Innovation is both the biggest opportunity and the greatest challenge facing business today. Organisations are under increasing pressure to both come up with the next big idea and get it to an ever-changing market faster than ever before. To be successful there are two fundamental truths we believe you must address.

1. Innovation must be driven by the needs, beliefs and aspirations of consumers - at every stage.
2. Innovation must combine creativity and discipline.

Because we believe so strongly in these two things we have a unique approach to innovation. To us, its a journey, integrating the right consumers and balancing creativity and discipline along the route.

To start the journey, we MAKE IT UP.

Inspire is the first step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its when we establish the consumer insights that will guide us on the way.

We believe an insight is a discovery that gets to the heart of peoples thoughts and behaviour, providing inspiration to grow your business.

How do we discover insights? We spend time with people immersing ourselves in innovative ways in the world of your consumers: their cultures, habits, families, needs and behaviour. We have the most extensive qualitative community in the world and a true knowledge-sharing network so that we are able to keep on the pulse of trends, reach and listen to hard to reach consumers and uncover and develop the latest ethnographic techniques.

Finally, we ensure we have generated genuine and valuable insights, not just observations. We make sure that the final insights are strong enough for us to use them as signposts and guides throughout the journey. Our perfect tool for that is Insightment, a research attitude, which offers a few ways of gathering data and reaching valuable conclusions. Insightment reaches to our rich experience, global researchers network and the knowledge of our consumers and experts.

Create is the second step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its when we generate a wealth of new ideas.

We believe that consumers should be at the heart of innovation, and so our typical approach to idea generation is to use highly trained and creative consumers in workshops which can also involve clients and outside experts.

Working with creative consumers in this way means we generate large numbers of highly original ideas. But we also use these consumers to develop the ideas, to ensure the ones we recommend will really work.

One of the tools we use at this stage is Super Group a method of generating ideas in co-operation with us, our clients and creative consumers. Its goal is creating new ideas and stimulating innovation.

This gives us our ticket to the next stage where we MAKE IT BETTER.

Explore is the third step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its where you work out which of the ideas youve generated have genuine potential.

Ideas are the lifeblood of an organisation. We all know they are the key to innovation and growth. Yet market research is often accused of strangling ideas at birth. It doesnt have to be that way. Our innovation database, which draws learning from throughout the journey, is constantly providing new insights into what drives success. So we understand why some new ideas work better than others and how to manage ideas that are before their time - by involving the right consumers.

If you expose an innovative idea to mainstream consumers alone, they often reject it. Thats why we also talk to early adopters consumers who are ahead of category trends and inclined to welcome innovation. eValuate is a technique developed by Research International which we use at this stage. It allows to evaluate many concepts at their start and protect the best of them.

Nurture is the fourth step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its where you develop your ideas creatively so that they can fulfil their potential.

Innovations dont arrive fully-formed, they need nurturing and improving before they make it to the market. But the nurturing has to respect the creativity at the heart of the idea its crucial to avoid turning a good idea into something bland.

In order to nurture early ideas we draw on a mix of creative consumers, early adopters, mainstream consumers, outside experts, and client teams under the guidance of our innovation experts. They build good ideas into great ones, mixing creativity with discipline, refining innovations and anticipating problems. The result of the nurturing process will be a concrete offer that is ready to be fully appraised by a wide audience at the next stage of the innovation journey.

Super Clinic is the tool here innovation experts, creative consumers, early adopters and clients working together in a stimulating environment for maximum focused creativity.

Appraise is the fifth step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its when you check that the improvements youve made to your ideas have really made them better.

You cant make an idea real without being sure youve improved it as far as you can. We believe that you need an objective check at this stage of each component of your innovation, exploring more than simply whether consumers like it. You need to know whether it remains true to the insights you began with, whether it fits your wider brand, and the ways in which its future customers will use it. The responses you get will help ensure that your innovation journey has stayed on the right track.

The next stage is to MAKE IT REAL.

Unite is the sixth step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its when we bring together all the aspects of a new product or service and find out the combination and price that will best equip it for market success.

Your latest innovation may be a great idea, or have amazing product features, a memorable name and exciting packaging but to succeed in the real world all these have to fit together.

One way of doing this is to present consumers with combinations of product or service features, and work to make sure the mix of your offer is just right. Finally we use the knowledge we have of how consumers react to different prices for new products to ensure your concept will succeed.

Finally, we MAKE IT GO.

Predict is the seventh step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its when we put a new innovation to the test, assessing how it is likely to perform in the market, and predicting how well it will sell.

Purchase intent isnt the only measure of a new product or services likely success. We build a picture from understanding how much individuals see an innovation as distinctive and how much they like it. We use our innovation database (with over 30,000 cases creating a body of knowledge gathered over decades) to help you optimise your product - and our knowledge of cutting-edge forecasting and analysis to make sure the predictions are as accurate as possible.

Once youve gone through this step you can take the most important decision of all whether and when to launch with confidence. We not only help you launch better products, but help you launch products, better.

Our tool is the Micro Test which is one of the best technologies used for precise forecasting of sales and volume.

Monitor is the eighth step in Research Internationals innovation journey. Its also the only step that takes place after youve launched your innovation onto the market.

Naturally you want to measure the performance of an innovation after launch. We believe that this assessment should aim not only to maximise the success of this launch but to provide springboards for future ideas.

During the monitor stage we can tell you how the market is changing in reaction to your launch, what new opportunities have been created, and how your competitors are reacting. We can also tell you which customers you are winning, where the untapped potential for your innovation is, and what might threaten the new customer base.

This is the last stage in the journey, but it shouldnt be the end. The insights that monitoring your launch provides can lead you on new journeys, to new innovations.

Like the best journeys, we learn along the way and build on our successes and failures. Throughout the journey we gather the fresh creative insights that allow a new journey to begin. And because a consistent framework runs throughout the journey you can be certain that your idea is getting better and that the product you launch has more chance of success.

The journey also helps clients who only join us for one or two steps because our knowledge and experience of the whole adds deeper insights to the parts. So, we not only help you launch better products, we help you launch products, better.

Take an Innovation Journey with Pentor Research International.

See also:

What makes a good product?

New century, new ideas

How to have an idea?