Introduction

In this chapter, we provide prescriptive advice for new product development professionals who are interested in designing and creating radically new products. Radically new products are defined as products that allow us to do something we could not have done before (Hoeffler, 2003). Examples include 3D printers, TiVo, and more recently, Google Glass. While the topic of design and the domain of radically new products are both relatively new and emerging topics in marketing, crossing the desire to create radically new products with emphasizing the role of design in the success of these novel products requires altering many of the approaches that are currently used.

This chapter contains a series of processes design professionals should use in order to create an independent process that results in novel ideas. We offer six processes for firms that are seeking to improve their ability to come up with breakthrough products:

1. Communicate the challenge goal toward radically new products.
2. Shift time frames to future and past.
3. Promote emerging technology focus across the consumption chain.
4. Promote the use of analogical thinking.
5. Look for novel ways to solve simple problems.
6. Leverage more ideators via crowdsourcing.

Table 17.1 gives specific examples of how these processes translate into action and supplies specific examples of companies and products that have employed these processes.

17.1 Communicate the Challenge Goal toward Radically New Products

When trying to break out of existing new product development (NPD) patterns and create completely novel designs, it is important that upper management explicitly communicates those goals to both internal new product development personnel (when the task is in-house) and to any external ideators. We suggest that periodic attempts to create radical designs are added to the traditional NPD process and highlighted as unique so that they can receive special attention. To facilitate these attempts, the organization's top management should take three general steps.

First, management has to create a culture in which failure is acceptable; otherwise, the development team will be less willing to take big risks. It has been shown that if the manager directly in charge of the new product development teams is supportive and has an open-minded response to questions and challenges, then the NPD team is more likely to feel psychologically safe and take more risks in its work. A culture that allows NPD teams to make mistakes along the way promotes more radical ideas and designs. The measurements of performance of the NPD team can also influence how radical the team's ideas are. To be effective in that way, the performance measurement should not emphasize short-term gains, but rather focus on the long term. Further, it should emphasize the process rather than the outcome. For example, did the team learn from its experience, even if the outcome was ill-fated?

Second, management can help the innovation development team by viewing this process as having two stages, the first including open behaviors and the second closed behaviors. Open behaviors include taking risks, drawing on different domains, being radical. Closed behaviors, on the other hand, focus on what is possible—on implementation. The goal should be to start with the radical and audacious ideas, and only much later on in the process to think about implementation. The tension that implementation creates should be avoided in the early stages, but it is helpful in later stages because it can push innovators to come up with creative solutions.

Third, management has to allow the team to avoid routine organizational procedures. It other words, management should allow the development team to be autonomous and free of bureaucracy. This means that the development team should have more access to resources (such as adding other employees to the team, adding materials, purchasing and training with new technologies and equipment, etc.), and more freedom in terms of reporting on their progress. After communicating the challenge goal of developing a radically new product, the following steps should be taken to implement the change:

1. Develop new criteria. First, senior management should develop and communicate new evaluation criteria for challenges geared toward radically new products. Thus, the focus of the idea generation phase should be on uniqueness rather than on feasibility. This may be difficult for managers to allow because they are often evaluated on concrete outcomes, thus this directive has to come from top management. For example, feasibility (which is often a new product review criterion) should be eliminated (or lessened in importance) when the focus is to create radically new product ideas.
2. Set target goals. Specific target goals should be set for the number of radically new ideas that are put forth. These targets could be in the form of a percentage of ideas that are more radically new and/or a percentage of time that each employee should devote to generating radical ideas.
3. Perform systematic idea audits. In order to measure the success of the program to create radically new ideas, the firm can bring in outsiders to rate the newness or novelty of the ideas. The novelty ratings should be tracked over time and shared with the NPD team, on both a team and an individual basis.
4. Measure the effectiveness of the team. Teams that develop radically new products should be able to be autonomous. This needs to be confirmed from time to time in order for the team to function well. Occasionally, senior management should question the team as to (adopted from Edmondson, 1999):
   1. Does your team get all the information it needs to do your work and plan your schedule?
   2. Is it easy for your team to obtain expert assistance when you do not know how to handle something that came up?
   3. Does your team have access to useful training on the job? This way management makes sure that the developing team stays effective.

