Product innovation
Imagine the innovative products of tomorrow by boosting your product innovation
For more than 30 years, our specialized team has been supporting R&D and marketing teams in their product innovation projects by exploring, imagining and testing innovative new product concepts on the market.
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The key success factors of product innovation
Innovation is everywhere. Companies want to be thought of as innovative. Customers expect innovation. Innovation drives current markets and creates new markets. While innovation can come in lots of forms, innovative products serve as the backbone of innovation in any market. Though, several challenges are to be considered when creating innovative products:
Holistic design takes not only whole user experience into account. This includes the person, the piece of technology, the circumstances it’s used in i.e. the physical space and the human behavior and psychology that goes into the experience to derive what would be considered as an optimal experience. In order to capture these elements, one would need to use customer journey maps, user stories, personas and other connected devices and behaviors.
Does the current design have elements that could more seamlessly fit into the user’s life? Are there user personas with different usages that should be considered? How differentiating would the optimal design be from the current state?
Significant leaps in technology can radically change the way we interact not only with technology but with each other. For example, telemedicine has made it easier to reach a physician when one needs to be consulted, but it also produces a serious challenge to the ability of doctors to form significant relationships with their patients. Thus, how a product’s introduction will change the interactions across the value chain should be considered during the design to ensure that advances in one facet do not negatively impact the rest of the larger market.
How will this new design shift the customer journey? How will this design affect current interactions between stakeholders? What kinds of new personas will enter the customer journey with this new design?
Corporations have a responsibility to consider the impact of their products on the environment for the sake of society. Many innovations toward a more sustainable future have provided companies not only a way to reach their sustainable development goals (SDGs) but also opened up new markets and revenue streams with circular economies, lower cost supply chains, and novel sources of materials.
How will this design impact my sustainability goals? Are there advantages to be found in eco-design for my product? What are the major gains to be made in eco-design in my sector? What’s the impact of my product on the environment?
How we support you in your product innovation projects
Alcimed supports its customers in the development of their product innovations. We work in collaboration with our clients’ Research & Development (R&D) departments and marketing teams to help them explore, imagine, test and launch new product concepts (new raw materials, new ingredients, new technologies, new packaging, etc.) that meet the needs of consumers/users.
We also assist our clients in setting up or implementing effective innovation processes (internal innovation process, community animation, open innovation approach, etc.), in studying their launch environments (market context and trends, competitive analysis, regulatory analysis, etc.) through to operational implementation and the launch of their innovations (market access strategy, search for partners, tactical product launch plan, business development support, etc.).
Examples of recent product innovation projects carried out for our clients
Launching product innovations: evaluation of an innovative hypertension management program in several countries
Supporting a leader in the pharmaceutical industry in the testing of an innovative hypertension management program launched in several countries.
Through an analysis of available scientific publications, international guidelines and congress reports, as well as an assessment of the receptiveness of healthcare professionals, Alcimed enabled its client to determine the likely impact of such a disease management program from a patient perspective and in terms of sales in the target countries.
Product innovation: new avenues for product innovation in infant formula
Our team explored the field of natural alternatives to cow’s milk to help a player in the food industry to innovate on its range of infant milks.
Our client wanted to inspire its R&D teams by analyzing all possible alternatives to cow’s milk in order to create a roadmap of new product innovations together.
Through the identification and characterization of alternatives to cow’s milk, both animal and vegetable, then the selection and prioritization of these solutions, Alcimed enabled its client to identify new avenues for product innovation, enabling it to define a new product development plan adapted to this trend and thus meet consumer expectations.
Open innovation: improvement of a product innovation process towards more open innovation for a leader in the agri-food industry
We supported the R&D team of a leading player in the food industry in optimizing its product innovation process to accelerate the marketing of its products.
Our client had an innovation process very rich in ideas but internally focused and not very open to an external ecosystem. This constraint generated many limitations, including slow idea characterization and feasibility checks.
