What's the Big Idea? Test and Identify

For over 20 years, Ipsos Vantis has been testing the market potential of thousands of new products and services. Based on the world's largest concept-testing database, containing more than 15,000 non-grocery product and service concepts, Ipsos Vantis has devised validated forecasting models to test concepts across four broad sectors - durable goods, technology (hardware, software), health and pharmaceutical, and services. Our research helps companies determine which ideas will fly and which ones will sink if placed in the market.

Companies are drawn to big ideas. It seams only logical that bigger is better and attracting more interest to your idea means greater success. But identifying the big ideas that translate into business success isn't always so obvious. And sometimes, there are surprises along the way.

Ideas to the Test

How do you identify big ideas? The approach our researchers at Ipsos Vantis take is to test an idea and measure its potential against similar and relevant concepts previously tested in our database. We specifically measure factors that will determine the in-market success of an idea - purchase intent, liking, price/value, uniqueness, believability, and need fulfillment. All of these key measures are put into a scorecard and a market success score is assigned. Ideas will come out as having low market potential, high market potential or fall somewhere in the middle.

Naturally, low scoring ideas are easy to reject and high scoring ideas help point to a winner offer. Our research shows that products and services that score above average or better across the database have a 70% chance of success in market. Many of these ideas score high because they are concepts that are relevant or already familiar to the market, finding their basis in sectors, products and services that are generally known and accepted by the public. They have a high adaptability and translate easily to the market.

But it is the idea that scores in the middle that poses the more challenging decision because these ideas are often ripe with opportunity. Again, our research shows that middle scoring ideas have a 50% success rate once in the market. But the fact is, many of the biggest market success stories ringing up sales across the country today had average key measure scores in the testing phase. Why? Some of these ideas are game changers in the market, but are not immediately accepted by test respondents. Some of these mid-scorers are truly innovative ideas that could represent a whole new category, product, or service, but because they do not have that familiarity and acceptance built in at the testing stage, they fall into the middle of the scorecard. The iPhone and the Kindle were two such products. The biggest ideas can lie right in the middle and when we come across these kinds of ideas, the research analysis must go beyond the key performance indicators.

From Average to Star

Some of the biggest success stories started as mid-performing ideas. And that is good news. But while 50% of those average-performing ideas turn up as winners, that also means an equal share do not. So how do we proceed? We dig deeper into the research to identify the factors that point to a successful big idea.

One way is to take another look at the database scores, in particular, the pattern of those scores. There are about two-dozen new product archetypes to examine, but the majority of the missed opportunities fall into three archetypes: overpriced, niche or targeted, and breakthrough.

Overpriced ideas perform well in most areas, are liked, but score poorly on value and purchase intent because of their high price. Niche or targeted ideas have a mediocre performance along the key measures score, but their purchase intent is very high to a particular segment of the test audience. And breakthrough ideas win on their likeability and uniqueness, but fall short on the other measures. Looking at these archetypes and seeing these three areas in particular helps us point to good ideas, and possibly very big ideas.

We also look at the average performing ideas across segments. Across the board, an average scoring idea may not have broad appeal, but it may have high appeal to one or more segments of the market.

Identifying these areas represent tremendous opportunities for tweaking and targeting what could be a seemingly average performing idea into a shining idea. But take note. It is important not to settle for a simple rank order. Pick your winners and move forward, but be disciplined about your analysis of the mid performers.