Moreover, management stays in the loop and learns about issues before they become too complicated to solve.

17.2 Shift Time Frames to Future and Past

One method to free up ideators from the bounds of today's traditional designs is to specifically ask for ideas that will not be relevant until some future date (i.e., 5 or 10 years into the future), or as Google X Lab defines it, “science fiction–sounding solutions.” This farther-into-the-future thinking may relax the normal constraints associated with developing a novel design. Moreover, this shift in time focus may eliminate one's common self-imposed restriction on new ideas to merely those where the ideator can envision a path to fulfillment. Innovators' prescribed imagination is the killer of radical ideas. Therefore, top management should find ways to remove mental boundaries by allowing the innovation team to generate ideas that will not be feasible in the near future. The following steps should be taken when implementing this change in time frames:

1. Specific future time frames. Instead of just having the NPD teams think about products that will be developed in the future, specific challenges should be created for unique time frames (i.e., unique challenges for products that could be available in 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, etc.). These challenges can be technological, such as amputees who control a fully functional hand that can handle delicate objects with their brains, or clothes made of fiber-based nanogenerators that provide a flexible, foldable, and wearable power source that allows people to generate their own electrical current while walking, and harvest/storing the power generated for later use. These challenges also can be related to social acceptance, as we see happening now with Google Glass, which raises concerns over privacy and safety; or related to the law, as is the case of the driverless car and the legal questions that arise.
2. Look into the past. In order to get some sense of where new technologies might come from, an interesting approach is to examine where current technologies came from. So much of what is included in today's products is taken for granted. If one examines the history behind these technologies to identify the original purpose for which the technology was developed, one can gain insights into the seemingly idiosyncratic development of current technologies. Many of these technologies were likely intended for industries other than the ones they ended up being used in.
3. Create a pictorial archive. One method that can be used to examine changes over time is to document the history of those changes in an easy to display manner. The idea is to capture every form of all competing products in the industry, going back to the introduction of the product category. These pictures should be captured and displayed in such a way that the history and development of the category can be easily examined.

17.3 Promote an Emerging Technology Focus across the Consumption Chain

One way to promote uniqueness is to fuse the process with a particular emerging technology and ask how that emerging technology could be used in the focal domain. Another way is to attempt to hack together two emerging technologies and then place the outcome in a specific domain (related to the company's core industry). In addition, technological road maps can be created for all potential emerging technologies that may impact the industry, consequently promoting combinations of several emerging technologies in a novel design challenge.

The idea to focus on new technologies is similar to the blue ocean concept in which innovators create new industries rather than compete with current players. Nintendo's Wii console is a perfect example. The company did not wish to directly compete with Sony's PlayStation or Microsoft's Xbox in terms of the resolution and animation of the games. Instead, Nintendo created a new control and thus appealed to segments new to the video game industry (women and older folks). By promoting a focus on emerging technologies, firms can reconstruct market boundaries and introduce novelty. New product developers can use cross-conventional technologies to create new demand in a new, unknown space, rather than compete over existing markets. This emerging technology focus in the design process will lead to innovative developments. The following steps should be taken when implementing the emerging technology focus:

1. Identify steps in consumer consumption chain. The first step here is to identify the steps associated with consumers' consumption chain (MacMillan & McGrath, 1997). Then, for each step within the consumption chain (Table 17.2), the NPD team can identify emerging technologies that are likely to have an impact on how consumers make decisions at those different stages.

   How do people become aware of their need for your product or service?

   How do consumers find your offering?

   How do consumers make their final selection?

   How do consumers order and purchase your product or service?

   How is your product or service delivered?

   What happens when your product or service is delivered?

   How is your product installed?

   How is your product or service paid for?

   How is your product stored?

   How is your product moved around?

