13a. Concept Generation Introduction

With customer needs and the problem space relatively well understood — and your initial Marketing Requirement Doc in hand — all that you need to do now is come up with a great product idea, refine it, develop it, test it, and launch it!

Easy, right??!!

Yes, there’s still a long journey ahead before a commercial product is ready for launch. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

In this chapter, we’re gonna talk about that first single step you need to take: coming up with a good product concept.

“The concept generation process begins with a set of customer needs and target specifications and results in a set of product concepts from which the team will make a final selection.” — Ulrich & Eppinger, Product Design and Development

What we’ll cover in this Chapter:

• How understanding customer needs leads inevitably to solution concepts
• Divergent Thinking
• The Opportunity-Solutions Tree
• And, as always, additional resources

Let’s get into it.

You are now in the Solution Space!

Product concepts are solutions. That means, technically, we are now in the Solution Space!! Holy. Shit.

It might not feel real, but you did it…you made it into the part of Product Development where we actually talk about SOLVING customer’s needs.

Finally.

Concepts are the seeds of products

A concept is not a final product — it is a seed that will germinate (#eighth-grade-biology) into a more refined end-product.

Boys and Girls, this is called an “ANALOGY.”

Don’t stress about having fully-formed, amazing product ideas in the concept phase. All product development methodologies place a big emphasis on prototyping, iterating, and refining a concept, so trust that your concept will evolve, grow, and improve.

Prototyping will teach you what works, what doesn’t work, and what truly sucks about your concept, so don’t feel like you need all those answers at the outset.

“Concepts are to products what seeds are to trees.” — Me.

This Phase Has Ambiguity

Generating new concepts is not done the same way in all industries and companies. Remember, different strokes for different folks.

Some of the methods and processes here will work for you, but some will not. It will be up to you to research them further and to figure out which is best for your particular situation.

That’s all for an intro. Enjoy the Concept Generation content to come.

13b. Concept Generation Overlaps With Identifying Customer Needs

Here is a critical insight into generating new product concepts: identifying new product concepts is intertwined with voice-of-the-customer activities.

“You don’t invent the answers, you reveal the answers” by “finding the right question.” — Jonas Salk, discoverer of the first polio vaccine

Let’s unpack this idea; it’s important.

Key Idea

Many product development books don’t really separate the act of discovering customer needs with discovering new product ideas.

In many cases, identifying the key under-served needs IS THE METHOD for generating new product concepts.

Here’s an Example

Let’s say you are designing a toothbrush for a small child. You go out and try to understand the key customer needs. “What does this little kid need? What outcomes is she seeking?”

If you’ve ever watched a child brush her teeth, you see a few clear needs:

1. First, it’s difficult for young children to grasp a small toothbrush; they lack the motor skills.
2. Second, they don’t like it; kids generally like brushing their teeth about as much as they like eating literally anything other than pizza.

Now, with those two insights in mind, what might you design as a solution?

Boom . . . an oversized-grip-having, crayon-looking toothbrush.

Kind of obvious, right?

The point is that this solution is friggin obvious once the needs are clearly understood. It’s clever, but it’s not THAT clever.

90% of the work was to identify that the toothbrush should be easier to grip and that it should be fun. That’s not “concept generation” — that’s understanding the problem space.

Point being — understanding the customer’s needs often leads you right to product concepts.

The discovery of the core problem is often the mechanism for finding the solution.

To further illustrate this overlap between voice-of-the-customer and concept generation, here is a list of some of the methods listed for coming up with the product concepts in the book Winning At New Products :

• Camping out and observing your customers
• Bringing passionate customers into the office and talking with them
• Focus groups
• Lead-user analysis

See how these are VoC methods?

These activities are focused on learning all about the problem space — the assumption being that once you have discovered the problems, the solutions will be relatively self-evident.

In summary, when it comes to finding solutions, knowing the real, important problems — or knowing the important, under-served outcomes — is 90% of the battle.

“The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers, it is to find the right question. For there are few things as useless — if not dangerous — as the right answer to the wrong question.” — Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management

13c. Divergent Thinking Techniques

When people talk about generating new product concepts, divergent thinking techniques are almost always discussed. I’d call it one of the universal topics in product development.

The goal of this section is to simply introduce you to some general concepts about divergent and creative thinking. You know…distill it.

What is Divergent Thinking?

If you have three ideas, and then you think of a fourth, you just demonstrated divergent thinking.

Divergent thinking is about creating options. It’s about going wide and broad with your thinking to generate new ideas.

Divergent thinking is the overarching method that product developers employ to find their product concept.

Tim Brown

Some Specific Methods of Divergent Thinking

Brainstorming

The term brainstorming is often used interchangeably with “come up with a solution,” but it’s not the same thing.

Brainstorming is about idea generation — quantity over quality. Most good product development processes include some brainstorming for concept generation.

Ideation

Ideation is another specific example of divergent thinking. Ideation is similar to brainstorming, but it typically involves using specific prompts to generate ideas. It involves stimulus.

“Come up with a way to solve this need for less than $2.”

“Describe the perfect hotel experience for a family with a new baby.”

These are pointed prompts meant to generate specific ideas or concepts. Again — similar to brainstorming — but more focused.

Inspiration / Stealing

Concept generation is not a “closed book” test. Inspiration is the use of other content to spark new solution concepts.

