case study in product innovation

Ten Types of Innovation: 30 new case studies for 2019

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Ten Types of Innovation, a framework developed by Doblin (now a part of Deloitte).

I previously listed it as the #2 innovation framework you should be using.

And with good reason. I have used it frequently with clients to get them to think beyond innovating their product , which becomes harder, more expensive and less differentiating over time.

However, what I have found in recent workshops is that since it was originally published in 2013, some of the case studies and examples in the book already come across as out of date. That’s how rapidly the world is changing.

So here, I present three new more recent case studies for each of the Ten Types of Innovation, along with an outline on what each of them represents. Try and see which of these examples you would also suggest touch on more than one of the Ten Types, and let me know in the comments below:

1) Profit Model: How you make money

Innovative profit models find a fresh way to convert a firm’s offerings and other sources of value into cash. Great ones reflect a deep understanding of what customers and users actually cherish and where new revenue or pricing opportunities might lie.

Innovative profit models often challenge an industry’s tired old assumptions about what to offer, what to charge, or how to collect revenues. This is a big part of their power: in most industries, the dominant profit model often goes unquestioned for decades.

Recent examples:

• Fortnite – Pay to customise: This Free-to-Play video game by Epic Game Studios is currently one of the most popular and profitable games in the world. Unlike other “freemium” games which incentivise people to spend money to speed up progression, Fortnite is completely free to progress and people only need pay if they want to unlock cosmetic items which don’t affect gameplay but act to personalise their characters.
• Deloitte – Value sharing: Professional Services firm Deloitte is the world’s largest Management Consulting firm and still growing. They noticed a desire from their clients for assurance that the advice they were being given and transformation projects which Deloitte was running would actually succeed. As a result, Deloitte has begun trialling projects where instead of their fee being based just on Time and Materials, they will also share in value delivery, where additional bonus payments are only activated if previously-agreed performance metrics are successfully met.
• Supreme – Limiting supply: While most companies want to get their products in to the hands of as many people as possible, Supreme has built a cult following through deliberately forcing scarcity of its products. The streetwear clothing retailer announces limited items which will only be available from a specific day when they “drop”, and once they are sold out, that’s it, unless you want to pay huge markups for a second-hand item on eBay. Their red box logo is now so collectible and desirable that the company is able to sell almost anything by putting the logo on it for a limited time only. Case in point: you can find official Supreme Bricks (yes, like the ones used to build houses) which are still selling on eBay for $500.

Supreme’s limited quantity releases often lead to people queuing overnight

2) Network: How you connect with others to create value

In today’s hyper-connected world, no company can or should do everything alone. Network innovations provide a way for firms to take advantage of other companies’ processes, technologies, offerings, channels, and brands—pretty much any and every component of a business.

These innovations mean a firm can capitalize on its own strengths while harnessing the capabilities and assets of others. Network innovations also help executives to share risk in developing new offers and ventures. These collaborations can be brief or enduring, and they can be formed between close allies or even staunch competitors.

Recent Examples:

• Ford & Volkswagen – Developing Self-driving cars: As two of the world’s largest car-makers, Ford and Volkswagen are competitors on the road. However, in 2019 they announced a partnership to work together to develop technology for self-driving cars and electric vehicles which would be used in both company’s fleets of the future. While Ford brings more advanced automated driving technology, Volkswagen was leading in electric vehicles. Through the combined venture called ARGO, both firms can spread their R&D spending across more cars, while both developing competing products.
• Microsoft – launching on competitors platforms: Since new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken over, he has changed the innovation ethos of the company. Whereas previously Microsoft was a product-first company who tried to eliminate competing products and customers should stay within the company’s ecosystem, Nadella has shifted the mindset to a service company where their products should be accessible to customers should be able to access the products in whichever way they prefer. As a result, products such as Office 365 are now available in any web browser, as well as on the mobile marketplaces of Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS, previously seen as competitors.
• Huawei – Leveraging celebrity endorsement: Until recently, “high-quality smartphone” made people think of companies like Apple (USA), Samsung and LG (South Korea). Brands from China were often seen as competing on price but suffering from lower build quality and a lack of innovation. So in order to raise their profile in Western markets, Huawei has invested heavily in celebrities to endorse their flagship phones, such as Scarlett Johanssen, Lionel Messi, Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot. This initial investment raised brand name recognition, to the stage where it is now focusing marketing more towards features and functionality.

Huawei has paid Lionel Messi millions to endorse their brand

3) Structure: How you organize and align your talent and assets

Structure innovations are focused on organizing company assets—hard, human, or intangible—in unique ways that create value. They can include everything from superior talent management systems to ingenious configurations of heavy capital equipment.

An enterprise’s fixed costs and corporate functions can also be improved through Structure innovations, including departments such as Human Resources, R&D, and IT. Ideally, such innovations also help attract talent to the organization by creating supremely productive working environments or fostering a level of performance that competitors can’t match.

• Perpetual Guardian – Four-day working week: This small financial advisory firm in New Zealand trialed moving to a four-day working week, giving their staff an additional free day each week as long as they got their outputs done. As a result, they found people adjusted their working rhythm to achieve the same outcomes in 20% less time , while also resulting in more satisfied employees.
• Netflix – Unlimited Vacations: In order to drive their breakneck growth, Netflix reviewed their formal HR policies to see what processes were getting in the way of people doing their best work. They discovered that most bureaucratic processes which slowed down high performing individuals were in place to only handle situations where a low-performance individual would do something wrong. As a result, they scrapped most formal HR policies to free people to work in their own ways to benefit the company, summarised in their “Freedom and Responsibility” culture document, including allowing staff to take as many vacation days as they felt they needed to produce their best work.
• WeWork – Leveraging other companies’ hard assets: WeWork’s business model revolves around providing affordable office rentals for entrepreneurs and companies, fitting a lot of tenants into the same space by offering co-working areas. In order to rapidly deploy new working spaces and attract customers, WeWork started using a system called rental arbitrage, where they would rent commercial space, create a ready-to-use coworking setup, and then rent this space to customers. By not having to spend CAPEX on purchasing the buildings themselves, they were able to rapidly expand with lower overhead.

Netflix allows staff to take unlimited vacation days

4) Process: How you use signature or superior methods to do your work

Process innovations involve the activities and operations that produce an enterprise’s primary offerings. Innovating here requires a dramatic change from “business as usual” that enables the company to use unique capabilities, function efficiently, adapt quickly, and build market–leading margins.

Process innovations often form the core competency of an enterprise, and may include patented or proprietary approaches that yield advantage for years or even decades. Ideally, they are the “special sauce” you use that competitors simply can’t replicate.

• Tesla – Vertically integrated supply chain: Tesla’s electric cars require huge packs of EV batteries, made of thousands of lithium-ion cells. Until recently, the lack of demand for electric vehicles meant that companies had not invested in battery technology development, resulting in prices remaining high and making the cost of cars prohibitively more expensive than their gasoline counterparts. Tesla invested in a massive gigafactory to produce the newest battery packs themselves, and the economies of scale, as well as not paying markups to manufacturers, are estimated to save them 30% of the cost of the batteries.
• Amazon Web Services – opening internal technology to third parties: When Amazon Web Services initially launched in 2006 , it effectively launched the cloud computing market, allowing external companies to not just host webpages but run code and calculations at a fraction of the cost of building their own server network. Since then, Amazon has continued to develop new technology it would use for its own services, such as artificial intelligence, image recognition, machine learning, and natural-language processing, and later make this technology available to their customers.
• AliExpress – Making everyone a Shop Owner: AliExpress is one of the world’s largest eCommerce sites, and serves as a commercial storefront for thousands of Chinese companies, allowing you to purchase everything to phone cases to forklifts. However, AliExpress also allows the platform to handle purchases as listed on external storefronts using a system called drop-shipping, where anyone can set up their own store, sell someone else’s products (but to customers it looks like they are coming from the seller) and then have those manufacturers send the product directly to the customer.

Tesla’s Gigafactory is the world’s largest building

5) Product Performance: How you develop distinguishing features and functionality

Product Performance innovations address the value, features, and quality of a company’s offering. This type of innovation involves both entirely new products as well as updates and line extensions that add substantial value. Too often, people mistake Product Performance for the sum of innovation. It’s certainly important, but it’s always worth remembering that it is only one of the Ten Types of Innovation, and it’s often the easiest for competitors to copy.

Think about any product or feature war you’ve witnessed—whether torque and toughness in trucks, toothbrushes that are easier to hold and use, even with baby strollers. Too quickly, it all devolves into an expensive mad dash to parity. Product Performance innovations that deliver long-term competitive advantage are the exception rather than the rule.

• Gorilla Glass – Changing chemistry to improve smartphone durability: Gorilla Glass by Corning was listed as one of the original Ten Types by becoming scratch resistant. I have included it again for how it has changed the properties of its glass based on customer feedback each year. In 2016, version 5 of the glass was designed to resist shattering when dropped from 5+ feet, dubbed “selfie height” drops. However, after discussing what properties their customers wanted, by 2018 version 6 was no longer trying to resist shattering when dropped from a height once, instead the chemistry and manufacturing process had been changed to make it resistant to cracking after 15 drops from a lower height (1 meter, or a “fumble drop from your pocket”). I love this example of innovation as the product performance doesn’t just try to become “ better ” by resisting one drop from a higher height than last year, instead figuring out what really matters to customers and delivering that.
• Raspberry Pi – full PC for $35: The original Rasperbby Pi was developed by a UK charity to make a simple yet expandable computer which was affordable enough for everyone. Their credit-card sized PC may look bare-bones (it comes without a case and is effectively an exposed circuit board), yet it contains everything which someone needs to run a Linux operating system, learn to program and even connect it with external sensors and peripherals to make all manner of machines. The latest version 4 is now powerful enough to serve as a dedicated PC, all for a price so low you can give it to a child to tinker with without fear of it being broken.
• Lush Cosmetics – Removing what people don’t want anymore: As people become more aware of their impact on the environment, customers are demanding that customers do more to reduce the amount of plastic packaging their products use which could end up in landfill or the ocean. Lush Cosmetics was an early pioneer in bringing packaging-free cosmetics to scale, offering some of their packaging-free products like shampoo bars and soaps in dedicated packaging-free stores .

Giving children a cheap PC like the Raspberry Pi to learn and experiment on

6) Product System: How you create complementary products and services

Product System innovations are rooted in how individual products and services connect or bundle together to create a robust and scalable system. This is fostered through interoperability, modularity, integration, and other ways of creating valuable connections between otherwise distinct and disparate offerings. Product System innovations help you build ecosystems that captivate and delight customers and defend against competitors.

• Ryobi – One battery to rule them all: While handheld tools have had rechargeable batteries for decades now, Ryobi’s innovation was designing the modular One+ battery which could be used with over 80 different tools. Not only was this convenient for customers who needed fewer batteries overall for multiple uses, it also encouraged someone to buy into the Ryobi tool ecosystem once they had previously purchased one tool and battery set.
• Zapier – making APIs easy: Many web-based applications nowadays have an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows them to share data with other services. However, this often requires complex coding from the developers, and repeated effort to integrate with multiple different APIs. Zapier acts as a middleman for data, providing ready-made actions and API integrations between popular web services, allowing customers to automate certain activities every time a specific event happens.
• Airbnb – Expanding into experiences: Airbnb built their business on allowing everyday people to sell accommodation in their homes to strangers. Now the company has begun offering complementary services to people visiting new places through Experiences . These experiences are also sold by local guides, and allow guests to try things they would otherwise not have known about in addition to staying somewhere new.

Ryobi One+ battery powers multiple different tools

7) Service: How you support and amplify the value of your offerings

Service innovations ensure and enhance the utility, performance, and apparent value of an offering. They make a product easier to try, use, and enjoy; they reveal features and functionality customers might otherwise overlook, and they fix problems and smooth rough patches in the customer journey. Done well, they elevate even bland and average products into compelling experiences that customers come back for again and again.

• Kroger – Smartphone grocery scanning: US retail giant Kroger has been trialing a new smartphone app which allows shoppers to scan items as they shop, and then skip checking out altogether. Using the Scan, Bag, Go app, a customer will scan each item as they pick them up and place them into whatever bag they want, and once they are done, they can simply pay using the app and leave. This prevents shoppers having to wait in checkout lines and gives them an overview of their running total as they go, and also allows the supermarket to entice shoppers by sending coupons and offers directly to them.
• PurpleBricks – bringing real estate online: Estate Agents have a poor reputation for treating both sellers and buyers, especially for the amount they charge relative to the service they provide. PurpleBricks was one of the first online-only estate agents , where they could charge a significantly lower fee if the seller chose to complete some of the service processes themselves, such as showing the home to potential buyers. The firm can provide additional services for additional charges.
• Meituan Dianping – providing one app for all the services you want: As Fast Company’s 2019 Most Innovative company , Meituan Dianping provides a platform for Chinese consumers to purchase a variety of services. Known as a transactional super-app, you can use the app to book and pay for food delivery, travel, movie tickets and more from over 5 million Chinese small and large merchants.

Scan your own groceries with the Scan-Bag-Go app

8) Channel: How you deliver your offerings to customers and users

Channel innovations encompass all the ways that you connect your company’s offerings with your customers and users. While e-commerce has emerged as a dominant force in recent years, traditional channels such as physical stores are still important — particularly when it comes to creating immersive experiences.

Skilled innovators in this type often find multiple but complementary ways to bring their products and services to customers. Their goal is to ensure that users can buy what they want, when and how they want it, with minimal friction and cost and maximum delight.

• Dollar Shave Club – Direct to your door: Razor Blades have always been high-margin products, and Gillette was one of the original innovators by giving away the razor handle to make money on the subsequent razor blade sales. Dollar Shave Club has taken a different approach, by reducing the cost of each set of blades, but having people join a subscription service where blades are delivered to them automatically. While the margin on each set of blades is lower than retail, the subscription model has provided steady, predictable revenue for the company, to the extend that subscription boxes can now be found for almost any consumable product.
• Zipline – Blood Delivery for remote areas: In hospital settings, getting fresh blood can a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, many Sub-Sharan African countries don’t have road infrastructure suitable for quickly delivering blood between hospitals or storage locations. This is why Zipline has developed a simple, reliable drone network where hospitals in Rwanda and Ghana can order fresh blood from a central processing area and receive it within an average of 15 minutes, rather than the hours or days it would take using conventional transportation.
• 3D Printers – produce whatever you need at home: Instead of a single company, the industry of 3D printers is slowly beginning to change the way in which consumers get simple tools and parts. By downloading schematics from the internet (or designing their own), people owning a 3D printer now no longer to go to a retail location or order the parts they need. In commercial settings, this is also speeding up how quickly companies are able to prototype new ideas and designs, waiting hours rather than days or weeks.

zipline blood drone innovation

9) Brand: How you represent your offerings and business

Brand innovations help to ensure that customers and users recognize, remember, and prefer your offerings to those of competitors or substitutes. Great ones distill a “promise” that attracts buyers and conveys a distinct identity.

They are typically the result of carefully crafted strategies that are implemented across many touchpoints between your company and your customers, including communications, advertising, service interactions, channel environments, and employee and business partner conduct. Brand innovations can transform commodities into prized products, and confer meaning, intent, and value to your offerings and your enterprise.