   What is the consumer really using your product for?

   What do consumers need help with when they use your product?

   What about returns or exchanges?

   How is your product repaired or serviced?

   What happens when your product is disposed of or no longer used?

   Strategically thinking about the various steps consumers go through when interacting with a product enables the development team to creatively enhance the consumer experience every step of the way with unconventional technological solutions.

2. Mix and match technologies. Those emerging technologies that the team has identified then become the focal technologies. Next, the team should examine and list implications for mixing and matching different technologies together to come up with radically new product ideas. As a simple example we may consider two “hot” ideas: 3D printers and same-day delivery. How can we combine these to create a meaningful radical new product? One idea is that for simple products the designer can send the client a file to be printed at the client's home with the 3D printer—delivery is immediate. The beauty of this example is that it hacks together two seemingly unrelated products/services to create a potentially meaningful offering.

17.4 Promote the Use of Analogical Thinking

The design team should find ideas from analogous domains in extremely different industries that have dealt with some of the same abstract problems (Kalogerakis, Luthje, & Herstatt, 2010). Analogy use is a common and vital technique in creative problem solving and complex innovation tasks. The goal of this exercise is to find both similarities and, more importantly, differences between the problem at hand and the base of the analogy, in order to infuse the solution to the problem with attributes that otherwise would be unthinkable.

The story behind the invention of the Nest Learning Thermostat is a good example for analogical thinking. The team that designed the thermostat aimed to reinvent something that has not changed in the past 20 years. The head of this team was the person who invented the iPod. His thought was, how can we make a thermostat that is more like an iPod? Indeed, if you look inside the Nest, you will basically see a smartphone—a very high-powered processor with memory, flash, wireless radios, and antennas. By using analogical transfer, the team was able to reinvent this “unloved but important home product.”

In addition to analogical thinking, scenario thinking can be helpful in mentally simulating future consumption and experiential usage scenarios. One aspect that may help ideators think through the potential usage scenarios is to think through the specific types of consumer uncertainties that are thought to impact the usefulness of the new product or service. Hoeffler (2003) demonstrated that consumers have greater uncertainty when estimating the perceived usefulness of RNPs, and proceeded to partition the sources of uncertainty into:

• Benefit uncertainty—an estimate of the perceived benefits provided by the new product or service;
• Learning cost uncertainty—how much work the consumer will need to do in order to fully utilize the new product; and
• Symbolic (or affective) uncertainty—which is the more gestalt affective reaction to the adoption of a radically new product.

Thinking through these uncertainties may help identify particular areas where completely novel opportunities exist. Specific tasks to elicit novel design ideas may include sketching, prototyping, and storytelling. In addition, visual examples may be shown to ideators to promote novelty, as long as the timing of the exposure to examples is strategically designed to avoid design fixation. The following steps should be taken when implementing this emerging technology focus:

1. Identify important consumer uncertainties. The first step is to identify the uncertainties that consumers have with respect to the existing products available. This can be done by examining the different types of uncertainties presented in Table 17.3. After listing the associated uncertainties, the development team can better focus on identifying creative solutions that can ease the consumer's experience and lower the degree of uncertainty. In the following three subsections, we show examples of how these uncertainties have been dealt with in the past. Development teams can learn from others' experiences and solutions.

   Prediction	Uncertainty	Examples
   Predicting benefits	Consumption/usage uncertainty	Replaces something you are currently doing Provides new benefits Unknown consumption constraints
   	Performance uncertainty	New features (additional or improved) Combined functionality of several products
   	Network externalities uncertainty	Evolving architecture/technology (standardization) Availability of supporting products Evolving functionality
   Predicting drawbacks	Switching costs uncertainty	Physical (remodeling) Psychological (threatens or enhances existing knowledge)
   	Learning curve uncertainty	Learning how to purchase How to use (Extract benefits)
   	Price change uncertainty	Price will decrease after the consumer buys
   Predicting social implications	Symbolic uncertainty	Consumer (How do I feel about the image it portrays?) Peers (What image does it portray to my peers?)
   	Affective reaction uncertainty	Seductive or repulsive