Inspiration can come from other products or other markets or other industries entirely.

Inspiration can come from looking at patents, researching disruptive technologies, or talking to experts.

Remember what Picasso said about inspiration: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Turns out Picasso was a thief.

Compounding ideas

A brainstorm might be good for coming up with a lot of ideas, but they are rarely effective for finding “higher-order” or “next-level” ideas.

To get those “higher-order” ideas, probe your concept with some harder questions. Consider how it might evolve in the next generation. Consider how you might add features. Consider how you would build it with various cost or distribution constraints.

This probing and critical thinking will help you “compound” your initial idea from something simple to something more sophisticated.

Just use this method carefully — don’t let it disqualify a good concept by asking hard questions too early. (More on this idea in the book Innovation: The Five Disciplines.)

Questioning

“What caused it to be this way?” “Why does it work like that?” There is even something called “question-storming” that’s a lot like brainstorming but involves posing the only questions about a certain problem or opportunity (read more about it in The Innovator’s DNA).

Divergent Thinking and Product Development

Product concepts evolve into commercially-viable products through a process that begins with a product concept. Product concepts come from divergent thinking.

Divergent thinking tools like brainstorming, ideation, inspiration, and compounding are used to generate those initial product concepts.

More on filling the solution space next as we talk about the Opportunity-Solution Tree next.

13d. The Amazing Opportunity-Solution Tree

This is a great time to talk about the Opportunity-Solution Tree because, well, we are talking about opportunities and solutions, and opportunities and solutions are what the Opportunity-Solution Tree is all about.

What is Opportunity-Solution Tree?

The OST (I got tired of typing opportunity-solution tree) is a framework for mapping solutions to a given opportunity. It’s a technique for coming up with a number of different solutions to a given problem.

“Wait, that sounds like brainstorming or ideation.” — You, right now.

Yeah, sort of, but also not really. The OST is more of a visual tool promotes divergent thinking.

Let me explain with an example.

An Example of the Opportunity-Solution Tree

I’m going to steal this example from this great blog post on the OST by Teresa Torres. (Remember, Picasso, said to steal great ideas.)

Imagine, if you would, that you are one of the many people who think “I’d like to own a house.” That’s the opportunity (or the problem space) — you need/want to own a house.

What does the solution space look like?

Your first “concept” to solve this need is probably “buy a house.” Good idea, captain obvious.

Now, let’s think like a product developer. Dig deeper; what is the core need that owning a house would serve? What is the job-to-be-done that you would hire a house to do?

• A house is a shelter
• A house is an investment
• A house is a means of being more connected to a community
• A house is a means to feeling more accomplished
• A house is a project

As you start to identify these jobs (notice some are functional, emotional, social, and personal), it should become clear that there are many ways to solve each of these problems.

For example, “being more connected to a community” is a need that can be solved in lots of ways — from volunteering with local organizations to just hanging out at the local bar, getting weird on the karaoke.

Source: Teresa Torres

See the opportunity-solution tree coming together? “Buy a house” is actually a solution — one of many — not the fundamental problem.

The Opportunity-Solutions Tree

By drawing out the OST, we force ourselves to

1. Try to identify what the core, fundamental needs are, and
2. Think divergently about how we might solve them.

Drawing out this tree makes us better understand the problem space and begin to populate the solution space at the same time.

It also makes you think in the context of jobs-to-be-done because you’re connecting solutions to needs (i.e., what you might “hire” to solve the need).

Pretty cool, right?

In summary

The opportunity-solution tree will

1. Help ensure you’re focusing on the fundamental, core need.
2. Promote divergent thinking by encouraging you to identify multiple solutions to the need.

It can be used in many capacities throughout a product development process. Anytime a good solution is needed, the OST can provide a great framework for divergent thinking.

 13e. Why Divergent Thinking Matters

Divergent thinking is important. Here’s why:

The first idea isn’t always the best

Coming up with a lot of ideas ensures that you have explored the solution space thoroughly. You don’t want to spend a lot of time developing a concept only to realize it’s the wrong concept. You can pivot and iterate down the road, but if you’re fundamentally in the wrong zip code, then you’re pretty much hosed.

Helps reduce bias and politics

Thoroughly exploring the solution space by using divergent thinking tools helps to prevent a team from being railroaded by the highest-paid-person or by the most assertive person in the room.

Helps build alignment and commitment

People are more committed to an idea if they’ve been given the opportunity to debate it. This insight comes from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Using divergent thinking to explore the solution space provides the team with an opportunity to contribute and debate the possible solution paths.

Marching forward without having sufficiently used divergent thinking is a great way to create cynical people who will undermine the project later on.

In Summary

Divergent thinking is the overarching technique for concept generation.

Product Developers use brainstorming, ideation, and other divergent thinking techniques like the opportunity-solution tree to generate product concepts when building a product development strategy during the product development process.

Oh, and they use voice-of-the-customer methods as well. After-all, identifying customer needs is part-and-parcel with generating new product concepts.

Resources

A good book on brainstorming and divergent thinking: Change by Design, Tim Brown

A good book on Compounding Ideas: Innovation: The Five Disciplines.

Teresa Torres Why This Opportunity Solution Tree is Changing the Way Product Teams Work