• Gillette / Nike – being willing to lose customers who don’t align with purpose: I have combined both Gillette and Nike into this example of brand innovation since they have both recently aligned their brands to a purpose (social and political), which has been positively welcomed by some people but has resulted in hatred from other groups. Nike began by making former NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick the face and voice of one of their advertising campaigns. Kaepernick rose in prominence when he refused to stand during the national anthem before his games, his way of protesting the police brutality and inequality towards his African American community. This led to some people claiming he was disrespecting the American Flag, and therefore what the flag stands for. When his advert launched, a vocal minority took to social media to upload videos of themselves saying that Nike no longer aligned with their values, and they burned their shoes, vowing to never buy Nike again. Similarily, Gillette came out with a commercial urging all men to be “The best a man can be”, by pushing aside previously ‘masculine’ traits like bullying, chauvinism or fighting, and showing children how a modern man should behave. As soon as the ad was released online, many media outlets praised its message, but it brought the wrath of angry men who claimed that the razor manufacturer shouldn’t tell them what to think or how to behave, how they would never buy the products again, and how the world was becoming too politically correct, with women and minorities getting preferential treatment over white men. The advert quickly became one of the most disliked videos on Youtube, and even my commentary about the innovative message (seen in the video below) had the comments section covered by hate-filled messages. What both Nike and Gillette realised was that if they wanted to align with positive, progressive messages and values (which align with their target demographic of the future), then they would risk upsetting and alienating the proportion of their current customer base who didn’t share those views. In both cases, these were decisions that would have been signed off by all levels in the company, through marketing, sales, legal and the board, and the brands will be stronger in the future because of it.
• Burberry – modernising a classic brand: Burberry had built its luxury fashion reputation by aligning itself with the British Aristocracy, and its famous chequer patterned fabric was iconic. However, when trying to modernise and make the brand “sexy” in the early 2000s, a misstep happened when the luxury house began to license the chequered fabric, resulting in it becoming a status symbol and desired motif for a different social group: the British “Chavs” (rough, lower class and sometimes aggressive). This poisoned the once iconic brand in the eyes of their intended luxury clientele. In order to survive, the company and brand embraced innovation , by becoming one of the first fashion houses to redesign their website to be mobile-optimised, aligning their store layout to mirror the website, highlighting young British talent and livestreaming content and fashion shows. Most importantly, they moved away from the iconic chequer pattern in their fashion designs, where it is now limited to less than 10% of products.

10) Customer Engagement: How you foster compelling interactions

Customer Engagement innovations are all about understanding the deep-seated aspirations of customers and users, and using those insights to develop meaningful connections between them and your company.

Great Customer Engagement innovations provide broad avenues for exploration and help people find ways to make parts of their lives more memorable, fulfilling, delightful — even magical.

• REI – closing their stores on the busiest shopping day: Outdoor equipment retailer REI had begun closing its doors on Black Friday , traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year. They claim they are doing this to Eddie their customers to actually get outdoors and use their equipment, rather than queuing for discounted material goods.
• Peloton – bringing the gym into the home: Many people benefit from going to joint gym classes because the sense of a group working toward is goals together with a coach is more powerful than trying to exercise by yourself. Peloton makes exercise equipment with built-in screens, powered by a subscription to live and on-demand classes. It’s like being part of a workout group with the benefits of being at home.
• NBA – bringing the fans into the action: The NBA had invested heavily in innovation to make their sport more immersive. From live analytics and player statistics, new ways to watch like VR video, and official video game players for each team, they are finding new ways to bring basketball to the next generation, while making it even more exciting for existing fans.

Peloton brings exercise classes into the home

There we go, a new set of 30 examples of the Ten Types of Innovation.

If you found some of these examples interesting, please share the article.

Can you think of any more good examples? Let me know in the comments below.

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great examples! I now feel inspired to innovate in my entrepreneurial project. Thank you ?

Greetings from Mexico

Excellent work!

They’s very interesting. Do you have the solutions of some of recent examples?

My university has taken pretty much everything from here, poorly rephrased a few things and have delivered it to us, the student, as an entire weeks worth of content. Maybe i should be paying my fees here…

Bachelor of business student Australia

Very interesting. Which course was it being used for?

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A Systems View Across Time and Space

• Open access
• Published: 17 July 2023

New product development process and case studies for deep-tech academic research to commercialization

• Pravee Kruachottikul 1 , 2 ,
• Poomsiri Dumrongvute   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0009-7461-5888 3 ,
• Pinnaree Tea-makorn 4 ,
• Santhaya Kittikowit 5 &
• Arisara Amrapala 6  

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship volume  12 , Article number:  48 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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This research proposes a new product development (NPD) framework for innovation-driven deep-tech research to commercialization and tested it with three case studies of different exploitation methods. The proposed framework, called Augmented Stage-Gate, integrates the next-generation Agile Stage-Gate development process with lean startup and design thinking approaches. The framework consists of six stages and five gates and focuses on critical thinking to help entrepreneurs avoid psychological traps and make the right decisions. Early activities focus on scouting for potential socioeconomically impactful deep-tech research, developing a business case, market analysis, and strategy for problem–solution fit, and then, moving to a build–measure–learn activity with a validated learning feedback loop. Next, suitable exploitation methods are decided using weight factor analysis, developing intellectual property (IP) strategy, completing the university technology transfer process, and participating in fundraising. To pass each gate, the committee board members, consisting of tech, business, IP and regulatory, and domain experts, will evaluate the passing criteria to decide Go/No-Go. Applying the framework to the case studies results in successful university research commercialization. The model, case study, and lessons learned in this paper can be useful for other deep-tech incubator programs to successfully launch deep-tech research for commercialization. The case studies’ positive outcomes validate the Augmented Stage-Gate framework, yet their success is not entirely guaranteed due to external factors like regulatory constraints, entrepreneur characteristics, timing, and the necessary ecosystem or infrastructure, particularly in emerging markets. These factors should be taken into account for future research purposes.

Introduction

Deep-tech innovation is a new wave of impactful innovation that drives the economy and society. Unlike digital innovations such as mobile apps and digital platforms that disrupted many old-fashioned businesses in past decades, deep-tech is unique, high-value, hard-to-reproduce technological or scientific advances that will improve the technological frontier or disrupt existing solutions and result in socio-economic impacts (De la Tour et al., 2017 ). Deep-tech innovation is usually led by megatrends and unmet needs (Linden & Fenn, 2003 ).

Thailand, a developing country, relies heavily on traditional businesses such as sales, marketing, and services. Thailand’s gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) is lower than that of other middle-to-high income countries. In 2018, Thailand spent 1.11% of gross domestic product (GDP) (182 billion baht) compared with an average of 1.41% for the upper-middle-income group and 2.43% for high income countries. GERD was expected to reach 2% of GPD in 2027 but this was revised to 1.46% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, assuming no new measures to boost R&D investment. Nevertheless, various government policies require stimulus to R&D spending, especially for SMEs and innovation-driven enterprises through the Thai Bay-Dole Act (Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council, 2021 ). Therefore, deep-tech innovation applied to Thai businesses could be a potent new driver for its economy. Since most deep-tech originates from academia, researchers, patents, or publications, it is unlikely to be successful and sustainable without real demand from users or direction from the business side. This is because traditional academia focuses heavily on research, publication, and prototype development (Fellnhofer, 2016 ), rather than building a product that is ready for commercial use (Hicks et al., 2009 ). Promoting entrepreneurship, which is a combination of art and process to pursue opportunities and turn into a business regardless of resources, among academia can be helpful to create environments that support innovation development (Barringer & Ireland, 2012 ).

Moreover, many deep-tech innovations require a large amount of funding at the initial stage to build a prototype, perform user validation, and develop a business strategy. Additionally, deep-tech innovation is new, and the industry may not be clear about market needs or potential buyers. Therefore, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is used to understand predictors of human behavior toward potential acceptance or rejection of the technology, particularly technologies related to information and communication technology (ICT) (Lee et al., 2003 ). It can also provide a useful tool to assess the success of new technology introductions and help understand the drivers of acceptance to proactively design interventions targeted at users that may be less inclined to adopt new systems (Venkatesh et al., 2003 ). After validating the market and technology, it is time to decide on commercialization options (Yaldiz & Bailey, 2019 ).

For deep-tech innovation to become successful exploitation from the research ideation stage until commercialization, it requires a product development model suitable for university research initiation and developing market environment. Meanwhile, many pieces of prior research on the NPD model and case studies were primarily conducted based on developed countries where the product development was done within the established company ecosystem (Cocchi et al., 2021 ; Cooper, 2016 ; Cooper & Sommer, 2016 , 2018 ; Salvato & Laplume, 2020 ; Walrave et al., 2022 ; Wuest et al., 2014 ). However, this study highlighted the importance of a specific NPD model in the academic initiative context with low resources and a lack of infrastructure setting, which generally happens within developing countries (Ravi & Janodia, 2022a ). This study is essential to promote deep-tech in Thailand and to help other developing countries that require a new growth potential to drive the economy. Consequently, to accelerate deep-tech innovation in Thailand, the Chulalongkorn University Technology Center (UTC) was established in 2019 as a platform to spring-board academic research to commercialization and facilitate among stakeholders within the ecosystem based on triple helix model, which promotes the way of working that the government, private sector, and academia must collaborate to form a solid, deep-tech innovation ecosystem (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998 ) to support manpower, finance, know-how, production facilities, regulation, and sandbox testing in order to expedite the speed of innovation development.

This study uses qualitative research and observation based on the actual case studies of the UTC portfolio research teams. The goal is to understand the pain points, needs, obstacles, and processes required for the successful exploitation of their project and then extract the vital insightful factors for applying to the NPD model, which will be later discussed in the Methods section.

To develop the proposed NPD model, several related NPD studies have been reviewed. Then the next-generation stage-gate development system integrated with agile development, lean startup, and design thinking methods is selected and then applied together with the insights obtained from qualitative research as the NPD model to develop successful business-driven deep-tech innovation. The effectiveness of the model is later tested and confirmed using both experts and observation, which will be later described further in the Results section. This framework, which we call the Augmented Stage-Gate framework, is important for successful innovation and is based on critical thinking. Because human decisions are influenced by the subconscious, it is essential to make decisions based on the results of logical reasoning and avoid psychological traps (Linden & Fenn, 2003 ).

In addition, three case studies are explained and discussed. Applying the Augmented Stage-Gate framework results in successful commercialization process in all three cases where the teams transferred the technology via a spin-off startup with a patent, non-profit use with trade secret, and licensing. The benefits of this study can be used as a framework and case study for successful deep-tech innovation development and commercialization, especially in the context of developing markets and academic research initiation. Several options are proposed and discussed. Finally, the study makes several recommendations for future research, including its application to other vertical deep-tech innovation areas.

Literature review

In this section, the literature on the NPD model, TAM model, and product readiness assessment is discussed. Generally, the NPD model, is a nonlinear and iterative process based on a problem-solving approach that is used for the conception, development, and launch of new products or services. It can help management understand user insights, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test with target users to successfully launch in the market. In addition, the NPD process is based on critical thinking, which is the ability to look at events, conditions, or thoughts with a careful eye and make decisions about the reliability and validity of the knowledge according to standards of logic (Seferoglu & Akbiyik, 2006 ). It involves identifying and analyzing informational sources for credibility, indicating previous knowledge, making connections, and deducing conclusions (Thurman, 2009 ). Higher-order thinking ability provides the opportunity to analyze the existing knowledge or situation to correct mistakes and complete deficits to reach correct conclusions (Howard et al., 2015 ). In this study, the authors select Stage-Gate, which is a macro idea-to-launch product development planning process that involves the Go/No-Go decision-making (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2001 ), as the baseline NPD framework because the model is easy to understand among stakeholders in a simple linear system format that consists of detailed guidelines for every stage and explains the criteria for management to make a decision whether to allow the development to pass each gate. These unique characteristics of Stage-Gate model strongly fit within the context of our study. While its principles can be applied, the Stage-Gate model, including the number of stages, activities, and gate criteria, has to be adjusted according to our objectives using the insights obtained from this study.

After the core concept of Stage-Gate model was chosen, several modern State-Gate models were reviewed. The next-generation Stage-Gate process that comes with the Triple A system and spiral concept that promotes the development process to be adaptive, flexible, iterative, and accelerated using a feedback loop from user validation (Cooper, 2016 ) can be applied to the model. Furthermore, there was a study of applying Agile project management methods, which highlights a process that is a dynamic planning process that is adaptive and flexible to changes in product development, into a traditional Stage-Gate system, called Agile-Stage-Gate Hybrids. The results looked promising for faster product releases, quicker and better responses to changing customer requirements, and improved team communication and morale (Cooper, 2016 ). Moreover, case studies in manufacturers conducted by R. Cooper in 2018 also supported the earlier finding; yet it also added some challenges in terms of management buy-in, resources needed and allocation, and fluid product definitions and development plans (Cooper & Sommer, 2018 ). These insights are also similar to the study by Zasa et al. ( 2020 ) who highlighted that agile project management will increase interaction among project stakeholders and help break big tasks into small and achievable action items (called sprints ) within a short period of time. They also suggested that successful implementation required the integration between traditional project planning modes and the agile method, cultural change, and perceptions of all stakeholders in the organization (Zasa et al., 2020 ).

Therefore, by applying modern concepts of Stage-Gate like triple A system with spiral concept and agile development, the earlier Stage-Gate baseline model can be improved in many ways. That is, the model becomes more adaptive and flexible to changing customer requirements and situations, increasingly improved team communication and morale, and further highlights on an iterative process to promote interfacing between the development team and the target user. Moreover, the importance of interfacing with users iteratively for business assumption validation is also similar to the principle of lean startup and design thinking. The lean startup encourages startups to challenge business growth hypotheses and use them to build the minimal viable product (MVP), then test and validate with the real user to learn whether it is required to pivot or preserve. This can be repeated many times during the NPD process; an approach called build–measure–learn (Ries, 2011 ). On the other hand, design thinking uses a designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs to what is technologically feasible and a viable business strategy that can be converted into customer value and market opportunity (Brown, 2008 ).

In addition, the TAM can be useful to consider during the NPD process, in particular with ICT-related technologies. It can provide information regarding the probability of success during the introduction of a new technology and the key drivers of user acceptance to enable proactively designed interventions and strategies targeted at populations of users who may not be inclined to adopt new systems (Venkatesh et al., 2003 ).

Lastly, the authors review the study of product readiness assessment. This is important for our context because there is a misalignment issue from different stakeholders when evaluating the readiness of the new product development. This is a typical problem found when the product is not ready for commercial. Yet the team has to communicate readiness level with stakeholders for different purposes such as fundraising, selling, field testing, etc. The first assessment is the technology readiness level (TRL) which was introduced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1970s. It is a well-recognized and useful tool to determine the maturity of new technologies. It is also a discipline-independent program that enables more effective assessment and communication. Its nine assessment levels are beneficial to determine the readiness of new technology and/or capability during the technology life cycle, which includes the completion of systems analysis and conceptual design studies, determination from several design options, and decision to start full-scale development (Mankins, 2009 ). Another assessment is the investment readiness level (IRL) proposed by Steve Blank in 2013, which is also divided into nine levels. IRL is used to evaluate how investment-ready a technology is by validating its business model to help investors assess the risk of investment (Blank, 2014 ). Investment readiness can be defined as a set of business development processes that increase business venture readiness as candidates for equity investors (Aernoudt et al., 2007 ). Alternatively, it is the capacity of the business venture to look for external funding, especially from an equity investor, to understand the specific needs required by an investor and be able to give an investor an attractive business proposal with high confidence (European Commission, 2006 ). Entrepreneurs need information and advice on the advantages of raising equity financing, what it means, and how to become investment-ready (Mason & Kwok, 2010 ). In addition, Australia National Investment Council. & Marsden Jacob Associates ( 1995 ) proposed that businesses that are not investment-ready are primarily the result of a lack of information. This means that they do not know about the role of equity finance and are unaware of what is involved in raising money, what is required to attract investors, and how to convincingly express their investment proposals (Australia National Investment Council. & Marsden Jacob Associates., 1995 ).

