Our unique Idea-Led Innovation approach delivers bigger ideas,  faster to market.

Our process is structured in four phases – Immersion, Development, Evolution and Actualization. Initial engagements typically run five months from kick-off to size-of-prize assessment, spanning the first three phases. Most projects extend into the fourth phase – Actualization – advancing ideas into and through the commercialization process.

PHASE 01 Immersion
Immersion is a process of gathering intelligence and generating consumer and commercial insight, with an end-goal of defining the strategy and a set of transformational working hypotheses to catalyze idea development. In Phase 01, we bring an independent perspective to bear on existing knowledge and asset base within the client organization and the wider world. 

Company strategy, business objectives, operational parameters, leverageable assets, brand and technologies, category and consumer dynamics, competitive initiatives and market trends are explored and distilled, looking both analytically and what is and inventively at what transformation can be created to catalyze growth, Independent and front-end consumer research is often used to benchmark current reality and sharpen the framing of the problem

PHASE 02 Development
The Development phase makes the transition from where to play to how to win. This comes about through the generation, definition, interrogation and articulation of a portfolio of new product ideas.

At the midpoint of this phase, a number of Notions are shared with the project team - collaborative interrogation of the attractiveness, strategic value and feasibility of these Notions helps guide further development of the Idea Portfolio: an array of discrete and distinct new product ideas, each represented as a fully-formed market-ready concept and video prototype.

PHASE 03 Evolution
In the Evolution phase, the entire Idea Portfolio is road-tested with key stakeholders from consumers to brand and technical teams. That body of input drives the refinement of individual ideas and the portfolio as a whole in preparation for size of prize assessment and/or commercialization.

Optimization spans everything from the honing of business models and routes to market to insights, benefits, reasons to believe, brand hierarchy, versioning, design, sensory experience, technology and the telling of the story.

PHASE 04 Actualization

In the Actualization phase, ideas that have survived the gauntlet of consumer, technical and commercial interrogation progress to accelerated market readiness. Throughout Actualization, we partner with our clients’ commercial teams to provide the supplemental skills they need to address their most pressing go-to-market challenges with a focus on accelerating ideas to launch in test or broad distribution.

Our contribution here focuses on three key areas: Strategic Development, Creative Execution and Commercial Strategy.