Setting priorities for a supplements innovation pipeline

The question

At this company, every new idea had to pass a quantitative screen before development began, so the pipeline needed ideas relevant and different enough to clear it.

Before any ideas, the innovation team had to agree where to look: which health needs, and which kinds of consumer solution, deserved its attention two and three years out.

Our approach

We came at the category from several directions before anyone wrote an idea.

Discovery joined the business’s own knowledge with what people write about products in online reviews, a semiotic reading of the category’s codes, and a digital ethnography that followed people as they looked after their health.

With the innovation team, we then set priorities among the health needs and solutions that discovery had mapped, so ideation started from ground everyone had agreed.

Ideas were built with the client’s team and its ingredient suppliers, and consumers helped develop the strongest of them. The pack for a new product had research of its own, with a semiotic reading of the category’s packs alongside.

What the team came away with

The innovation team had opportunity areas and springboards for ideas, ideas built to go through its screens, and pack research for the new product.

Because the priorities were agreed before ideation, every idea traced back to a need the team had chosen to pursue.