In this research, the authors use the next-generation stage-gate process as the baseline for the NPD process and then propose the modified NPD framework for new deep technologies that are more suitable for academic research initiation to commercialization in developing markets, called the Augmented Stage-Gate framework. The framework was designed using the insights obtained from in-depth interviews of 19 research teams who had been working on deep tech research and entered the three-month entrepreneurship development program in 2019. The interview was conducted at the end of the program and focused on understanding the pain points in the research-to-commercialization process in terms of entrepreneurship, business development, networking, financial, technology transfer process, progress assessment, and goal. After careful analysis, several recommendations were proposed and integrated into the Augmented Stage-Gate framework as shown in Table 1 .

The Augmented Stage-Gate framework highlights more on the Agile development process, flexible entrepreneurial development program, progress assessment using TRL and IRL, process management specialist to guide along the academic research to commercialization journey and bring in a network of business partners and legal experts to support. Its structure is divided into six stages (innovation ideation, build business case, development, test and validation, launch, and scale-up) with five gates (screening, go to development, go to test, go to commercial, and post-launch review). Here, stage means the process for work to be completed, and gate is for the Go or No-Go decision-making. TRL and IRL assessments, as shown in Table 2 , can be used to evaluate progress in terms of technology and business readiness at each stage.

The Augmented Stage-Gate framework applies the principle of the next-generation Stage-Gate’s triple A system and spiral development, which aims to overcome the typical challenges when handling undefined requirements during initial development, and Agile development, which aims to increase interaction among project stakeholders and help break big tasks into small and achievable action items (Sprints). This is because most customers are uncertain about their needs and so the product definition prior to development is unclear. The triple A model promotes each stage to be adaptive and flexible, agile, and accelerated while the spiral development concept promotes experimentation. This is also similar to what Isaacson ( 2011 ) described Steve Jobs’ philosophy during his development career at Apple that encouraged project teams to fail often, fail quickly, and fail cheaply. With the benefits obtained from the Augmented Stage-Gate core concept, the product design and definition can adapt to new information, customer feedback, and changing conditions along with multiple iterations of validation activities with users or customers throughout the NPD cycle. In addition, it is important to understand that the details of the process and its functions may differ from project to project, especially with deep tech, academic research initiative, and emerging market environment. Therefore, a flexible gating process must be leaner, faster, adaptive, and risk based. Experienced project teams, mentors, and stage-gate committees are also important to guide startup work throughout the NPD process. Additionally, even though the NPD model is represented in a simple linear format, in reality, it is common that each step can be repeated many times and also go back and forth between stages, depending on the readiness, criteria, and requirement to pass each stage.

Then the effectiveness of the Augmented Stage-Gate framework was tested with three cases, to be discussed in Sect. 4. The cases were research teams that joined UTC in 2019 after the new framework had been designed and completed the final stage of the framework by September 2022. The teams were willing to participate in the study. We gathered the information for the cases via observations and interviews.

The authors directly observed the teams as they moved through each stage of the framework. Tangible results such as actual sales, contract execution, regulatory approval, and certifications, were recorded. The authors also had access to relevant documents related to the development process since the teams were required to submit a progress checklist and presentation slides. Information reported (as appropriate to each stage) includes team, research and development progress, regulatory process, business plan, project planning and concept, product design, milestones, risk assessment, technology verification and validation (MVP), market validation, legal activities, IP status, implementation and operations, sales and marketing, and financial activities. These documents were collected and analyzed for the case studies.

In addition to observation, the authors interviewed the stage-gate committees and two or three people from each team (the principal investigator and 1–2 team members). The interviewees were asked to describe the team’s journey, how they applied the Augmented-Stage-Gate framework, and the results they achieved. The interviews also explored any significant challenges encountered during implementation, along with the solutions that the teams developed.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed, with the transcriptions used to create a final summary of the case. The summary was then reviewed and approved by the interviewees. In some cases, we went back to the interviewees multiple times to get additional information or to conduct follow-up interviews when the implementation and results had become clearer.

The Augmented Stage-Gate process of new product development

The proposed Augmented Stage-Gate process, as shown in Fig.  1 , is divided into six stages. In addition, the below detail explains the objective, activity, and criteria to pass the gate of each stage (as also summarized in Table 3 ).

Stage 0: innovation ideation stage. As a technology incubation office, one of the important roles at UTC is to search for impactful deep-tech research in focused areas that potentially impact our way of life and attitudes in all aspects. To achieve this, UTC has been working with various business partners and consultants to gain market insights while studying market research information for mega trends. Using this information, UTC scouts, classifies, and prioritizes potential research projects. After finding candidates, UTC works closely with them through various programs such as boot camp, workshop, and mentoring to develop the entrepreneurial knowledge and skill in order to help conduct an initial business feasibility study. Another advantage is to give entrepreneurs an understanding of the business journey, challenges, and exit plan so that they can prepare themselves with both skills and morale to be ready before launching. Moreover, the entrepreneurial development program is provided in a flexible format both online and offline to suit with the availability of researchers who might have other full-time jobs at the beginning. Usually, the business model canvas (Osterwalder et al., 2005 ), with its nine building blocks template, is used to communicate a firm’s or product’s value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances to stakeholders. After completion, the team is ready for the official screening, where the committee board consisting of business, technology, and legal experts will evaluate each research project.

The first step is to identify the target customer and study the user journey to understand the pain points and user insights. Additionally, lead users—advanced users who deal with an individual problem very intensively (von Hippel, 1986 )—are a subset of target users and can be helpful for the research team to test, validate, and gain valuable feedback on the early development product. Like design thinking, the concept starts with understanding the way customers do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them. This can be done by carefully observing, engaging, watching, and listening to the users and stakeholders, and then crafting a meaningful and actionable problem statement that focuses on the insights and needs (Brown, 2008 ).

The second step is to analyze internal and external market data. This process aims to understand the business environment and will allow us to better plan so that the threats and opportunities associated with the target area of the business are understood. An internal analysis examines factors within the research project and its co-founding team. The preferred analysis is a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat). Meanwhile, an external analysis examines the wider business environment outside the research project. A popular tool for this is the PESTEL five-force analysis. The key to this process is to ensure that there is market demand to continue the tech-market fit development process.

The third step is to complete an initial financial management strategy, including profit and loss analysis, cash flow planning, and fundraising, that can help the entrepreneur understand the business from a financial perspective in different scenarios and help the business thrive. Because deep-tech product development usually requires a large amount of money and lengthy development time, careful planning in this step is much cheaper regarding business risk. It can avoid cash flow issues that may cause the company to go bankrupt or project delays. Moreover, financial planning can be used to estimate how much investment is needed in each venture development stage so that the entrepreneur can develop a successful fundraising strategy for investors or government grant agencies.

The next step is a preliminary study of the IP landscape. This gives the research project a high-level perspective on the constraints and opportunities regarding the potential exploitation and freedom to operate of IP rights. The researchers can conduct this by themselves or consult with the university IP office since normally the university provides IP support through its Technology Transfer Office (TTO) and IP Practicum Clinic, or by outsourcing services to specialized law firms.

After that, it is time for regulatory planning to help the research team understand and anticipate what regulations are required for each target market. For instance, Med Tech requires FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for commercialization, IRB (Institutional Review Board) for conducting a clinical trial in humans, and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) for manufacturing medical devices. Meanwhile, the PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) is required to use personal data. Generally, the university technology office can be a helpful resource for regulatory advice.

Finally, since deep-tech initiates from academic research by nature, the original research team usually consists mainly of tech-savvy people. Therefore, to become a successful venture, it is crucial to find co-founders with business skills to join the team. Business case competitions or networking events within the university ecosystem can help form an organic partnership.

Augmented Stage-Gate framework

Stage 1: build business case stage. The main activity focuses on developing and validating the business model with target users by demonstrating the prototype and then measuring customer satisfaction, interest, or purchase intent. Usually, the prototype in this stage can be nonfunctional and developed based on the concepts of rapid, rough, and right. For example, AI and computer science technology can use UX/UI (user experience and user interface) and wireframe, which is a schematic or blueprint that is useful for thinking and communicating about the software structure among team members, as a prototype to validate the end-to-end solution idea with the user. Moreover, a network of mentors, domain experts, or key opinion leaders, which are mostly university alumni, can be useful resource because they are knowledgeable and experienced, in which they can give truthful advice and validate the solution idea. Another important thing is to interact with real users or customers as early as possible because today users’ roles have become more significant as a new source of innovation than in the past, when innovation was created solely from producers and supplied to consumers via goods and services, as described in Schumpeter’s theory of innovation in 1934 (Schumpeter, 1934 ). By working together, the research team can provide product knowledge, engineering, and manufacturing for innovative users to think and be creative (von Hippel, 1976 ), which means innovators receive an incentive to engage with users to develop innovative designs (Baldwin & von Hippel, 2011 ).

Stage 2: development stage. The main objective in this stage is to develop a workable and functional MVP, validate with the target user, and refine the business model. That is, it aims to improve technology progress and business strategy so that business risk can be reduced. However, it is noted that due to the Agile concept, the startup should target to break the development plan into small and achievable action items so that their hypothesis can be tested and learned often. In addition, validating the MVP in the closest real environment or sandbox, which refers to the environment that allows some players under specific conditions, to enter the market with fewer administrative constraints (e.g., licenses) or legislative requirements (Tsai et al., 2020 ), is recommended to move the MVP and business closer to the commercial version.

Stage 3: test and validation stage. The goal in this stage is to obtain a commercial version of the MVP and business model. To do that, the lean startup’s validated learning concept is applied to this stage because it can show whether the innovation development and business are moving in the correct direction according to the business model. If not, the innovation can be pivoted; a structural course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth. To make the validated learning successful, cause-and-effect questions with actionable and quantitative metrics are essential. After the new features of the MVP are developed, it will be measured with the user to determine if it demonstrates business growth according to the underlying hypothesis, a process can be repeated many times. The benefit of embracing validated learning is to substantially shorten the developmental cycle.

Stage 4: launch stage. The main goal for this stage is to introduce the market of commercial products. The technology development team participates in a build–measure–learn activity to reach the closest version of a commercial product, while the business development team focuses on delivering a commercial final version of the business plan, sales and marketing strategy, IP strategy, regulatory planning, team formation and financial strategy to select the best commercial option with the highest probability of success and return on investment. In addition, if the university IP is used, the team must complete the technology transfer process. Moreover, according to the business model canvas template, this step must ensure that all nine blocks are validated with stakeholders in a way that leads to business growth and the commercial version of the MVP is refined accordingly. The next step is to finalize the IP submission and strategy, consisting of the final IP draft, valuation, and portfolio management, to obtain optimal legal protection and manage the IP effectively. IP valuation, calculated using either cost-based, income-based, or market-based methods, is useful for the entrepreneur to decide on a proper commercialization option and IP valuation for fundraising. Thus, it should be finalized before going to market. Even though IP services can be particularly expensive and time consuming for such early-stage endeavors, the benefit obtained from IP valuation and protection with a well-managed IP strategy generally increases company competitive advantages tremendously after successful exploitation.

The university technology transfer process is an intrinsic part of the technological innovation process. It is the process of conveying results stemming from scientific and technological research to the marketplace and to the wider society along with associated skills and procedures. To achieve a successful technological transfer, many factors must be considered. Souder et al. ( 1990 ) described seven best practices as analytical, facilities, pro-actions, people roles, conditions, technology quality, and organization. Meanwhile, Gorschek et al., ( 2006 ) recommended close cooperation and collaboration between researchers and practitioners. However, both entrepreneurs and tech transfer officers must discuss and plan each option carefully for the benefit of all stakeholders.

After completing the previous steps, it is time to decide on commercialization. Exploiting an innovation is not only about starting a new company, but there are also many other pathways to bring ideas to markets, such as licensing, joint ventures, and M&A (Schaufeld, 2015 ). Thus, to choose which option is suitable, the entrepreneur needs to consider factors such as market opportunity, IP protection, operation risk, time commitment, return on investment, and investment amount. A complete business plan should be developed and carefully verified, so that entrepreneurs can understand the business opportunities and risks in advance. Table 4 shows an example of an option comparison with a weight matrix between spin-offs and licenses. Briefly, the Option A spin-off scores higher than the Option B license, which means it is the more desirable commercial option to an entrepreneur.

Stage 5: scale-up. This activity focuses on collecting and analyzing the feedback obtained after launch, providing newer and better versions of commercial products or business plans using market feedback, and fully penetrating the target market. Several considerations can be analyzed. The first is to assess whether the product is performing according to pre-defined expectations in terms of technical and business aspects such as functionality, revenues, costs, profits, and so on. The second is to check customer satisfaction or anything that affects the company’s value chain, including purchasing raw material, selling the product, and delivering the goods to the customer. Finally, we examine the strengths and weaknesses of the entire NPD process to learn and improve.

Results and discussion

Case studies.

The case studies below highlight the importance of having an NPD framework that is adaptable to deep-tech within university research and emerging market contexts, yet extensive enough to cover all the essential components to transform deep-tech research into an innovation that has a high-fidelity MVP, an accomplished business and market strategy, a clear pathway towards implementation in the real world, and a complete IP strategy and technology transfer process from academia IP.

ReadMe is an artificial intelligence (AI) research project application that began in 2013 to perform Thai object character recognition (OCR) in any scene image, which often has high perspective and distortion error, uneven illumination, and different image resolutions. Additionally, the Thai character structure itself is very difficult to read automatically, particularly using software algorithms, because it consists of a syntactic structure of up to four layers and a strict relationship between words. The research team was conducting research and development internally and working with various industry partners. An e-commerce platform and a railway engineering company were contracted to help understand business demand as well as to improve and optimize the AI model for real-world applications. Nevertheless, after many years the technology remained a research project; early customers did not have purchase intent with a long-term commitment although the Thai OCR reading accuracy was high. Upon applying our Augmented Stage-Gate Framework to ReadMe in 2019, we successfully transformed the deep-tech research into a tech startup named Eikonnex AI ( https://www.eikonnex.ai/ ) that has now secured business deals for commercial use in private companies.

At the screening stage, the project’s potential for exploitation, validity, market feasibility, and technological feasibility was assessed and found to fulfill all the framework’s criteria. ReadMe, a national award-winning research project, was a deep-tech text reader that was in development for six years, had a research prototype proven well in the lab with a TRL of 4 and an IRL of 1, was the state-of-the-art Thai text reader that was more accurate than other better-known OCR technologies, and is a high-potential technology that could impact the business, medical, and transport industries.

Following their selection, the research team carried out innovation framework activities starting with continuous customer validation, that later helped them develop their market research and business plans. A large majority of their customers were banks, driven by the digital transformation trend and strong competition in the financial industry. One of the most challenging and high-volume applications is the personal loan approval credit scoring. Most were unable to automatically read Thai bank statements correctly due to statement template differences from different banks and Thai character challenges, increasing the time required for loan approval. The team saw this opportunity and pivoted their target customer and core technology to become an OCR with automatic template detection to read bank statements instead. After this decision, the team quickly redeveloped their MVP and carried out multiple user validations using the build–measure–learn process. In the meantime, the team worked closely with a network of mentors to adjust and validate the product idea and business plan.

