New Product Evaluation Sessions - Now On
Over the past two years, I have offered many courses, seminars and advisory sessions on the principles of Product Opportunity Mapping. Audience members have included senior leaders from a wide array of companies, industries and locations – all of which were wanting to create new products to grow their businesses and (re)build corporate resilience. Post session surveys and feedback were consistently positive and it was clear “new product development” would deeply resonate as a topic.
After reviewing feedback surveys and following up with past customers I have noted that most if not all sessions - at least once - circled back to a discussion on overall company strategy.
Companies struggle with how to best identify and evaluate new product opportunities and when the going gets tough, senior executives start asking if these development efforts align with their overall corporate strategy. They want to diversify their revenue streams and build new product lines but aren’t sure if this is the best use of their limited time and resources.
These are important questions to ask as the failure rates of new product development efforts are very high. In most cases, we would answer the questions by circling back to first principles and looking at the fundamentals of the new product under consideration.
This is at the foundation of the Product Opportunity Mapping framework and the process we would go through would include three steps:
The first would be to prepare a Product Opportunity Summary which addresses the foundational components of a new product being considered. Creating this summary does not guarantee success but not doing it greatly increases the chances of failure.
The second step would be to complete a Product Readiness Review which is a realistic and objective evaluation of the question: how far is the product from launch? This also generates an outline for what needs to be done next as well as decision template to decide if the project should keep going; stop (completely); pivot in a new direction; or being parked and reconsidered at some point in the future.
The third step would be to complete a Next Step Game Plan which ensures there is an internal understanding and consensus of what needs to be done next and by whom. This is best done by floating a hypothesis; agreeing on how it can be validated (or invalidated) and who is responsible for what and by when.
Interestingly, these evaluations can often be completed in single half-day session.
For this reason, I have decided to offer Product Opportunity Mapping Evaluation Sessions to companies who want to assess new product opportunities they have under consideration or need a new take on a development effort that is spinning its wheels. These sessions are facilitated by me, are a half-day in length (in addition to some upfront consultation) and have the deliverables of:
Preparing (and generating a consensus for) a Product Opportunity Summary;
Completing a Product Readiness Assessment; and
Outlining a Next Step Game Plan.
This is all offered at a fixed fee and ideally suited for groups of four to eight who represent different company departments or product development stakeholders.
Typically they include 1 or 2 hours of initial consultation plus a 4 hour facilitated sessions (to note, after an initial consultation and depending upon product status, it sometimes makes more sense to hold two or more half-day sessions held two to four weeks apart).
For Q2 and Q3 of 2021, I’m offering these sessions at an introductory cost of $2,500.00 for each half day session (plus applicable taxes and any out-of-pocket session costs).
For a free initial consultation, please contact me at: Bruce Alton | 780-884-4820 | bruce@a-partners.ca