Idea Screening

Idea Screening

Following on from the Idea Generation phase, an organisation may be left with hundreds of successful, newly developed products and services (Toubia and Florès, 2007).  The Idea Screening Process is therefore seen to be one of the most prominent elements to the product development phase, playing an important role in innovation success. At this stage, a management team evaluates new products and service ideas, developed on from the idea generation phase, undergoing processes that involve high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity, making a ‘first go or no go’ decision based upon certain levels of criteria chosen by the team (Hammedi, Van Reil and Sasovova, 2011).

Limited available resources make it difficult to develop several products at the same time, and a successful idea screening process contributes to a more focused product development process, with a higher possibility of success (Candice Consulting, 2013).

Examples of Idea Screening

Nike are continuously developing and re-evaluating their products to produce high quality sports wear. Their aim in this phase is to produce a ‘refined standard for innovation and sustainability – a standard we use to assess our products’ (Nike Inc., 2012). In order for their product goal to become successful, Nike have successfully ‘developed a predictive tool to quantify, in real time, the environmental impacts of each choice a designer makes’ (Nike Inc., 2012). Nike therefore uses Idea Screening to eliminate unwanted products, successfully producing only environmentally friendly and sustainable products.

Another example of this is Galvin Green, where Idea Screening is continuously used to develop the latest waterproof clothing specifically made for Golf, using this process to create a 'full range of high-tech garments, designed to match and function in combination [...] specifically developed for the game of golf. Designed by golfers, for golfers' (Galvin Green, 2013). This allows the developed products to be innovative, therefore showing why this company is a leading Golf manufacturer.

The Process Itself

The following Decision Making Matrix (Figure 1) presents the evaluation of three product ideas, marked against 6 criteria. This method uses numeric techniques to help decision makers choose among a discrete set of alternative decisions and its success is based upon the utility of the decision makers involved (Triantaphyllou, 2000).The Matrix can be seen as bias as although it is carried out with a customer focus, it is the decision makers final choice of which score each product is granted.




Figure. 1

This specific matrix presents Product 1 to be marked relatively low in comparison to the other products due to alternatives being available in the market and the high level of risk involved in creating the product that could lead to low profit once developed. Product 2 and Product 3 ranked similarly against all criteria as the both presented to have a gap in the market along with a high potential profit gain. However, the product that will be taken forward into the next process stage is Product 3 due to the prominent gap in the market for this design of shoe.

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References

Toubia, O., & Florès, L. (2007). Adaptive idea screening using consumers. Marketing Science, 26(3), 342-360.

Hammedi, W., Van Riel, A. C., & Sasovova, Z. (2011). Antecedents and Consequences of Reflexivity in New Product Idea Screening. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(5), 662-679.

Candice Consulting. 4.3 Idea Screening (2013). Available at: http://www.slmsc-project.eu/en/?page_id=2142 [Accessed: 18/11/2013]


Triantaphyllou, E. (2000). Multi-criteria decision making methods (pp. 5-21). Springer US.

Nike Inc. Designing Product: Shrinking the footprint of our products (2012). Available at: http://nikeinc.com/pages/products. [Accessed: 19/11/2013]

Nike Inc. Strategy: A New Model and Shift to a Sustainable Business and Innovation (2012). Available at: http://www.nikebiz.com/crreport/content/strategy/2-1-4-a-new-model-and-shift-to-sustainable-business-and-innovation.php?cat=cr-strategy. [Accessed on: 19/11/2013]




Galvin Green. Multi-Layer Concept (2013). Available at:  http://www.galvingreen.com/2013/multi_layer_concept.html. [Acessed on: 19/11/2013]

+Paul Blakey