After rigorously applying the framework’s validation activities, the technology underwent a complete transformation and reached commercial readiness. The technology now had a TRL of 7 and an IRL of 7, completed the IP strategy by obtaining a patent for their technique, concluded the technology transfer process, and set up a spin-off tech startup. Moreover, in early 2021 a few months after their establishment as a startup, the company received its first business deal from one of the biggest banks and completed the technology transfer process. Currently, the company is making its first sales by providing Thai document reader solution services either as an API or as a customized technology. They will continue to move towards digital transformation and expand into a coherent document digitization platform.

It is clear that with the support, guidance, and structure provided by the Augmented Stage-Gate Framework as explained in Table 5 , deep-tech research can be transformed into an innovative, high-impact, commercializable product and company in one to two years.

Chest X-ray AI reporter for COVID-19

Following the trend in the use of AI for healthcare, the chest X-ray reporter was an R&D project by physicians and computational researchers that aimed to create AI software that could classify and report abnormalities for physicians to consider as part of their diagnosis. Nonetheless, the technology remained a research project as it lacked a workforce to develop the complete application software and system integration and had no exit strategy.

With the application of our framework and the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the technology met the immediate needs of society by being able to detect COVID-19 and numerous other conditions from chest X-rays. As of the end of 2021, this innovation was used as a not-for-profit technology in the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, helping many patients in need.

The technology had a TRL of three and an IRL of one at the time of screening with an alpha version of the AI algorithm. As this project is led by physicians and computational researchers who are experts in the field, it is considered a deep technology with high potential for use in hospitals, especially rural government hospitals that sometimes lack healthcare personnel or technology to analyze chest X-rays efficiently. This innovation may also be adapted for use in other types of X-rays for other diseases and undoubtedly has large potential to improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis. Thus, this research is a good candidate for our Augmented Stage-Gate framework as explained in Table 6 .

Following the development and validation activities of our framework, the research team recruited more AI engineers to develop their algorithms and UX/UI to enable intuitive use of the technology. Here, the code and interface were continuously revised with frequent customer and domain expert validations to select the most relevant features and data for physicians. To protect intellectual property, the technique was kept a trade secret. After using the framework for only one year, the work reached a TRL level of 7 and an IRL level of 7 and gained acceptance for not-for-profit use in the hospital for preliminary screening of COVID-19 and other chest X-ray abnormalities. At present, the innovation is used at Chulalongkorn Hospital. We believe that, with its initial success, the technology can be implemented in other hospitals to help improve patients’ quality of life. The project team is now involved in the process of technology transfer and spin-off.

Progesterone test kit

The progesterone test kit for swine is a medical technology that began with a contracted research project between the Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and a multinational science and technology company. The research team has in-depth knowledge and IP for developing a test kit that can easily test the progesterone level of animals from serum samples. In this research, the industry partner wanted to detect swine progesterone in the form of a strip test as it is a cheap and convenient method for mass adoption. The company promised to license the technology for sales and marketing purposes after the prototype showed promising results.

This research project has a potentially high impact on the local livestock industry. It is a new state-of-the-art technology and is an easy, effective, and low-cost solution that addresses many pain points faced by the swine farm industry. Moreover, we foresaw that the technology could be adapted to detect other hormones and health- or disease-related biomolecules in other livestock, increasing the market size and potential customers in the future. Finally, the initial readiness assessment revealed a TRL of 6 and an IRL of 1.

With our Augmented Stage-Gate framework, as explained in Table 7 , and business directions from the industry partner, the project established its market and business strategy and financial analysis. Moreover, the project team also brought in the qualified diagnostic development (QDD) center of Chulalongkorn University to support strip test design and small-scale manufacturing. Furthermore, with continuous iterations of customer validation, the researchers were able to fit the technology to the user’s needs and better understand the type of collaboration the industry was looking for. Thus, the team had business matching opportunities and discussed plausible deals with potential customers.

After more than 6 months of fine-tuning all aspects of the innovation, the project had a TRL of 7 and an IRL of 7 with a final prototype and licensed their technology to an international company that will use the kit for real-world applications. With the success of their first deal, the team has leverage to make future deals with other private companies.

The Augmented Stage-Gate Framework was used in these cases to validate the potential for exploitation, validity, market feasibility, and technological feasibility. All projects had low levels of investment readiness and different levels of technological readiness at the time of screening but were all considered deep technologies with high potential for use in their respective industries. The framework helped the teams carry out innovation framework activities, including continuous customer validation, market research, and business plans. All projects underwent a complete transformation after rigorously applying the framework’s validation activities, which included developing their MVP, carrying out multiple user validations, and adjusting their product idea and business plan with a network of mentors. In terms of commercial success, ReadMe successfully transformed into a tech startup named Eikonnex AI and secured business deals for commercial use in private companies. Chest X-ray AI Reporter for COVID-19 remained a not-for-profit technology used in King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital to detect COVID-19 and other chest X-ray abnormalities. Progesterone Test Kit licensed their technology to an international company. It is shown that the Augmented Stage-Gate Framework effectively transformed research projects into innovative, high-impact, commercialized products and companies.

Past literature has mentioned that traditional Stage-Gate models are not suitable for many of today’s businesses due to fast-changing user needs, uncertain market requirements (Cooper & Sommer, 2018 ), or industry complexity that requires highly iterative cycles and external collaboration (Sommer et al., 2015) and requires a more flexible and adaptive Stage-Gate model such as integrating agile process (Cocchi et al., 2021 ). Case studies leveraging these models were mostly conducted in corporates in developed economies. Directly adopting successful models from developed countries’ academic institutions require a well-established technology transfer office (Ravi & Janodia, 2022b ). Other studies that focus on the academic context in developing countries made suggestions in the policy level, recommending that the government encourage technology transfer by connecting industry and academia (Kirby & El Hadidi, 2019 ; Ravi & Janodia, 2022b ). None has given practical, step-by-step guideline model for technology initiated from academic institutions like ours.

Therefore, our work provides the first proved example of a new product development model that can be applied in similar contexts—commercializing university technology in an emerging economy. It solves the problems that persist in developing countries, Thailand especially, of lack of literature, lack of evaluation from key stakeholders, and a design-actuality gap (Abbasi et al., 2022 ; Heeks, 2002 ; Kalyanasundaram et al., 2021 ; Ravi & Janodia, 2022a ). However, we believe this model can also be applied to ecosystems with better infrastructure and maturity. Once research can be stably commercialized, building a strong infrastructure for technology transfer office like those in developed countries is a task recommended in the long run.

Lastly, even though the result from these case studies can confirm the validity of the proposed NPD model, it is not a hundred percent guarantee of successful exploitation. There might be other factors or circumstances that can affect the result such as market or technology that is highly regulated by local law, certain requirements of entrepreneur characteristics, appropriate timing for market or technology readiness, ecosystem or infrastructure that is required for research to commercial process, especially in emerging markets that might have no mature standard yet, etc. Those mentioned can be considered for future research.

Theoretical implications

This study develops a modified NPD framework that incorporates agile, lean startup, and design thinking to the Stage-Gate model for effective research to commercialization process generated from within the university in developing markets. Using the proposed Augmented Stage-Gate framework that has six stages (Innovation Ideation, Build Business Case, Development, Test and Validation, Launch, and Scale-up), we have presented three case studies from the Chulalongkorn University Technology Center. The approach is structural and based on critical thinking, which helps the technology incubator to accelerate the idea-to-launch process, decide the Go/No-Go of each innovation project stage to prioritize resource contribution, and reduce the risk of failure. Applying an open innovation concept can be beneficial during the NPD process of exchanging internal and external ideas. For example, introducing market demand to guide the direction of research, bringing in high-quality human resources from outside firms to accelerate the research and development, engaging users or customers to trial the product at an early stage, and co-creating the sandbox area to test and validate the innovation. Nevertheless, the project team must have an open mindset and absorptive capability to capture the value of this approach. In addition, university or business incubators should engage legal experts to supervise each activity to avoid conflicts of interest with external parties.

Managerial implications

The actual journey from idea to launch can be different from project to project. Engaging the Next-generation Stage-Gate’s Triple A System, (Adaptive, Agile and Accelerated) and Agile development to the NPD process is very important. Especially during early stages, each project team should focus on setting up a problem statement and then experimenting to learn and fail early, fast, and cheaply. Additionally, we summarized the key lessons learned during the first few batches of the UTC incubation program. First, the importance of the stage-gate committee role and organization as they are the gatekeepers in deciding the Go/No-Go of each project’s stage. The team needs to understand each project very well and be able to effectively track development progress and milestones. Project management software tools can be helpful in sharing ideas and tracking progress among teams, mentors, and committees whose roles must be considered carefully. Second, the incubator is usually responsible for providing NPD guidelines and mentoring for each stage; yet the incubator must also sometimes play a hands-on role solving issues by working closely with each team, especially for topics that they are unfamiliar with or that are at high risk such as regulatory and IP issues. Third, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic period, many activities were conducted online, such as business matching, mentoring, and customer meetings. Online activities lack many of the emotional and social aspects of work done in person. Therefore, the community manager had to work hard to build a supportive environment, maintain momentum and create positive team dynamics. Still, our experience suggests that it is possible to practice a hybrid onsite/online model while maintaining social distancing during the COVID-19 period. Fourth, legal considerations such as NDAs (Non-disclosure Agreements) and co-founder agreements should be considered as early as possible to avoid any conflicts that could cause project delay or failure. Finally, creating an environment where research, business partners, investors, and mentors can get to know each other is very important. These relationships can be developed informally and can lead to successful business deals. However, tech incubators should be able to identify, understand, and manage the expectations and relationships of each party before organizing networking events so that win–win situations can be realized.

Ideas for future research

Further research on the deep-tech NPD framework applied to specific technologies such as Med Tech that require extraordinary activities or have important limitations is needed. Case studies of successes and failures can be very useful. Challenges involving multiple stakeholders in different development journeys can lead to project failure due to miscommunication, lack of transparency, and a lack of legal knowledge. Thus, integrating legal perspectives and creating legal readiness levels in each NPD journey is essential. Finally, an analysis of co-founder characteristics, such as personality and working style, can suggest suitable ways of commercialization to maximize the probability of success.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Artificial intelligence

Food and Drug Administration

Gross domestic product

Gross expenditure on R&D

Good manufacturing practice

• Intellectual property

Institutional review board

Investment readiness level

Minimal viable product

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Non-disclosure agreement

• New product development

Object character recognition

Personal Data Protection Act

Politics, economics, social, technology, environment and legal

Qualified diagnostic development

Strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat

Technology acceptance model

Technology readiness level

Technology transfer office

User interface

Chulalongkorn University Technology Center

User experience

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Eikonnex AI Co., Ltd., Chulalongkorn University Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (CU-AIM), Chulalongkorn University Center of Excellence in Swine Reproduction, and Qualified Diagnostic Development (QDD) Center of Chulalongkorn University for assisting the required information and being used in the selected case studies. We would like to express our gratitude to the Second Century Fund (C2F) of Chulalongkorn University and the Program Management Unit for National Competitiveness Enhancement (PMU-C) of The Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO) to support this research project. Lastly, we would like to thank the staffs of UTC, which now forms a research group called Ignite Innovation Lab.

Second Century Fund (C2F) of Chulalongkorn University and the Program Management Unit for National Competitiveness Enhancement (PMU-C) of The Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO) to support this research project.

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Kruachottikul, P., Dumrongvute, P., Tea-makorn, P. et al. New product development process and case studies for deep-tech academic research to commercialization. J Innov Entrep 12 , 48 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13731-023-00311-1

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Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation

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There is a method to the madness.

Tesla has shifted the auto industry toward electric vehicles, achieved consistently growing revenues, and at the start of 2020 was the highest-performing automaker in terms of total return, sales growth, and long-term shareholder value. As a technology and innovation scholar, the author has studied how innovators commercialize new technologies and found that Tesla’s strategy offers enduring lessons for any innovator, especially in terms of how to win support for an idea and how to bring new technologies to market. To understand Tesla’s strategy, one must separate its two primary pillars: headline-grabbing moves like launching the Cybertruck or the Roadster 2.0 and the big bets it is making on its core vehicles, the models S, X, 3, and Y.

Few companies have attracted as much scorn and adoration as Tesla. When Tesla launches a product like the Cybertruck, the reception tends to be divisive: Critics see it as further evidence that founder Elon Musk is out of touch and doomed to fail, while supporters buy in — within a month Tesla received 200,000 preorders for the new vehicle. Compare that with the Ford-150, the world’s best-selling car in 2018, which sold just over 1 million vehicles that year.

• Nathan Furr is a Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and a coauthor of five best-selling books, including The Upside of Uncertainty, The Innovator’s Method, Leading Transformation, Innovation Cap i tal , and Nail It then Scale It .
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Unraveling Product Management Success: In-Depth Analysis of 10 Case Studies

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Product management, a dynamic blend of creativity and strategy, shapes groundbreaking innovations from abstract ideas. There’s no better way to comprehend this intricate dance than by diving into real-world case studies. In this blog, we emba rk on a journey through ten illuminating case studies, dissecting each phase and challenge that architects product management triumphs. From monumental missteps to resounding victories, each case study forms a mosaic of insights, demonstrating the path from ideation to market supremacy. These insights are further enriched as we link them to frameworks rooted in product management, product marketing , and strategic innovation.

These case studies illuminate the intricate art and strategic science of product management. Each story narrates a journey through innovation, iteration, user-centricity, and strategic adaptability, underpinned by frameworks integral to product management, product marketing, and strategic innovation. From empathetic design to responsive data-driven decisions , these studies form a compendium of strategies that drive product success. Whether in the realm of technology, travel, or consumer goods, the essence of product management resonates across diverse landscapes. As we navigate through these case studies in simple steps, we glean insights that guide both budding enthusiasts and seasoned professionals through the labyrinthine corridors of innovation, igniting the spark for the next wave of transformative products.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding customer needs drives innovation, evident in Apple’s iPhone and Airbnb’s personalized experiences.
• Strategic frameworks like Lean Startup (Tesla’s Model 3) and Blue Ocean Strategy (Airbnb) guide successful evolution.
• User feedback refines products, seen in Facebook’s News Feed redesign and Uber’s pricing strategy.
• Balancing innovation with familiarity propels mass adoption, exemplified by Tesla’s Model 3.
• Data shapes effective strategies, illustrated by Google’s algorithms, Netflix’s personalization, and Uber’s pricing approaches.

Case Study 1: Apple's iPhone - Orchestrating Innovation

Step 1:  Market Gap Analysis and Opportunity Identification (Problem-Solution Fit)

Apple’s iPhone journey began by identifying a yawning market gap: consumers desired an all-in-one device. This echoes the Problem-Solution Fit framework, encapsulating the essence of understanding customer pain points and providing tailor-made solutions.

Step 2:  Design Thinking and Iterative Prototyping (Design and Development)

Apple’s iterative approach to iPhone design embodies Design Thinking. By empathizing with user needs, ideating features, and rapidly prototyping, they ensured a product that resonated with real-world usage.

