

Favorable results in the development stage precede large-scale production and commercialization. Here, the business launches its promotion campaign for the new product. The market research conducted during the conception stage influences the timing and location of the product launch.

These stages of product development illustrate what is necessary to build and deploy a product into the market. By going through each stage meticulously a developer or client can determine the likelihood of success or failure of the product. It is imperative that a company provides a plan for product development that aligns with these stages to build the best product for a viable market.