2. Reducing benefit uncertainty: When Apple introduced the first iPod in 2001, the company faced a lot of consumer uncertainty—consumers did not understand the product, what it does, and how. The commercials said “A thousand songs in your pocket,” and “Say hello to iPod. Say goodbye to your hard drive.” But consumers still resisted and sales were relatively slow, until Apple introduced the iTunes music store in mid-2003 (Apple announced the sale of one million iPods on June 23, 2003, and the sale of two million iPods on January 6, 2004). Once iTunes was available, consumers benefited from the iPod substantially more and their uncertainties regarding usage, performance, and network diminished.
3. Reducing switching costs and learning curve uncertainty. As another example, in 2007 the U.S. Mint announced it wished to replace the $1 bill with coins (because bills last only 18 months and coins last much longer). To attract people to the new $1 coin, the U.S. Mint announced it would issue a series of dollar coins that bear portraits of past presidents. But consumers experienced elevated uncertainty regarding switching costs and learning curve, and thus continued to use the one dollar bills. A few years later, the U.S. Mint discontinued the aforementioned series of coins. In striking contrast, in 1987 the Royal Canadian Mint introduced a one dollar coin and in 1996 it introduced the two dollar coin. Both coins are widely used. What is the cause for this difference? The Canadian Mint removed the $1 and $2 bills from circulation when the new coins were introduced. While it is true that most companies do not have the power to eliminate used products or competitors' products from the market, they may be able to economically incentivize their customers to switch.
4. Reducing social acceptance uncertainty. Nokia's introduction of the first Bluetooth earpiece for mobile phones in 2001 demonstrates how effectively the company has dealt with symbolic uncertainty. Consumers were uncertain about the Bluetooth earpiece's social acceptance—being seen wearing a strange device and seemingly talking to themselves. As more companies joined Nokia in producing these earpieces (like Motorola, LG, and Samsung), they lobbied to change the laws in many countries around the world such that drivers would not be allowed to use their phones while driving. Once consumers had to find hands-free solutions for their phones, the use of the Bluetooth earpiece took off worldwide.

17.5 Look for Novel Ways to Solve Simple Problems

Often, companies focus on solving “big” problems in an effort to create extremely novel designs. We suggest that firms can alternatively focus on breakthrough ideas for solving common everyday nuisances. The goal here would be to start with the focus on common “small” problems, and then to think about designing extremely novel approaches to these simple problems.

For identifying day-to-day problems that need to be solved, a company might choose to expand its ideators group and invite input from a variety of factions. Involving customers and potential customers in the brainstorming stage can broaden the pool of ideas and thus promote novelty (and we provide suggestions for “crowdsourcing” to get novel ideas in the next section). By carefully defining the various problems brought up and identifying their core, the design thinking process can result in creative and previously unidentified solutions.

As an example, Leonard Bosack and Richard Troiano managed the computers at two different departments at Stanford, and wished to have their computers communicate with each other. They ended up developing the first router that allowed computers in different networks to be connected, and named their company Cisco. A simple problem triggered a solution that created one of the largest computing companies in the world.

17.6 Leverage More Ideators via Crowdsourcing

Toward a goal of coming up with a continual stream of new products, firms have traditionally relied on an internal staff of professional innovators to generate ideas and to evaluate those ideas. Recently, there has been a push to seek out novel ideas from any avenue available. One method that firms are employing is to outsource their ideation efforts in an attempt to get fresh ideas into their innovation process. The idea behind crowdsourcing is that firms can tap a dispersed “crowd” of nonexperts (e.g., consumers, employees). The steps to leverage more ideators include:

1. Find more diverse pools of ideators. A key aspect that may be important when implementing a crowdsourcing effort to general novelty in design is associated with the makeup of the participants of the crowd. Parjanen, Hennala, and Konsti-Laakso (2012) examine the use of a virtual idea generation platform and advocate the use of people with diverse experience, expertise, and perspectives to enhance the chances of success. One of the reasons why firms should use ideation teams that are diverse in knowledge and skills is to mitigate the effect of a competence trap that results in more incremental ideas rather than novel ones. An example was Nespresso's 2005 Design Contest, where the idea was to imagine the future of coffee rituals. One of the ideas that users from around the world came up with was the Nespresso Chipcard. This card stores your personal coffee preferences, and when inserted into a vending machine it brews your personalized cup of coffee. The open contest resulted in a completely new idea, and not an improvement to an existing Nespresso product/service.
2. Run comparative challenges against company ideators. One aspect that may help to spur on creativity of a “crowdsourced” idea challenge is knowing that the ideas that they come up with are going to be compared to the ideas found from within the company. This call for ideas can challenge outsiders for a “let the best idea win” competition, knowing their idea might be the one the company ends up developing. Who does not like to show off his innovativeness and creative thinking? Moreover, if coming up with a creative idea might result in an employment opportunity, even better. Co-creating with the development team can serve as a strong motivation for users to share their creative skills.
3. Highlight a goal of unique approaches. As we mentioned in the first process idea of communicating the challenge goal, the idea here is to make sure that there is special recognition for the most novel approaches created by the crowd. A company may want to consider offering a big reward or even a profit sharing for the best idea that will move the company forward into the future.

A summary of the aforementioned six ideas to improve product development is presented in Figure 17.1.

17.7 Conclusion

In order to achieve greater innovativeness, product development professionals interested in enhancing the novelty of their new product designs should first understand the unique differences between designing for improvements in existing products and designing for creating radically new products. As Figure 17.1 shows, a combination of effective communication of the challenge to create novelty, together with shift in temporal focus, inclusion of emerging technologies, analogical thinking exercises, focus on day-to-day issues, and crowdsourcing can effectively enhance novelty in design. With the aid of our six processes we hope that new product design teams will be more likely to find that breakthrough product to help redefine their industries going forward.

References

1. Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
2. Hoeffler, S. (2003, November). Measuring preferences for really new products. Journal of Marketing Research, 40, 406–420.
3. Kalogerakis K., Lüthje C., and Herstatt C. (2010, May). Developing Innovations Based on Analogies: Experience from Design and Engineering Consultants. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 27(3), 418–436.
4. MacMillan, I., & McGrath, R. (1997, July). Discovering new points of differentiations. Harvard Business Review, 133–145.
5. Parjanen, S., Hennala, L., & Konsti-Laakso, S. (2012). Brokerage functions in a virtual idea generation platform: Possibilities for collective creativity? Innovation: Management, Policy, and Practice, 14(3), 363–374.

About the Authors

Steve Hoeffler is a professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University; previously Steve was an assistant professor of marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Steve's research on such topics as positioning multiple category products, marketing radically new products, and the advantages of strong brands have appeared in such publications as the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Journal of Marketing Research. He has worked in marketing for NCR/AT&T and consulted for Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Fujitsu.

Michal Herzenstein is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Delaware's Lerner College of Business and Economics. She has been a member of the Lerner College since 2006, upon completion of her doctoral studies at the University of Rochester. Michal's research focuses on consumer decision making and specifically on financial decision making, crowdfunding, and prosocial behaviors. Her papers were published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, among other outlets. Prior to her doctoral studies, Michal worked as a marketing consultant at a prominent consulting firm in Israel, and was a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces. She holds a BS in economics, statistics, and operations research, and an MBA in marketing, both from Tel Aviv University.

Tamar Ginzburg holds an MBA in marketing and strategy from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, and a BA in economics and Arabic language and literature from Tel Aviv University. Currently, she is an at-large member of the Nashville Opera Executive Committee and serves on the Opera board. She is a board member at Akiva School in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as the PTFA co-chair of the school and a member of the school's recruitment committee. She has worked as a consultant and a marketing analytics manager at an advertising company, as a marketing analytics intern at Xerox, and prior to that in investment banking.