Step 3:  Agile Development and Rapid Testing (Agile Methodology)

Agile development was pivotal in iPhone’s realization. Frequent feedback loops, incremental development, and rapid testing aligned with Agile’s core principles, allowing Apple to pivot based on real-time insights.

Step 4:  Branding and Storytelling (Product Marketing)

Apple’s iconic iPhone launch wasn’t just about a product; it was a masterclass in storytelling. Their branding prowess and emotive narratives exemplify Product Marketing’s essence – conveying a product’s value through relatable stories.

Step 5:  Continuous Enhancement and User-Centric Iteration (Lean Startup)

Post-launch, Apple’s commitment to user-centricity mirrored the Lean Startup approach. Regular updates, user feedback incorporation, and iterative refinements transformed the iPhone into a product that evolved in tandem with user needs.

Case Study 2: Netflix's Content Personalization - Algorithms in Action

Step 1:  Data-Driven Insights and Customer Segmentation (Market Segmentation)

Netflix’s content personalization was sparked by data-driven insights, forming the foundation of effective market segmentation. The case study aligns with the principle of understanding diverse user segments and tailoring experiences accordingly.

Step 2:  Machine Learning and AI Integration (AI and Machine Learning)

Netflix’s predictive algorithms personify the integration of AI and Machine Learning. These algorithms, fueled by user data, offer personalized content recommendations at scale, showcasing the power of AI-driven personalization.

Step 3:  User-Centric Interface and Gamification (User Experience Design)

By designing a user-centric interface and incorporating gamification elements, Netflix amplified the User Experience Design philosophy. Their approach resonates with making interactions intuitive, engaging, and aligned with user preferences.

Step 4:  Feedback Loops and Agile Improvement (Agile Framework)

Netflix’s iterative enhancement process is an embodiment of the Agile framework. By encouraging user feedback, promptly adapting based on insights, and iteratively enhancing the platform, they embraced Agile’s ethos of flexibility.

Case Study 3: Tesla's Model 3 - From Vision to Mass Market

Step 1:  Disruptive Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy (Disruptive Innovation)

Tesla’s Model 3 journey echoes the Disruptive Innovation framework. By creating an affordable electric vehicle for the mass market, they disrupted the automotive industry and ventured into a blue ocean of opportunity.

Step 2:  Lean Production and Minimum Viable Product (Lean Production)

Tesla’s lean production tactics mirror the Lean Production framework. By emphasizing efficiency, minimizing waste, and focusing on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), they streamlined their manufacturing process.

Step 3:  Scalability and Operations Excellence (Operational Excellence)

Tesla’s emphasis on scalability and operational excellence aligns with the Operational Excellence framework. By refining processes, optimizing supply chains, and maintaining stringent quality control, they ensured seamless growth.

Step 4:  Innovation Ecosystem and Open Innovation (Open Innovation)

Tesla’s approach to autopilot features exemplifies Open Innovation. By tapping into external expertise and welcoming user inputs, they expanded their innovation ecosystem beyond internal boundaries.

Step 5:  Sustainable Growth and Value Chain Analysis (Value Chain Analysis)

Tesla’s journey from disruption to sustainable growth aligns with Value Chain Analysis. By optimizing each value-adding activity, they established a competitive edge while sustaining long-term growth.

Case Study 4: Airbnb's Platform Evolution - Cultivating Experiences

Step 1:  Customer Journey Mapping and Pain Point Identification (Customer Journey Mapping)

Airbnb’s evolution stemmed from mapping customer journeys and pinpointing pain points. By understanding user frustrations with traditional accommodations, they crafted a solution that resonated.

Step 2:  Rapid Prototyping and MVP Development (Minimum Viable Product)

Airbnb’s iterative evolution echoes the Minimum Viable Product approach. Rapid prototyping, embracing feedback, and building on the MVP allowed them to evolve the platform effectively.

Step 3:  Trust Building and Reputation Management (Reputation Management)

Airbnb’s focus on building trust among users aligns with Reputation Management principles. By nurturing a positive brand perception and managing user reviews, they established credibility and loyalty.

Step 4:  Global Expansion and Market Entry Strategy (Market Entry Strategy)

Airbnb’s global expansion reflects a well-executed Market Entry Strategy. Adapting to local cultures while preserving core offerings exemplifies the importance of understanding diverse markets.

Step 5:  Community Building and Network Effects (Network Effects)

Airbnb’s success thrived on harnessing Network Effects. Their initiatives for fostering community engagement created a positive feedback loop, amplifying user engagement and the platform’s value.

Case Study 5: Google's Search Engine - Algorithmic Prowess

Step 1:  Competitive Analysis and Market Positioning (Competitive Analysis)

Google’s journey commenced with competitive analysis, establishing a unique market  positioning . This strategic move underscores the importance of differentiating oneself in a crowded landscape.

Step 2:  Algorithmic Design and Innovation Framework (Innovation Framework)

Google’s introduction of the PageRank algorithm epitomizes  innovation frameworks . By introducing a groundbreaking approach to ranking web pages, they reshaped the landscape through innovative thinking.

Step 3:  Continuous Improvement and Kaizen Philosophy (Kaizen Philosophy)

Google’s iterative evolution embodies the Kaizen philosophy. By focusing on continuous improvement, incremental changes, and user-centricity, they sustained a competitive edge.

Step 4:  Monetization Strategies and Business Model Canvas (Business Model Canvas)

Google’s monetization through AdWords aligns with the Business Model Canvas. Identifying partners, customer segments, and revenue streams exemplifies crafting a holistic monetization strategy.

Case Study 6: Amazon's Prime Membership - Enriching Ecosystems

Step 1:  Customer Persona Development and Empathy Mapping (Empathy Mapping)

Amazon’s Prime journey initiated with crafting customer personas and empathy mapping. Stepping into users’ shoes, they devised an offering that catered to their desires and expectations.

Step 2:  Ecosystem Expansion and Blue Ocean Strategy (Blue Ocean Strategy)

Amazon’s expansion of Prime reflects Blue Ocean Strategy. By tapping into uncharted territories like streaming and e-books, they enriched their ecosystem, creating unprecedented value.

Step 3:  Data-Driven Decision-Making and KPI Measurement (KPI Measurement)

Amazon’s data-driven approach aligns with KPI measurement. Tracking key performance indicators, analyzing user behavior, and adapting offerings underscored the power of  data-driven decision-making .

Step 4:  Innovation and Disruptive Business Models (Disruptive Business Models)

Amazon’s introduction of Prime Day and Whole Foods discounts mirrors disruptive business models. By redefining industry norms, they sustained innovation and customer engagement.

Case Study 7: Coca-Cola's "New Coke" Fiasco - A Lesson in Perception Management

Step 1:  Market Research and Customer Surveys (Customer Surveys)

Coca-Cola’s reformulation of “New Coke” stemmed from extensive market research and surveys. This phase underscores the significance of gathering  consumer insights  and sentiments.

Step 2:  Change Management and Stakeholder Alignment (Change Management)

The response to “New Coke” highlighted the importance of change management. Ensuring alignment among internal stakeholders and managing transitions smoothly was pivotal.

Step 3:  Crisis Management and Reputation Recovery (Crisis Management)

Coca-Cola’s swift reversion to the original formula showcases effective crisis management. Acknowledging mistakes and reverting to a familiar product salvaged their brand reputation.

Case Study 8: Facebook's News Feed Redesign - Sculpting User-Centric Experiences

Step 1:  User Persona Development and User-Centered Design (User-Centered Design)

Facebook’s redesign journey commenced with user persona development and user-centered design. Focusing on user needs and preferences resulted in an interface aligned with user expectations.

Step 2:  Iterative Prototyping and Rapid Testing (Iterative Prototyping)

Facebook’s iterative approach mirrors the iterative prototyping framework. Creating prototypes, incorporating feedback, and refining designs ensured a seamless and user-friendly interface.

Step 3:  Ethical Design and Human-Centered AI (Ethical Design)

As concerns about user well-being grew, Facebook’s ethical design approach emerged. This phase highlights the importance of crafting technology that respects human well-being.

Step 4:  Storytelling and Emotional Branding (Emotional Branding)

Facebook’s storytelling approach echoes emotional branding. By weaving narratives that evoke emotions, they deepened their connection with users and fostered engagement.

Case Study 9: Microsoft's Windows 8 - Balancing Innovation and Familiarity

Step 1:  Ideation and Blue Sky Thinking (Blue Sky Thinking)

Microsoft’s Windows 8 journey began with blue sky thinking – embracing innovative ideas. This phase underscores the significance of bold thinking to reshape industries.

Step 2:  User Testing and Usability Iteration (Usability Iteration)

User testing and usability iteration exemplify Microsoft’s approach. Incorporating user feedback and iterating based on insights ensured a product that met user expectations.

Step 3:  Change Management and Internal Buy-In (Internal Buy-In)

The Windows 8 case highlights the importance of internal buy-in during change management. Gaining stakeholder support and managing transitions are vital for successful innovation.

Step 4:  Learning from Failure and Agile Mindset (Agile Mindset)

Microsoft’s response to user feedback reflects an agile mindset. Embracing failures as learning opportunities and adapting swiftly aligns with the principles of agility.

Case Study 10: Uber's Surge Pricing Strategy - Navigating Economics and User Perception

Step 1:  Demand-Supply Analysis and Pricing Optimization (Pricing Optimization)

Uber’s surge pricing strategy began with analyzing demand and supply dynamics. This phase emphasizes the importance of pricing optimization to balance economic viability and user sentiment.

Step 2:  Communication Strategy and Transparent Messaging (Communication Strategy)

Uber’s enhancement of their communication strategy was prompted by user confusion. Transparent messaging is vital for managing user expectations and preventing negative perceptions.

Step 3:  Ethical Pricing and Value Proposition (Ethical Pricing)

Uber’s approach to balancing profitability and ethics aligns with the Ethical Pricing framework. Maintaining a compelling value proposition even during surge pricing showcases a customer-first mindset.

Step 4:  Data-Driven Decision-Making and Continuous Improvement (Data-Driven Decision-Making)

Uber’s responsiveness to user behavior and feedback reflects data-driven decision-making. Analyzing user patterns and continuously adapting pricing strategies aligns with data-centric approaches.

Frequently Asked Questions

2024 estimate: Considering the current trajectory and projected growth, we can speculate that the average product manager salary in India for 2024 could be somewhere between ₹15 lakhs and ₹35 lakhs per year.

Product Manager salaries tend to increase with higher seniority levels. For instance, an Assistant Product Manager might earn ₹12.9 Lakhs, while a Chief Product Officer can command a salary of ₹1.2 Crores.

Some of the leading tech companies in India, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, offer competitive Product Manager salaries, with figures exceeding ₹50 Lakhs per annum.

Location plays a significant role in determining Product Manager salaries. Cities with a thriving tech ecosystem like Bangalore and Hyderabad tend to offer higher salaries.

Specialized skills, such as Agile Software Development, Product Strategy, and Go-to-Market Strategy, are highly rewarded in the field of Product Management.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Product innovation design process combined Kano and TRIZ with AD: Case study

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations College of Furnishing and Industrial Design, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Contributed equally to this work with: Jin Li, Ziqian Zhou

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization

Roles Investigation, Methodology

• Hui Rong, 
• Wei Liu, 
• Jin Li, 
• Ziqian Zhou

• Published: March 28, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

In the era of rapid product iteration, companies need simple and effective methods to guide the entire process of product innovation design and enhance their product innovation capabilities. Most research focused on improving one or several steps in the product design process. Although some scholars have proposed methods that guided the entire process, they combined more than three different theories, which increased the difficulty of theoretical learning and the complexity of practical implementation. This paper proposed a product innovation design process composed of three theoretical methods: Kano, Axiomatic Design (AD), and Theory of the Solution of Inventive Problems (TRIZ). This new process guided the entire product design process with fewer theoretical methods, reducing the difficulty of learning and implementation. The paper demonstrated the effectiveness of this method through the design practice of a portable two-wheeled self-balancing vehicle. Additionally, the discussion section explored the method’s potential from the design management perspective.

Citation: Rong H, Liu W, Li J, Zhou Z (2024) Product innovation design process combined Kano and TRIZ with AD: Case study. PLoS ONE 19(3): e0296980. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980

Editor: Mazyar Ghadiri Nejad, Cyprus International University Faculty of Engineering: Uluslararasi Kibris Universitesi Muhendislik Fakultesi, TURKEY

Received: July 11, 2023; Accepted: December 25, 2023; Published: March 28, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Rong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NOS:52105262)". Professor Wei Liu was the sponsor of the paper research. She played the roles of project management and writing guidance in this study. The authors did not receive any salary from the funder.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

In the context of fast-paced product iteration, the design innovation capability of companies needs to be enhanced [ 1 ]. So, the design innovation methods and processes must be effective and as simple as possible. To propose practical methods, it is necessary to outline the basic design innovation process. Improving user satisfaction is the ultimate goal of continuous product innovation [ 2 ]. Therefore, better services and products must start by analyzing user needs [ 3 ]. User needs determine the product’s functional attributes, and implementing these functions relies on technical principles and product structure [ 4 ]. Analyzing the mapping relationship between functions and structures and resolving conflicts are the main tasks of product functional design [ 5 ]. After completing the design solution, evaluating whether the product has been improved and optimized is necessary, which will help designers make design decisions [ 6 ]. In summary, the complete process of product innovation design includes five main steps: user needs research (S1), requirement-function transformation (S2), analysis of design issues (S3), resolution of design issues (S4), and design solution evaluation (S5).

Previous studies have proposed methods that only cover a single or a few steps in the product design process. These methods cannot guide the entire process of product innovation design. Further literature research has revealed that some scholars have paid attention to the need for strategies that can guide the whole process. However, these methods required the integration of more than three theories, which brought forth other issues. Readers needed a broad theoretical foundation to comprehend research articles and the design process. Additionally, the abundance of methods increased the complexity of the design practice, making it challenging for readers to learn and difficult to apply these methods widely.

The paper proposed an integrated method that covered the entire design process, utilizing only three theoretical approaches. This new method ensures guidance throughout the design workflow while reducing the complexity of both theory and practice. The proposed approach involves the use of Kano analysis for understanding user requirements (S1), utilizing the AD theory for requirement-function transformation, design problem analysis, and design solution evaluation (S2, S3, S5), and incorporating TRIZ for design problem-solving (S4). The paper demonstrated the new process’s effectiveness through a design practice.

Literature review

This literature review introduces the basic theories and research applications of Kano, AD, and TRIZ methods, their advantages and disadvantages, and the research gap.

Kano, proposed by Professor Noriaki Kano, is a two-dimensional cognitive model that studies the nonlinear relationship between product quality performance and user satisfaction [ 7 ]. The Kano model is widely applied in product development to help designers clarify user needs and establish product objectives [ 8 ]. The theoretical model classifies user needs into five categories based on the relationship between the completeness of functional requirements and user satisfaction: Must-Requirement (M), One-Dimensional Requirement (O), Attractive Requirement (A), Indifferent Requirement (I), and Reverse Requirements (R) [ 9 – 12 ]. These classification criteria assist in identifying explicit and implicit user needs, which contribute to designing new products or improving existing ones [ 13 ]. AD theory lacks specific methods for discovering and analyzing user needs. Kano can compensate for AD’s shortcomings and enhance the accuracy of mapping user needs to functional requirements.

