Idea Screening

Stage Two: Idea Screening

What is idea screening?

Idea screening is the second stage of the NPD process which follows on from idea generation. (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008). According to Lamb, Hair & McDaniel (2009) screening is the first filter in the NPD process; they explain it as eliminating products/ ideas that aren’t consistent with the company’s new product strategy.  This is similar to Wafa, van Riel & Zuzuna’s (2011) thoughts; they say idea screening is the process of evaluating new ideas to select which ones are suitable for further development and to drop ideas that will probably not lead to successful products.

One of the most common methods used in the idea screening phase is a decision matrix (Akao, 1988).  The matrix helps organisations establish which product is the most efficient and whether or not it would fit into the current market. It uses an objective system weighting different criteria according to their perceived importance and then rating each product on how well it performs in that category; this allows most products to be dropped from the process (Akao, 1988).

Example of Idea Screening

One example of idea screening is by Adidas, the German Sports equipment manufacturer. They have created the lightest football boot in the world, the Adidas f50 (TechRadar, 2013). Adidas established through idea screening that there was both the technology and the market, to create a super light football boot. This market has come about because, according to them, players want an extra edge and if they can make lighter boots then it will make for faster players. They went about it by completely stripping down the boot to what is essential and leaving nothing else which resulted in a football boot weighing less than 100grams.

My Idea

In order to ensure my products are screened objectively I used the decision matrix to assess my three ideas against each other. I used 6 criteria and weighted them accordingly with the feasibility of the idea being the most important factor and the time taken to develop the least important.

 

I established from the matrix that my cone collector/distributor was the best idea as it scored the highest weighted score and did particularly well when judged against the level of competition and the benefits to the customer. This is because there is no product like it and it is a product that would help coaches a lot. A close second in the ranking was my idea for a boot cleaner; however, the low scores in cost to develop and level of competition mean that I will drop this idea and continue with the cone collector.

Reference list

Akao, Y. (1988) 'Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Design', Quality Function Deployment, 1.

Hammedi, W., van Riel, A. C. R. and Sasovova, Z. (2011), ‘Antecedents and Consequences of Reflexivity in New Product Idea Screening.’  Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28: 662–679.

Kotler, P & Armstrong, G. (2008) Principles of Marketing. 12^th edn. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Lamb, C. Hair, J. McDaniel, C. (2009) Essentials of Marketing. Cengage Learning, Mason, OH.

Tech Radar, (2013) ‘Uncovered: the technology behind the impossibly light football boot’ Available at: http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/uncovered-yhe-technology-behind-the-impossibly-light-football-boot-1153914 Accessed on: 20/11/2013