The Importance of Product Ideation and Discovery in the Innovation Process

Innovation is what leads businesses to success, growth, and compete in this growing digital world. Staying relevant in today’s time is very hard and for that innovation stands on two important pillars – Product Ideation and Product Discovery. New ideas and user experience are crucial for consumer loyalty. In this blog, we will discuss why product ideation and discovery are important and how it results in innovation.

Innovation is a process that deals with several sub-processes like generating new ideas and concepts and implementing them for a positive outcome. With the rapid advancements in the software industry, it is very important to be innovative for any company or individual to stay in the game.

There are many reasons why innovation is important. A few of them are listed below:

   1. Keeping up with the trends

With new technology both new problems and new solutions arise. Thus, keeping track of the current trends is essential for being relevant in the market. This helps you in finding solutions and being ahead of your competition.

   2. Keeping a customer-centric approach

Staying connected with the customers and keeping your focus on user experience ensures customer satisfaction and loyalty in the long run.

   3. Scope of improvement

With continuous innovation the door to improvement also opens. When bringing new ideas and new software, you make sure that the user experience is better and improved. This also improves the critical thinking ability of the team and increases the overall productivity while using minimum resources.

   4. Uniqueness and Creativity

When businesses focus on innovation, then uniqueness and creativity come in handy. New ways open to deal with the same problem but in a better, unique, and creative way. This attracts a multitude and increases the sales of the company.

Product Discovery is a phase in innovation where we focus on understanding the user’s needs, identifying their problems and finding a solution that suits both the business owners as well as the customers. Product Discovery helps software industries to build the products in a way that prioritizes the customer’s needs while keeping the company’s resources in check.

There are many factors which are involved in this process:

   1. User Research

Trends and patterns are checked in order to understand and observe the target audience, their needs and pain-points. This helps us to get an insight into customer emotions and selling points.

   2. Product Ideation

The product ideation process is a very important step as new ideas and thoughts are brainstormed with the goal of bringing new and unique ideas for the growth of both users and the company.

   3. Continuous Improvement

An iterative approach is kept in mind so that there is room for improvement based on the customer feedback and market insights.

   4. Defining the Problem

This involves defining the problem clearly by thorough research and exploring the challenges faced along with the user needs.

Product Discovery is a continuous process and should be integrated with the entire software product development lifecycle to ensure that the final product is able to meet the user’s needs. It is a process where you need to constantly work on refining and altering the product based on the customer’s needs, current market situation and resources present in the company.

Product Discovery plays a huge role in the mobile and web development process, and it ensures that the final product is accepted by the consumers. Want to know how we discover, design and set a solid foundation for mobile apps? Then, read our blog on Mobile App Engagement Model – Discovery and Design.

Understanding the importance of Product Discovery in Innovation Process

   1. Mitigating Risks

Product discovery helps in reducing any potential risk associated with software development services by thoroughly researching any idea and concepts before investing any time or resources. This research determines if the product will be able to thrive or not in the market.

   2. Identifying Market Opportunities

Product discovery helps in conducting market research, analyzing consumer behavior, and gaining insights into the available opportunities. Companies can learn about the patterns and trends and leverage this information to launch innovative software solutions by bringing unique ideas to the table and thus gain a competitive advantage.

   3. Enhancing Customer Satisfaction

Product discovery provides companies with useful insights into the target audience and their preferences. This helps the companies to tailor products to meet the customer needs and better customer satisfaction and loyalty.

   4. Increasing Market Competitiveness

By developing innovative software solutions based on customer needs and market requirements, companies can stand out from their competitors and attract more customers.

   5. Reducing Costs and Increasing Revenues

By leveraging Product Discovery, businesses can economize and get maximum user satisfaction with minimum resources. This increases the revenue of the business leading to overall growth and development.

By incorporating product discovery practices into their software development processes, companies can create successful, customer-focused software products that meet market demands and drive business growth.

By incorporating product discovery practices into their software development processes, companies can create successful, customer-focused software products that meet market demands and drive business growth.

Product Ideation is an essential step in the Product Discovery process as this is the point where new ideas either for an existing solution or for a new product are generated. This is a very crucial step as it involves various questions that need to be asked before the launch of a product.

• Why does the product need to be launched?
• How will the product help?
• Will the product satisfy the user needs?
• Will the product sustain the changing market or not?
• How can the product be improved?

These questions determine the future of the product and the revenue it will generate for the company. This also helps in minimizing the risks that the company is about to take.

Since new ideas are created in this process, it gives the company uniqueness and freshness. When the company acknowledges the changing market and its needs, their products thrive in the market and customer value is seen.

When comparing the product ideation between SMB owners and IT directors, SMB owners have a broader sense of the market as they have direct contact with the customers and market. IT directors have to deal with a lot of internal processes like technology strategies, budgeting, and IT infrastructure while SMB owners deal with external processes.

Bringing successful innovation comes with its own challenges. Ideation is the initial step of the Innovation process, there’s a lot to work on like checking on the customer feedback, making changes according to the needs, understanding the market potential.

A few common challenges faced during the innovation process are follows:

A few common challenges faced during the innovation process are follows:

   1. Lack of Resources

There are times when lack of resources poses a challenge during the ideation and discovery phase while the other times, it becomes the reason in invention of a better product made up of minimal resources. When resources are less, it becomes difficult to prioritize because you’ve got to make the most of what you have and you’re not able to pursue every idea that you’ve in mind.

   2. Idea Evaluation and Prioritization

While creating new ideas, it is very important to clearly understand the goal. Setting a clear goal helps to evaluate the idea easily and know what should be prioritized. Many factors shape the evaluating process such as market condition, customer requirement, alignment with business goals and more.

   3. Lack of Diverse Perspectives

When ideas are limited to a specific thought or influenced by the existing solutions, it becomes very hard to generate new ideas. Keeping your mind open to new knowledge is very necessary in this process. You can find inspiration from very basic or day-to-day things. It is necessary to include each person, so that you can get hold of different perspectives.

   4. Balancing Innovation and Risk

Whenever a new product is introduced in the market, there always comes a tint of risk with it. The market is always unpredictable but still market analysis and risk assessment are required to narrow down the risk factors. Even though it being a challenge, it is always better to balance out the innovation process and risk factors associated with it.

   5. Evolving Mind

It is easy to turn your idea into a product, but what is hard is constantly refining and testing it based on the customer feedback, market requirements, and ROI of the company. This requires quick decision-making power and strong communication within the teams.

   6. Overcoming Resistance to Change

Ideation process faces a lot of resistance both from the stakeholders as well as from the customers. This is because people are often resistant to any change, being it a life decision or a new product in the market. With proper knowledge, education and communication, this problem can be resolved.

With this partnership, Philips was able to provide its customers with the bulb of their choice to brighten up their home and life. The customers were now not only able to choose the bulb of their choice, but also check the kind of light their house needed.

Philips and Sunflower Lab believe in customer satisfaction, and we both have fulfilled our promises. This innovation resulted in 1.7B of sales in the first quarter for Philips and also gaining the fastest app downloading record for any app.

Product Ideation and Discovery in the Innovation process has led to fruitful results for the businesses. Because of Product discovery creating a product for the customer satisfaction along with better ROI for the company has become easy and simple. It makes sure that a product survives the market and its flux.

At Sunflower Lab, our main goal is to diminish the gap between the clients and their customers with our digital solutions. Instead of giving a one-time solution, our experts are continuously dedicated to providing a long-term solution with better results and development of the company. Here, we make sure that your idea becomes your solution.

If you also have ideas and looking for digital solutions for Innovations, then we have our team ready for you. Contact us today and we would be happy to help!