Axiomatic design

Professor Suh proposed Axiomatic Design (AD) in 1976 [ 14 , 15 ]. This theoretical approach aims to establish design specifications quantitatively, assisting designers in enhancing the logic and systematics of problem analysis [ 16 ]. The theory proposes the concepts of customer domain (CAs), functional domain (FRs), structural domain (DPs), and process domain (PVs) to standardize the design process [ 17 ]. A mapping relationship exists between these domains in a zigzag pattern, as shown in Fig 1 . AD utilizes design matrices to express the relationships between the functional and structural domains and employs the independence axioms to analyze design problems [ 18 , 19 ]. When there is a coupled design, it indicates a contradiction between function and structure, and designers need to find ways to decouple them [ 20 , 21 ]. After obtaining design solutions, the information axioms in AD help designers make decisions by quantitatively comparing the information content in design alternatives [ 22 ]. Therefore, AD can assist in analyzing problems and evaluating solutions. However, previous research has indicated two notable limitations of AD. Firstly, although AD introduces the concept of the customer domain, it fails to provide an accurate method for identifying user needs and classifying their priorities [ 23 ]. Secondly, the ability to provide appropriate design suggestions is insufficient when presenting concrete solutions [ 24 ]. These are the main reasons the paper proposes the integration of Kano, TRIZ, and AD.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g001

Theory of inventive problem solving

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving(TRIZ) has been widely and rapidly adopted in academic and industrial fields as an efficient method for solving conflicting problems [ 25 ]. In 1946, Altshuller proposed TRIZ based on the analysis of interdisciplinary invention patents [ 26 ]. Since then, Ilevbare et al. have perfected the theoretical system of TRIZ by summarizing the contradiction matrix, 40 principles of the invention, and other related theoretical models, tools, and research methods [ 27 ]. TRIZ summarizes innovation methods from all fields and proposes a universal pattern that can be applied to engineering, tourism, catering, sharing economy, e-commerce, and other areas [ 28 ]. By addressing problems at the system level, TRIZ can effectively balance different interests in product design [ 29 ], and many designers and product design scholars have achieved effective design results using TRIZ [ 30 , 31 ].

The researcher classified all the tools and methods in the TRIZ theory system into three levels: philosophy, principles, and tools [ 32 , 33 ], as shown in Fig 2 . In actual use, researchers can flexibly choose the required methods based on the specific situation. Using contradictions to define problems and solve them with a contradiction matrix is one of the most commonly used methods in TRIZ theory [ 34 ]. TRIZ theory describes two types of contradictions: technical and physical contradictions. When a technical contradiction arises, changing one attribute in the system will lead to the deterioration of others. When a physical contradiction arises, the same parameter in the system cannot exist under different requirements [ 35 ]. Inventive principles will be found by analyzing the contradictions and comparing them to the corresponding engineering parameters and contradiction matrix [ 36 ]. Many published studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of this method [ 37 – 39 ]. For designers, the methods in TRIZ theory can provide new design inspiration and help solve contradictions that arise during the design process [ 40 , 41 ]. After analyzing design problems using AD, designers can utilize TRIZ to help solve these problems, which will compensate for the lack of solution methods in AD.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g002

Research gap

This study presents the literature through tables to provide a detailed overview of the existing research status. Due to the extensive literature volume, the tables only include research papers that meet the following two criteria: i. The papers were published within the past five years; ii. The papers proposed methodological processes that covered at least two steps in the design process. Table 1 displays the correspondence between the full names and abbreviations of theoretical methods, while Table 2 presents the relevant references.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t002

Numerous scholars have proposed improved methods for individual or multiple steps in product innovation design. Reference [ 42 ] examined the current needs of users using Kano (S1). References [ 43 , 44 ] utilized mathematical models and algorithms to predict future product demands (S1). Reference [ 45 ] established the connection between user requirements and product functions by QFD (S2). Additionally, it introduced a robot concept design for architectural layouts through TRIZ (S4). References [ 46 – 48 ] analyzed contradictions between functionalities and structures with AD (S3) and subsequently proposed design solutions by applying TRIZ (S4). Reference [ 50 ] constructed an evaluation system through literature research and the entropy evaluation method and evaluated mobile applications in government services by grey relational analysis (S5). Reference [ 52 ] employed qualitative methods to determine user requirements for bicycle handlebars (S1). Then, it proposed solution strategies using TRIZ (S4) and evaluated user satisfaction with improved handlebars by utilizing Kano and IPA (S5). These methodological processes presented in the studies can effectively enhance the efficiency or accuracy of specific steps in the design process, but they did not provide guidance for the entire process of product innovation design.

Further literature research reveals that some scholars have noticed the research gap in existing methods that failed to cover the entire innovation design process. To address this issue, they have integrated multiple theoretical methods. In reference [ 59 ], the KJ method and Kano survey were employed to analyze user requirements for Smart Neck Helmets (S1). And QFD was used to prioritize the importance of functional requirements and engineering parameters, providing a basis for analyzing design conflicts (S2, S3). Subsequently, TRIZ was applied to propose a new design solution (S4). Finally, the scheme was evaluated by FEA (S5). In reference [ 60 ], FMEA was utilized to capture user requirements for pressure relief valves. Then, QFD was employed to convert user requirements into functional and technical requirements, and TRIZ was used to develop a new valve structure solution. The solution was evaluated using LCA and Fuzzy TOPSIS. Although the studies guided the entire process of product innovation design, they necessitated the utilization of five different research theories and methods, which had potential drawbacks. First, it required readers to have a broad theoretical foundation to understand the design process and comprehend the research articles. Moreover, the multitude of methods increased the complexity of the design practice, which limited the practical application of these methods.

The paper proposed a new product innovation design process. This new process has two advantages. Firstly, this method can guide the entire process of product innovation design. Additionally, the new process incorporates only three theoretical methods, greatly reducing the learning burden for readers, while also lowering the difficulty and complexity of design practice.

The theoretical approach proposed in this paper consists of six main parts: clarifying user requirements, establishing a product function model, analyzing the conflicts between functional requirements and design parameters, resolving the conflicts based on TRIZ, validating and refining the design solution, and evaluating the scheme. The process is illustrated in Fig 3 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g003

Clarify user requirements

The Kano model is applied to identify user needs and classify them into different types, following the steps of designing the questionnaire, collecting responses, and processing data. This step provides a basis for mapping user needs to functional requirements and enhances accuracy.

Establish the function model

After clarifying user needs through the Kano model, in order to improve the accuracy of mapping functional requirements to design parameters, it is necessary to have a systematic understanding of the structural principles of the product. The paper will establish a functional model to decompose the functional structure of the product [ 66 ]. The functional model describes the relationships and interactions between components or parts of the product in a graphical manner [ 67 ], as shown in Fig 4 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g004

Analyze contradictions between product functions and design parameters

This process consists of three main steps.

Firstly, the functional requirements are decomposed based on the user needs identified by Kano.

Secondly, the mapping relationship between functional requirements and design parameters is established based on the functional model, as shown in Table 3 . The design equation can be represented as Eq ( 1 ), where X indicates the influence of the structure on the function, and O indicates no influence of the structure on the function.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t003

Thirdly, identify contradictions between product functional requirements and design parameters. According to the independence axiom in AD theory, the coupling of the design matrix is determined. Take Eq ( 2 ) as an example. The form of the matrix indicates that it is a coupling matrix. Three groups of conflicts exist between functional requirements and design parameters, namely FR 1 and DP 3 , FR 3 and DP 1 , and FR 3 and DP 2 . To decouple the matrix, these three conflicts are required to be solved.

Resolve conflicts based on TRIZ

The process mainly consists of three steps.

Firstly, complete the conversion of general parameters. In this step, the product components involved in the contradiction between function and structure need to be transformed into engineering parameters according to the definition in TRIZ theory, and the improvement factors and deterioration factors should be identified.

Secondly, select appropriate inventive principles and resolve contradictions. Based on the results of factor transformation in Step 1, refer to the Achshuler conflict matrix to find the inventive principle corresponding to the intersection of the improved and deteriorated parameters. Compare the obtained inventive principles with the design objectives and select the appropriate ones to resolve the design conflicts.

Validate and refine the design scheme

Verify the design scheme using the independence axiom in AD theory to determine its rationality. If the design scheme is deemed reasonable, further improvements can be made to enhance its effectiveness.

Evaluate the design scheme

After confirming that the design scheme complies with the independent axioms of AD and refining the design scheme, evaluate the design scheme by the information axioms in AD, comparing the amount of information in the scheme with the original product. Firstly, convert the user requirements obtained through Kano analysis into evaluation system indicators. Secondly, divide the evaluation levels of each indicator and determine the design scope based on user requirements. Thirdly, evaluate the scheme through expert evaluation. Finally, take the triangular fuzzy function as the membership function to convert linguistic terms into corresponding fuzzy numbers [ 68 ], draw the function graph, and calculate the amount of information according to Eq ( 3 ).

The self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle, as a means of transportation, has gained popularity among people in modern society. It has become common for college students to see them taking self-balancing two-wheeled vehicles to travel around the campus. This paper takes the design of a self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle as a practical case study to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the new process.

Identify user requirements for the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle

Through expert evaluation, the user requirements for the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle are determined by Kano analysis regarding commuting functionality, safety, comfort, portability, maintainability, and aesthetics. Based on the final calculation results, Must-Requirements include "ease of standing on the vehicle", "stable structures", and "responsive braking system". One-Dimensional Requirements include "simplicity of structure for easy maintenance" and "aesthetically pleasing appearance". Attractive Requirements include "good shock absorption", "lightweight", "handle for carrying", and "reduced size when idle". Indifferent Requirement is "riding speed". All the calculation results are presented in Table 4 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t004

Establish the functional model of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle

Through function analysis, the structural principles of the two-wheeled balancing vehicle, as well as the relationships and interactions among its components, can be determined, as shown in Fig 5 . This lays the foundation for establishing the mapping relationship between FRs and DPs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g005

Analyze the conflicts between the functional requirements and design parameters

Firstly, decompose the functional requirements based on the user requirements identified by Kano, as shown in Fig 6 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g006

Secondly, establish the mapping relationship between functional requirements and design parameters based on the functional model. Refer to Table 5 for details.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t005

Thirdly, analyze the conflicts between functional requirements and design parameters based on the independence axiom. According to the mapping results in Table 5 , the equations between portable self-balancing scooter functional requirements and product structure are listed, resulting in the design equation as shown in Eq ( 4 ). From the design matrix, it can be observed that there are 5 groups of conflicts.

There exists a conflict between "stable structures(FR 21 )" and "material(DP 41 )". Achieving structural stability requires high material strength, but high-strength materials may have a higher density, which would increase the weight of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle.

There exists a conflict between " stable structures(FR 21 )" and "folding structures(DP 43 )". While the inclusion of a folding structure may reduce the size when idle, it may also introduce movable components that compromise the structural stability.

There exists a conflict between "handle for carrying(FR 42 )" and "appearance(DP 61 )". Adding a handle would make it more convenient for users to carry the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle, but it may affect the product’s overall aesthetics.

There exists a conflict between " reduced size when idle (FR 43 )" and "footboard area (DP 11 )". Reducing the product size may result in a smaller footboard area, which could impact the riding experience for users.

There exists a conflict between "simple structures for easy maintenance(FR 51 )" and "folding structures(DP 43 )". The inclusion of a folding structure would increase the complexity of the vehicle’s structure, making maintenance more challenging.

Resolve design issues of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle based on TRIZ

Firstly, convert the factors of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle into general engineering parameters. Extract the factors that need improvement and the factors that may worsen from the five groups of conflicts, and transform them into the general parameters, as shown in Table 6 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t006

Secondly, select appropriate invention principles. Through the general parameters obtained from Table 6 , the paper refers to the Achshuler conflict matrix to find the corresponding invention, as shown in Table 7 . More than twenty invention principles are obtained based on the conflict matrix. After careful selection, the paper chooses principles of invention numbered 2, 5, 15, and 7 as the guiding methods for designing the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t007

Thirdly, utilize the invention principles to resolve design issues.

Above all, according to the invention principle No.2, the principle of extraction means that removing the part or attribute that has a negative effect is extracted from the object. The power transmission shaft component in the power system is extracted, thereby reducing the complexity and difficulty of the folding wheel structure.

Next, the invention principle No.5 is used for combination, which involves combining or merging the same objects or related operations in space or time. Combine the motor that generates power with the moving wheel, namely utilize hub motors to provide motive force for a self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle. The permanent magnet hub motor designed and researched by Ai Dong et al. can be a good choice, characterized by good stability, lightweight, and compact design [ 69 ].

Furthermore, the invention principle No.15, the dynamic principle, is meant to divide an object and make each of its parts alter its relative positions. To achieve folding function, certain components of the self-balancing scooter are allowed to change their relative positions. During this process, it is necessary to set up two rotating mechanisms to achieve the folding of the footboards and the wheels. A hinge is used between the handle and the footboard to achieve rotational folding of the footboard. The shape of the handle is designed to limit the footboard’s rotation angle, ensuring the product structure’s stability while riding. Moreover, it ensures the footboards can be quickly and easily folded when users need to carry the vehicle. A connecting shaft is employed between the wheel with a hub motor and the footboard. To realize the folding of wheels, a fixed joint is utilized to connect the connecting shaft with the wheel, while a rotating joint is adopted to connect the connecting shaft with the footboard. The structure enables the wheel to rotate onto the two-dimensional plane where the footboard is located, further reducing the overall volume of the product after folding.

Eventually, the invention principle No.7, the nesting principle, is employed to allow one object to pass through or be within the cavity of another object. To ensure the stability of the vehicle structure during riding and the simplicity of folding operation, a self-locking system needs to be designed. Two connecting shafts with different shape features are nested between the connecting shaft and the footboard to achieve dual functionality. During the operation of the vehicle, a square axis is used to connect the connecting shaft and the footboard to prevent relative displacement between the footboard and the wheel. When folding the self-balancing vehicle, the square axis is replaced with a round axis, so that the connecting shaft can act as a pivot. These two connecting shafts can be interchanged through buttons, card slots, and springs.

By comprehensively applying the inventive principles, a folding structure that meets the requirements is obtained. The schematic diagram of this structure is shown in Fig 7 . As the two-wheeled self-balancing vehicle is symmetrical, only the right side is shown in the figure.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g007

Firstly, the rationality of the design proposal is validated using the independence axiom of the AD theory. The mapping relationship between the functional requirements and design parameters of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle in the design scheme is established, as shown in Table 8 . The design matrix, as shown in Eq ( 5 ), indicates a non-coupled design according to the definition of the AD theory, suggesting that the design scheme is theoretically reasonable.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t008

Secondly, refine the design scheme based on the mechanical structure in the new design scheme. The design schematics of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle are shown in Fig 8 . This self-balancing two-wheeled is different from traditional ones. It can serve as a means of transportation when the user needs to travel from one place to another, and can also be folded by the user when not in use. The folding steps are shown in Fig 9 . Taking into account both commuting and portability in terms of ergonomics, the product size is determined as depicted in Fig 10 . The product has a simple and compact appearance, with colors mainly black and gray. And blue vehicle lights are used to enhance its technological sense. The main material options for the product body include aluminum alloy, magnesium alloy, or carbon fiber, which ensure strength while maintaining lightweight quality. These materials possess high plasticity and mature manufacturing processes, including sheet metal processing, spinning, stamping, deep drawing, and superplastic forming. In addition, the surface can be changed with spray painting or powder coating to increase corrosion resistance and scratch resistance.

