The New Product Development Process

IdeaPaint , a paint that turns any surface into a dry-erase board, is a good example showing how students take advantage of the environment and have it invented. It is now found in 10,000 locations around the world, including MIT, MTV Networks and The Limited Brands. I would like to use this to illustrate the new product development process.

It first starts from Idea Generation which came by brainstorming by a student, Jeff Avallon and his friends in a study room with walls covered in Post-it notes. They thought walls could act as collaboration tools. They came out many ideas to have the concept of being able to write over an entire wall. After Idea Screening, they decided to devise an erasable paint to satisfy their want. To testify the feasibility of the idea, they seek help from two professors, a college-board member and a parent to see if they believed in the idea and put investment. This is called Concept Development and Testing. After that, they started to find the target market, not only for school, but also for work and home. During Marketing Strategy Development, they need to plan the potential price, distribution, and marketing budget. Profits goal and marketing mix strategy were planned in the business plan and would be evaluated in Business Analysis. Now, they were going out of concept but take actions by producing a prototype, Product Development. As they said, when IdeaPaint finally had a prototype, “they had a conversation with everybody at school, Babson, who could be a potential customer or user.” When the final product was ready, they let the school be the first customer. This was the way they tested the Market. Finally, Commercialization means to introduce IdeaPaint into the market.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/march/205056.html

Selina Chan

Section G