How To Improve Or Develop A New Product/Service

Product/service improvement or looking for right opportunities to develop new product/service is something that every business, enterprise, organization takes part into, almost on daily basis.

Constant improvement in product/service or developing new product/service is not just necessary but essential for the long term success of any business and to gain competitive advantage. 

We all agree on the significance of constant improvement, developing new product/service, no disagreement there.

But most of us often disagree on how to do it, what approach to follow and how to ensure effective improvement in product/service or adding successful new product/service.

Indeed these questions are important and thus demand a lot of mental effort, time and other resources.

And for that very reason, to answer these questions in a reasonable way, I have developed a framework as per my own research and understanding, I believe that this framework would help, make it quite easy for product development Managers, Entrepreneurs to improve their products/services or to develop successful new product/service.

So let’s get to it!

Step One: Product/Service Ideas

The first step to improve a particular product/service or to develop new successful product/service is, you need ideas, lots of them.

Step one is kind of a brainstorm step, where you get together with your colleagues, peers, staff in meetings.

Once you get a reasonable number of good ideas, it’s time to move to the next step!

Step Two: Right Ideas/Opportunities

So out of that big pool of ideas, opportunities that you have collected to improve certain products/services or to develop new ones, you need to pick the right ideas, opportunities.

Recognizing right business (product/service) ideas or opportunities is one of the most basic and important entrepreneurial behavior (1). 

Therefore to help you to develop this essential behavior I have written a detailed article on how to identify right opportunities and right threats, that post will certainly help you in identifying right opportunities, ideas.

Step Three: Innovate

Once you pick up the right opportunities/ideas, next step is to innovate new product/service or experiment with current product/service to further improve it. 

Why Innovation?!

Well innovation has been a solid candidate for attracting investments, increasing growth and valuation. 

For instance it was actually innovation that Apple Inc jumped from 2 billion company (1997) to more than 600 billion company in 2012 largely due to iPhone, iPod, iPad. 

Similarly all the credit goes to innovation, Tesla Automobiles, that has sold 50000 units and yet valued around 17 $billion in comparison to market giant General Motors that is valued around 52 $billion.

So definitely innovation is the way to go, innovation is about picking up right idea (entrepreneurial behavior) and then transforming that idea into a new business (product/service) that provides value to the target market and delivers healthy revenue in return (2).

And to achieve that (providing value to target market and revenue) let's move to our second last step that is “Identify What Works”.

Step Four: Identify What Works

You know the drill, it’s all about target market research, surveys, interviews etc utilize both qualitative and quantitative research approaches as they provide accurate data on consumer behavior, attitudes (3) .

Remember that every research method has its own strengths and limitations, therefore combination of different methods should be used so that weaknesses of one are helped by strengths of other and vice versa (4).

Once you know what works it’s time to take the final step of the framework.

Step Five: Commit

The final step, once you identify what product/service improvements or new products/services works, commit resources to those “what works”, make them part of the overall business commitment (business commitment means, how a business develops, delivers, and capture value). 

It has been confirmed (via research) that by having such commitment (making the "what works" part of overall business commitment) a business gets what it desires, in other words “desired outcome” of their new activities (new products/services or improvement of new product/services), that (desired outcome) is market acceptance of their new activities (5).

Along with all that (according to another research) commitment leads to a decision making routine that result in improving organization or business capabilities which delivers competitive advantage (6).

That’s it, over to you guys, speak your mind, share your ideas on how to further improve this framework for its intended purpose, just say it ;).

Do check out the cited articles for further research, understanding!

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References:

1.      C.M Gaglio “Opportunity Identification: Review, Critique and Suggested Research direction,” in J. A. Katz (ed.), Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, Vole. 3 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1997), pp. 139.-202.

2.      Corbett, A.C. (2007) Learning Asymmetries and the Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities. Journal of Business Venturing, 22, 97–118.

3.      Proctor, T. (2000), Essentials of Marketing Research, Pearson Education Limited, Essex.

4.      Deshpande, R. (1983) ‘Paradigms lost’: on theory and method in research in marketing. Journal of Marketing, 47, 101–110.

5.      Garud, R. and Van de Ven, A.H. (1992) An Empirical Evaluation of the Internal Corporate Venturing Process. Strategic Management Journal, 13, 93–109.

6.      Barney, J.B. (1991) Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 99–120.