(a) This figure shows the deployment state of a portable two-wheeled balancing vehicle. (b). This figure shows the folding state of a portable two-wheeled balancing vehicle.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g008

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g009

(a) This figure shows the product size of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle as it is deployed. (b) This figure shows the product size of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle as it is folded.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g010

Evaluation of the self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle design scheme

First, the user requirements obtained through Kano analysis are transformed into evaluation system indicators, namely, commuting functionality(A), safety(B), comfort(C), portability(D), maintenance complexity(E), and aesthetics(F).

Next, divide the evaluation levels of each indicator and determine the design scope on user requirements. A-D and F are divided into five evaluation levels: poor, fair, average, good, and excellent, while E is divided into three evaluation levels: simple, average, and complex. The design ranges of each indicator are determined based on user requirements. The design range for A-D and F is good and above, while the design range for E is average and below.

Then, through expert evaluation, the two self-balancing two-wheeled vehicles are assessed, and the evaluation results are shown in Table 9 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t009

Finally, calculate the information amount based on the plotted function graph. Take the commuting function (A) as an example; the plotted function graph is shown in Fig 11 . Eq ( 6 ) and Eq ( 7 ) show the information calculation processes. All the evaluation results are in Table 10 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.g011

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.t010

Contribution, significance, and limitations

This paper proposed a process for product innovation design by combining Kano, AD, and TRIZ. The new process was applied to the design practice of a self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle, which resulted in an improved design scheme. The final design output demonstrated that the proposed method could effectively guide the entire product innovation design process, helping designers understand user needs, analyze functional requirements, identify and resolve structural contradictions, and evaluate design solutions. In the new method, Kano’s identification of user needs clarifies the design direction in the early stages and forms an evaluation model for design solutions in conjunction with AD during the design evaluation stage. The AD theory plays a role in transforming user needs, analyzing design contradictions, and evaluating design solutions in the new process. These theoretical methods fully demonstrate their effectiveness and characteristics in the new process, leading to a reduced complexity of integrated methods in theory and practice compared to previous studies [ 59 , 60 ].

However, shortcomings in the new process can also be clearly identified during design practice. Firstly, the method proposed in this paper cannot effectively identify dynamically changing user requirements. Reference [ 70 ] combined Kano, grey relational analysis, and benchmarking theory to help identify and calculate dynamically changing user requirements and satisfaction. Additionally, using TRIZ to find innovative methods can lengthen the design cycle. Although TRIZ has summarized many parameters and inventive principles, it still relies on the designer’s experience for practical application selection. In this process, the design team needs to go through several trial-and-error attempts to find the correct direction, which undoubtedly prolongs the design cycle. Reference [ 71 ] proposed utilizing artificial neural networks (ANN) to address this issue. In conclusion, there are still shortcomings in the new process proposed in this study. Further research should try to address the shortcomings through optimization methods or by considering other perspectives.

Insights from managerial perspectives

Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that the proposed method has limitations in both capturing dynamic user requirements and efficiently utilizing TRIZ. Appropriate management approaches can partially compensate for the drawbacks of new processes without increasing the complexity of theoretical methods in practical implementation. The following will explain the design management approach of agile development and discuss the potential of using this management approach to address the drawbacks based on literature research and successful design cases.

Agile development originally referred to a design and management approach for software development that emphasizes iteration and incremental progress [ 72 ]. It underlines rapid feedback, flexibility, and collaboration, focusing on team communication and cooperation to adapt to changing requirements and rapidly iterate product updates [ 73 ]. This design management approach has gradually been extended to physical product design, known as agile product development [ 74 – 76 ].

The agile product development management approach requires constant feedback from users during the product design process to adapt to user needs and adjust design plans promptly. Simultaneously, technical development for implementing product functionalities should be conducted while conceptualizing design plans, with regular feedback provided [ 77 ]. The application of the agile product development management approach in industrial case studies, as demonstrated in the literature [ 77 – 79 ], has proven the effectiveness of this management approach in responding to dynamic user needs and rapidly iterating product technology plans. Many commercially successful products have been developed using this design management approach, such as Tesla’s Model 3. Tesla’s design team closely collaborated with potential users during the design process, rapidly collecting feedback on requirements and opinions on automotive interior design and promptly adjusting design plans. Moreover, due to the parallel design and development management approach, Tesla could proceed with the release and sales of Model 3 without any delays, even in the event of design plan adjustments.

In summary, the agile product development management approach facilitates tracking changes in user requirements and rapid iteration of product solutions. This effectively compensates for the shortcomings of the proposed method process in this paper. It provides a research direction for the subsequent optimization of the new approach.

The proposed design method combines Kano, AD, and TRIZ, covering the processes and steps of researching user needs, transforming needs into functional requirements, analyzing design problems, solving design problems, and evaluating design solutions. It guided the entire design process with fewer theoretical approaches, reducing the complexity of theory and practice. The design practice of a self-balancing two-wheeled vehicle demonstrated the new method’s effectiveness. However, there are still limitations and shortcomings in this study. Firstly, the proposed theoretical method weakens the ability to capture dynamically changing user needs. Additionally, selecting appropriate engineering parameters and inventive principles from TRIZ relies on personal experience and multiple trial and error. From a management perspective, when designing practice according to the new process, combining the agile product development management approach may compensate for the new process’s shortcomings without increasing theoretical complexity. Future research will attempt to optimize the proposed method process from the perspectives of management and other disciplines, enhancing the ability to follow up on changes in user needs and improving the accuracy of selecting engineering parameters and inventive principles.

Supporting information

S1 file. the minimal underlying data set..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296980.s001

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Professor Liu for her academic guidance. Thanks to Jin Li and Ziqian Zhou for their research.

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• Oct 4, 2023

Five Successful Product Design Case Studies that Drive Business Growth

Product design is a powerful catalyst for driving business growth. It goes beyond creating aesthetically pleasing products and delves into crafting compelling user experiences that captivate your target audience.

When your product resonates with customers emotionally, it establishes a strong connection that translates into brand loyalty, increased sales, and sustained business growth.

Paying careful attention to every aspect of your product's design, from its functionality to its visual appeal, can differentiate your brand and create a competitive advantage in the market.

In this article, we will explore five remarkable product design case studies that exemplify the impact of product design on driving business growth. These real-life examples showcase how companies like Apple Inc., Tesla Inc., Airbnb, Slack, and Coca-Cola leveraged product design to revolutionize their industries and achieve remarkable success.

By dissecting these case studies, we can extract valuable insights and actionable strategies that can be applied to your product, UI, or UX design projects.

Before we explore the case studies, it's worth mentioning our previous articles that provide a broader context. In " What to Ask Before a Product Design Project? (18 Top Questions!) ," we discussed the key questions to ask before starting a product design project.

Asking the right questions helps you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, define clear goals, and lay the foundation for effective product design that drives business growth.

Now, let's delve into the captivating case studies that demonstrate the power of product design in driving business growth.

Table of Content

Case study 1: apple inc. - iphone, key takeaways from apple's product design strategy, case study 2: tesla inc. - model s.

Lessons to Learn from Telsa's Product Design Approach

Case Study 3: Airbnb - User Interface Redesign

Key learnings from airbnb's ui design transformation, case study 4: slack - user experience enhancement, noteworthy insights from slack's ux design journey, case study 5: coca-cola - packaging redesign, valuable takeaways from coca-cola's packaging design approach, final thoughts.

Launch Your Products With Ease at the BraveUX Platform

Further Reading

Background of Apple Inc. and Its Focus on Product Design

Apple Inc., renowned for its commitment to innovation, has made product design a cornerstone of its success. The company consistently strives to create products that blend cutting-edge technology with elegant design.

From the Macintosh to the iPod, Apple has demonstrated its prowess in delivering exceptional user experiences. The iPhone is a standout example of Apple's dedication to product design [ 1 ].

Overview of the iPhone's Revolutionary Design

Upon its release in 2007, the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry with its sleek and intuitive design. It introduced a touchscreen interface that eliminated the need for physical keyboards, paving the way for a new era of user interaction.

The iPhone's minimalist aesthetics and seamless hardware and software integration set a new smartphone standard, captivating users worldwide [ 2 ].

Impact of iPhone's Design on Apple's Business Growth

The design of the iPhone played a pivotal role in propelling Apple's business growth. The combination of its sleek appearance, user-friendly interface, and innovative features garnered a dedicated following of loyal customers.

The iPhone's success not only boosted Apple's revenue but also solidified the brand's reputation as a leader in the tech industry. Its iconic design became synonymous with quality, reliability, and cutting-edge technology, driving customer loyalty and market dominance [ 3 ].

Apple's product design strategy offers valuable insights for businesses aiming to drive growth. Firstly, emphasizing the seamless integration of hardware and software demonstrates the importance of holistic user experiences.

Secondly, Apple's commitment to sleek and minimalist aesthetics showcases the power of visual appeal in capturing consumer attention.

Lastly, the iPhone's continuous evolution through iterative design updates highlights the significance of staying ahead of market trends and consistently improving the user experience.

By studying Apple's product design approach, businesses can learn the importance of prioritizing user-centric design, pushing boundaries to create innovative experiences, and adapting to evolving consumer needs. Apple's success with the iPhone serves as a testament to the transformative impact of effective product design on business growth.

Tesla Inc. and Its Emphasis on Product Design

Tesla Inc., the visionary electric vehicle manufacturer led by Elon Musk, strongly emphasizes product design.

The company's commitment to creating innovative, sustainable, and visually striking vehicles has set it apart in the automotive industry. One standout example of Tesla's product design excellence is the Model S [ 4 ].

The Model S's Design Features

The Model S, Tesla's flagship electric vehicle, boasts a design that seamlessly merges performance, sustainability, and luxury. Its sleek silhouette, aerodynamic curves, and clean lines not only contribute to its striking visual appeal but also optimize its efficiency and range.

Inside, the Model S offers a minimalist yet sophisticated cabin with a large touchscreen display that controls various vehicle functions. Its emphasis on cutting-edge technology and user-friendly interfaces ensures an engaging and intuitive driving experience [ 5 ].

Influence of Model S's Design on Tesla's Business Success

The design of the Model S has played a significant role in driving Tesla's business success.

By challenging the status quo of traditional automotive design, Tesla captured the imagination of consumers and positioned itself as an industry disruptor.

The Model S's sleek aesthetics and advanced electric powertrain attracted early adopters and environmentally conscious consumers, establishing Tesla as a premium brand in the electric vehicle market. Its innovative design and exceptional performance and range have garnered a loyal customer base, driving Tesla's exponential growth and market value [ 6 ].

Lessons to Learn from Tesla's Product Design Approach

Tesla's product design approach offers valuable lessons for businesses aiming to make an impact. Firstly, integrating sustainability and cutting-edge technology showcases the importance of addressing environmental concerns while delivering exceptional performance.

Secondly, the focus on creating visually appealing and luxurious designs demonstrates the power of evoking desire and emotions in consumers. Lastly, Tesla's commitment to continuous innovation and pushing the boundaries of electric vehicle design highlights the significance of staying ahead of the competition and shaping industry trends [ 7 ].

Studying Tesla's product design approach helps businesses gain insights into the importance of combining sustainability, technology, and aesthetics.

Tesla's success with the Model S exemplifies how groundbreaking design can position a brand as a leader in a competitive market, capturing the hearts and minds of consumers.

Airbnb's Platform and Its UI Design Evolution

Airbnb, the renowned online marketplace for vacation rentals, has significantly evolved its user interface (UI) design. Initially starting as a simple platform, Airbnb recognized the need to enhance its UI to provide a seamless and delightful user experience. Over time, the platform's UI design has evolved, integrating user feedback, market trends, and technological advancements to create a more intuitive and visually appealing interface [ 8 ].

Examination of Airbnb's User Interface Redesign Process

Airbnb's UI redesign process involved a comprehensive analysis of user behavior, pain points, and preferences.

The company conducted extensive research, incorporating user feedback and conducting usability testing to identify areas for improvement.

With a focus on simplicity and clarity, Airbnb refined its UI design, streamlining navigation, enhancing search functionality, and optimizing the booking process. The redesign also aligned the platform's visuals with the aspirations and emotions associated with travel and accommodation [ 9 ].

Positive Impact of UI Redesign on Airbnb's Business Growth

The UI redesign had a profound positive impact on Airbnb's business growth. The enhanced user experience increased engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.

By making the platform more intuitive and visually appealing, Airbnb attracted a wider user base, including hosts and guests, fostering trust and loyalty.

The positive word-of-mouth generated by the improved UI design further contributed to Airbnb's growth, solidifying its position as a leader in the vacation rental market [ 10 ].

Airbnb's UI design transformation offers valuable insights for businesses seeking to enhance their user experiences. Firstly, a user-centered approach, grounded in research and usability testing, is crucial in identifying pain points and understanding user behavior.

Secondly, simplicity and clarity are key to creating an intuitive and engaging UI design. Lastly, aligning the visual design with the emotional aspects of the platform's purpose can resonate with users on a deeper level, fostering a connection and driving business growth [ 11 ].

By studying Airbnb's UI design transformation, businesses can learn the importance of continuously improving the user experience, leveraging user feedback and data-driven insights.

Slack and Its Focus on User Experience

Slack, the popular communication and collaboration platform, strongly emphasizes user experience (UX). Recognizing that seamless and intuitive interactions are key to productivity and collaboration, Slack has continuously sought to enhance its UX design.

Slack aims to create a platform that fosters efficient communication and teamwork by prioritizing user-centered design principles [ 12 ].

Slack's UX Design Improvements

Slack's UX design journey has involved a series of improvements to optimize the user experience.

The platform has focused on simplifying navigation, streamlining messaging features, and integrating additional functionalities to enhance productivity.

Slack has refined its interface through iterative design updates, ensuring that users can effortlessly navigate channels, search for information, and collaborate effectively within teams. These improvements reflect Slack's commitment to delivering a seamless and enjoyable user experience.

How Enhanced UX Design Contributed to Slack's Business Growth

The enhanced UX design of Slack has played a significant role in its business growth. By creating an intuitive and user-friendly platform, Slack has attracted a large user base and gained a strong foothold in the market.

The improved user experience has increased user engagement, driving higher adoption rates and fostering long-term customer loyalty. The platform's reputation for delivering exceptional UX has been instrumental in Slack's rise as a leading communication and collaboration tool [ 13 ].

Slack's UX design journey offers valuable insights for businesses seeking to enhance their user experiences. Firstly, prioritizing simplicity and ease of use is crucial in creating an intuitive and enjoyable platform.

Secondly, understanding user workflows and pain points enables the identification of areas for improvement. Lastly, consistent iterations and updates based on user feedback and evolving needs are key to delivering a superior UX that drives business growth [ 14 ].

When you study Slack's UX design approach, you learn the importance of user-centric design, continuous improvement, and staying attuned to user needs.

Coca-Cola and Its Packaging Design Legacy

Coca-Cola, a globally recognized beverage brand, has a rich history and a legacy of impactful packaging design. Over the years, Coca-Cola has become synonymous with its iconic red and white packaging, which has left a lasting imprint on consumer culture. The brand's commitment to innovative packaging design has significantly shaped its identity and success in the market [ 15 ].

Coca-Cola's Packaging Redesign Strategy

Coca-Cola's packaging redesign strategy involved carefully analyzing evolving consumer preferences, market trends, and sustainability goals. The brand recognized the need to align its packaging with changing consumer demands and environmental considerations.

Through a thoughtful and meticulous process, Coca-Cola introduced new packaging designs that embraced modern aesthetics, sustainable materials, and personalized options to cater to diverse consumer segments [ 16 ].

Influence of Packaging Redesign on Coca-Cola's Business Success

The packaging redesign efforts of Coca-Cola have had a profound influence on its business success. By refreshing its packaging design, Coca-Cola has connected with new generations of consumers while maintaining its loyal customer base.

The updated designs attracted attention on store shelves and created a sense of novelty and excitement around the brand. This, in turn, led to increased sales, strengthened brand loyalty, and a positive impact on Coca-Cola's overall market share [ 17 ].

Coca-Cola's packaging design approach offers valuable takeaways for businesses aiming to enhance their brand presence and drive business growth. Firstly, recognizing and adapting to changing consumer preferences is essential in staying relevant and capturing new markets.

Secondly, embracing sustainability in packaging design can align a brand with consumer values and contribute to a positive brand image. Lastly, creating personalized packaging options can foster a sense of individuality and strengthen the emotional connection between consumers and the brand [ 18 ].

By studying Coca-Cola's packaging design approach, businesses can gain insights into the importance of continually evaluating and evolving their packaging strategies.

These success stories demonstrate that effective product design goes beyond aesthetics – it encompasses user experience, innovation, and differentiation. By prioritizing product design, businesses can create compelling experiences that captivate their target audience, foster brand loyalty, and propel their growth in the competitive market.

Effective product design is a strategic imperative in today's dynamic business landscape. It is about creating visually appealing products and understanding user needs, solving pain points, and delivering memorable experiences.

By prioritizing product design, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive long-term success. Investing in exceptional product design is an investment in your business's future growth and sustainability.

Launch Your Products with Ease at the Brave UX Platform

To help businesses achieve their product design goals, we invite you to engage the Brave UX Platform today. Our platform offers various services and solutions to streamline your design process and deliver exceptional results.

With our agile methodology, you can expect an efficient and collaborative design that ensures timely project completion. Our design services focus on creating exceptional user experiences that engage and impress your target audience.

We specialize in conversion-driven design, maximizing your conversion rates and return on investment.

Through our subscription-based design services, you can enjoy unlimited iteration, make the most of your subscription, engage multiple squads, and have unlimited access to source files.

Our platform provides access to top talent and expertise through our design squad, ensuring you work with the best in the field. We offer industry-focused solutions tailored to your specific sector, understanding your industry's unique challenges and opportunities.

We value partnership and collaboration, working closely with you to bring your vision to life. Sign up at the Brave UX Platform today and unleash the power of effective product design to drive your business growth.

Further Reading:

Product Design vs. Product Development: The Differences Explained Learn about the distinctions between product design and development and how they contribute to successful product creation.

5 Common Product Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Discover the most common pitfalls in product design and learn practical strategies to avoid them for better design outcomes.

Five Successful Tech Products That Were Made by Mistake Explore the intriguing stories of tech products that unexpectedly became successful and the lessons we can learn from their accidental beginnings.

How Business Analysis And UX/UI Design Collaboration Can Create Better Products Discover the powerful collaboration between business analysis and UX/UI design and how their collaboration can create exceptional products.

• Product Development and Management
• Product Design

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• Nov 30, 2021

A Case Study in Product Improvement

Updated: Dec 9, 2021

THE CHALLENGE

A large, global manufacturing company was experiencing a product issue that they

estimated was costing them $11 million annually in product repairs and maintenance. They

wanted to develop modifications to their existing product that would not only solve this

issue, but would generate new value through 1) marketable improvements, and 2)

protectable solutions.

THE SOLUTION

The team wanted to find actionable solutions fast, so through a half-day custom Innovation

Works® recipe, this company was able to leverage knowledge from engineers and sales/

marketing experts to focus on rapidly producing numerous solutions.

Working in small teams, participants collaborated to develop, refine and pitch their best

ideas. Teams then took these initial concepts through additional iteration cycles using the

same innovation process.

THE RESULTS

“This experience, which allowed cross-functional teams to rapidly generate solutions,

ultimately produced seven concepts that were sent to the company’s patent attorneys. The

process generated the marketable and protectable improvements we were looking for, and

the team had fun.”

- Senior Staff Engineer

• Innovation Works®

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Product Innovation

Case study of a product innovation mandate for one of the largest and most dominant pension administration companies in North America.

Our client is one of the largest and most dominant pension administration companies in North America. Over the past 25 years, they have created the most comprehensive software suite for managing defined benefit pension plans.  

Its aging technology platform was creating higher integration costs and pushing the company's business out of the mid-market. As a result, the company was forced to focus exclusively on the largest pension administrators, thereby ignoring a market consisting of approximately 2,900 smaller organizations across Canada and the United States. Levio was responsible for designing and creating a next-generation software suite for smaller organizations that would be sold under a SaaS subscription model. Levio used a human-centered approach to design an innovative product that would solve a serious business problem.  

The product was created using a venture capital partnership model. Levio led the technology and innovation, while the vision was led by the partner client.  

• Establish a joint governance model to drive a 2-year, $10+ million initial program and drive marketing and sales of the new solution.  
• Develop a modern future-proof architecture based on C and Java back-end microservices, with Angular 6.0 Google Material design, on a front-end system and Azure cloud hosting to ensure DevOps deployment.  
• Utilize a new system to immediately support the client's outsourcing activities.  

Levio provided the following services:  

• Technical and product leadership  
• Digital transformation consulting  
• Customer and partner management  
• Roadmap, project scoping (objectives), design, architecture, requirements  
• Project and program planning, full life cycle management  
• Agile development  
• DevOps, QA, implementation, deployment  
• Support and maintenance  
• Change management and training  
• Minimal Viable Product (MVP) tracking and dashboard deployed to client's outsourced operations to manage small pension plans.  
• Deployment via a hybrid in-house/cloud model where the data layer and related processing components reside on in-house servers and all core application elements reside in the cloud, for the larger outsourcing companies the client does business with. The routing and networking required to make this possible is also handled by Levio's experts  
• The modern user interface of the product is transferred to the existing version of the company to enhance the user experience of the large enterprise customers.  

ACHIEVEMENTS  

• The product created in co-investment and venture capital partnership has been a real success.  
• All the steps of the roadmap have been completed.  
• Project was completed on time, on budget and within scope.  
• Seamless collaboration between partner and client teams.  
• In a company with a rather traditional business model, a new culture of innovation was created.  
• Levio gained the client's trust and subsequently other mandates.  

The Power of Sustainable Innovation: Real-World Case Studies

Sustainable innovation transforms industries. Companies like Tesla, Unilever, Patagonia, Interface, and Danone prove that profitability and purpose harmonise through eco-friendly strategies, securing a brighter, responsible future.

In an age defined by environmental concerns and heightened social responsibility, the integration of sustainability into business strategies has become paramount. Companies worldwide are embracing the notion that sustainable innovation is not only an ethical obligation but also a source of innovation, competitive advantage, and profitability.

This article will explore real-world case studies of companies that have successfully embedded sustainability into their core business strategies, highlighting their innovative approaches, the challenges they encountered, and the tangible benefits they have reaped in terms of profitability and purpose.

Tesla: Revolutionising the Automotive Industry

When you think of sustainable innovation in the automotive industry, Tesla inevitably comes to mind. Founded in 2003 by Elon Musk, Tesla's vision was to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. The company's groundbreaking electric vehicles (EVs) have disrupted the traditional automotive industry, demonstrating that sustainability can go hand in hand with innovation.

Tesla's innovative approach began with the production of high-performance electric sports cars. These vehicles not only reduced greenhouse gas emissions but also shattered preconceived notions about the capabilities of electric vehicles. The company then expanded its product line to include more affordable models, like the Model 3, making sustainable transportation accessible to a broader audience.

Tesla's challenges included battery technology development, charging infrastructure, and navigating regulatory obstacles. However, their unwavering commitment to sustainability led to groundbreaking solutions. Tesla's Gigafactories manufacture batteries at an unprecedented scale, reducing costs and increasing the range of their vehicles. Their Supercharger network addressed range anxiety, offering fast charging capabilities to EV owners.

The result? Tesla has not only driven the adoption of electric vehicles but has also become one of the most valuable companies in the world, proving that sustainability can be a catalyst for business growth and success.

Unilever: The Sustainable Living Plan

Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, set a shining example in the realm of sustainability with its Sustainable Living Plan. Unilever recognised early on that its products' environmental and social impacts needed addressing. Their innovative approach was to fully integrate sustainability into their business model, all while striving to double the size of the business.

Unilever's challenges were vast. They had to reassess their entire supply chain, ensuring it met sustainability standards. This involved finding sustainable sources for raw materials, reducing waste, and minimising their carbon footprint. They also set ambitious goals, like helping more than a billion people improve their health and well-being and reducing their environmental impact by half.

To meet these goals, Unilever focused on product innovation. They developed products that were not only environmentally friendly but also addressed social issues. For example, their Lifebuoy soap initiative aimed to improve hygiene in developing countries. They also acquired companies like Ben & Jerry's and Seventh Generation, known for their commitment to sustainability.

Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan not only improved their environmental and social footprint but also bolstered their brand image and bottom line. The company reported that their sustainable brands grew 69% faster than the rest of the business in 2018. This case study exemplifies how integrating sustainability into core business strategies can drive revenue and enhance brand value.

Patagonia: Leading the Way in Ethical Apparel

Patagonia, an outdoor apparel company, has long been a trailblaser in sustainability and ethical business practices. Their commitment to sustainability goes beyond mere lip service – it is ingrained in the company's DNA. Patagonia's innovative approach to sustainability is anchored in the belief that less harm means more good for the world.

One of their most remarkable initiatives is the "Worn Wear" program. This program encourages customers to buy used Patagonia items, repair their old clothing, or trade in used items for store credit. This not only extends the life of their products but also minimises waste and promotes responsible consumption.

Patagonia has also taken a stand against "fast fashion" by encouraging customers to buy fewer, high-quality items that last. Their commitment to environmental responsibility led them to donate 100% of Black Friday sales in 2016 to grassroots environmental organisations, contributing over $10 million.

Challenges faced by Patagonia included navigating the complexities of their supply chain and balancing sustainability with profitability. However, their innovative approach and unwavering commitment to environmental and social responsibility have led to remarkable results. Patagonia's revenue has continued to grow, demonstrating that consumers are increasingly valuing ethical and sustainable brands.

Interface: Sustainability in Carpet Manufacturing

Interface, a global manufacturer of modular carpet, is a prime example of how a company can completely revamp its business strategy to align with sustainability. Their founder, Ray Anderson, underwent a transformative journey when he realised the environmental impact of his business. Interface's innovative approach was to adopt a mission to become the world's first environmentally sustainable and socially responsible company.

Interface's journey was marked by challenges. They had to reimagine their entire production process, making it more sustainable. They introduced innovative technologies like closed-loop recycling, where old carpets are collected, recycled, and used to make new ones. This reduced waste and resource consumption while saving money.

The company also pursued a goal to source 100% of its materials from renewable or recycled sources. Their innovative approach to sourcing led to partnerships with suppliers who shared their sustainability goals. Interface also aimed to achieve zero net emissions, pushing them to invest in renewable energy and reduce their carbon footprint.

The results have been remarkable. Interface has reduced its environmental impact, increased customer loyalty, and improved its bottom line. Their dedication to sustainability has not only paid off in terms of profits but has also solidified their position as a leader in sustainable business practices.

Danone: Nurturing a Sustainable Food System

Danone, a multinational food-products corporation, has undertaken a journey to transform the way they do business, focusing on healthier and more sustainable food products. Their innovative approach is guided by their "One Planet. One Health" vision, which aligns business success with the well-being of people and the planet.

Danone's challenges included transforming their product portfolio to offer healthier options, reducing their carbon emissions, and promoting sustainable agriculture. They've invested in research and development to create healthier, more sustainable food products and have implemented sustainable farming practices.

One of their most notable initiatives is the Danone Ecosystem Fund, which supports local farmers and communities in developing countries, helping them adopt sustainable agricultural practices. This not only improves the livelihoods of farmers but also secures a sustainable supply of raw materials for Danone.

The company's commitment to sustainability has resonated with consumers, making them a preferred choice for those who value healthy, sustainable food products. Their revenue growth is indicative of the profitability of aligning business strategies with sustainability and health.

These real-world case studies underscore the power of sustainable innovation in transforming companies and industries. They demonstrate that integrating sustainability into core business strategies can lead to innovative solutions, increased profitability, and a stronger sense of purpose. By embracing sustainable practices, companies can not only mitigate environmental and social challenges but also thrive in an increasingly conscious and responsible world. The time for sustainable innovation is now, and these case studies provide a compelling roadmap for companies looking to make a positive impact on the world while growing their bottom line.

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Discover strategies to enhance profitability, cultivate a greener and more sustainable business model, and elevate overall well-being..

Group sales incentives boost weak brand sales, study finds

Study provides insights for managers of stores that offer single-brand product lines

New research co-authored by a UC Riverside business professor provides some sound advice for managers of retail outlets that limit their product selection to a particular brand: Managers should factor in the strength of their brand when structuring the pay incentives for their sales staff.

The study focused on what marketing scholars call “brand-managed” retail operations. These outlets include “stores within stores,” such as counters in major department stores with dedicated sales staff that offer just one brand of cosmetics such as Clinique. They can also be stores in malls that offer a single brand’s line of products, such as Nike sportswear or Gap clothing.

UCR marketing professor Subramanian “Bala” Balachander and his collaborators found that with weaker brands, group incentives, such as sales commissions divided up equally among the sales team members, resulted in better sales performances for particular sales outlets. They also found individual incentives, such as commissions based on each salesperson’s sales volumes, were more effective for stronger brands.

While these results may sound counterintuitive, Balachander explained that weaker brands generally have more uncertain sales outcomes. If salespeople are compensated individually, the store runs the risk of paying certain salespeople too much for easy sales from repeat buyers or customers who arrive at the stores ready to make a purchase.

“With a weaker brand, group sales compensation gives you a better filter because it doesn't matter whether a particular salesperson got the easy sale or the difficult customer, and we know for sure that the salespeople have been doing their work and being successful in converting those new customers. This advantage is much more valuable to the weak brand,” said Balachander, who is the Albert O. Steffey Chair at the UCR’s School of Business.

The study is based on data from brand-managed retail operations in the United States and China.

In the U.S., the researchers gathered data about the prevalence of group compensation in brand-managed outlets by obtaining designer brand names for beauty and fashion lines offered by a high-end department store and from stand-alone stores at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., from online directories. The researchers used Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com to gather employee-reported information about salesperson incentives in the form of commissions or cash bonuses offered by brands.

In China, the researchers obtained monthly sales data from 23 gold jewelry brands sold in a large retail store, with each brand having its own counters and sales staff. Similarly, sales data was gathered from a major Chinese electronics retailer, which received a percentage of the sales revenue from 51 brands generated in the store. Each brand set up its own selling counter and hired its own salespeople.

The study also provides a model of how brand strength or equity, which is based on marketing, promotion, customer awareness, and other factors that influence customer perception before they arrive at the store, influence the selling effectiveness of salespersons.

The study ’s title is “Group or Individual Sales Incentives? What is Best for Brand-Managed Retail Sales Operations?” It appears in the Journal of Marketing. The other co-authors are Wenshu Zhang and Jia Li.

Cover photo: A saleswoman at a 'Jo Malone'  luxury fragrances counter in Düsseldorf, Germany. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)

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