By conducting a benchmark of existing open innovation practices in the industry and leading a series of workshops with our client’s teams, we identified and implemented actions to use external partners at various stages of the innovation process in order to accelerate the different stages and thus the time-to-market of our client’s product innovations.
Product innovation: setting up an “innovation lab” to stimulate a culture of innovation
We assisted a leading pharmaceutical company that wanted to bring its teams together around innovation to develop new products, new services, new market access models and new ways of working; all in a special and unique place.
We decided to generate this new momentum by imagining the creation of an “innovation laboratory”, a physical place “apart”.
Through an external benchmark and internal workshops with a dedicated project team, we defined its operational functioning and roadmap and then organized the first events taking place in this new laboratory with employees now ready to innovate!
Technology scouting to identify new product innovations in the food industry
For a leader in the beverage sector, Alcimed carried out an exhaustive mapping of technologies for 4 key processes: pasteurization, deaeration, blending and filling, in order to stimulate upstream innovation and feed the project pipeline for all business units worldwide.
In this context, it wanted to gain an overview of key technologies, and open up to key external players to increase performance levels, be more innovative, and improve product quality and integrity. Through a scouting exercise, we identified 26 technologies, evaluated 8 in depth, and finally selected 6 as priority product innovations.
Identification of innovation and new business opportunities by deciphering industrial robotics applications
Our team supported a manufacturing company willing to diversify their revenues and profit sources by the identification of new businesses in industrial robotic applications, compatible with their capabilities.
To do so, we explored two selected potential markets. We prioritized the most attractive segments regarding robotics and identified the main figures, the major players, the existing and emerging solutions, the pain points and needs, and the technical prerequisites for each segment.
Based on the collected insights and our client’s vision, we provided our client with profiles and names of potential partners, areas of application to be favored, and designed two scenarios with medium-term and long-term visions.
Analysis of market trends in general and regional aviation for a new hydrogen fuel cell
Alcimed supported an industrial player in the development and the design of a strategic marketing approach for one of their innovations: a new fuel cell. The aim of our project was to enable our client to address the hydrogen propulsion market.
We investigated the main decarbonization trends and the economic expectations of the general aviation market, identified hydrogen development opportunities in regional aviation and characterized the competitive landscape. Our exploratory work enabled our team to deduce key strategic marketing elements on the general and regional aviation market segments.
On this basis, we provided our client with a list of five priority actions to be conducted as well as key recommendations for their investment in the field.
Definition of a development strategy for a new gene therapy against Parkinson’s Disease
Alcimed assisted a biotechnology player to prepare the clinical development of their new brain gene therapy to slow or halt Parkinson’s Disease associated with specific mutations, with a focus on the practices for administering gene therapy products into the brain.
Our team conducted extensive research on the current and evolving brain administration practices of neurosurgeons in the US, Europe, and Israel; and explored the potential roles and alternative brain administration possibilities with other specialists.
In the end, we provided our client with a development strategy, the best routes of administration and their perception by neurosurgeons. On this basis, our team made recommendations for the short term and the future while pointing out potential risks at every stage.
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Founded in 1993, Alcimed is an innovation and new business consulting firm, specializing in innovation driven sectors: life sciences (healthcare, biotech, agrifood), energy, environment, mobility, chemicals, materials, cosmetics, aeronautics, space and defence.
Our purpose? Helping both private and public decision-makers explore and develop their uncharted territories: new technologies, new offers, new geographies, possible futures, and new ways to innovate.
Located across eight offices around the world (France, Europe, Singapore and the United States), our team is made up of 220 highly-qualified, multicultural and passionate explorers, with a blended science/technology and business culture.
Our dream? To build a team of 1,000 explorers, to design tomorrow’s world hand in hand with our clients.
For Alcimed, product innovation means succeeding in putting more products or services on the market, faster, and in a more responsible way, i.e. by taking into account the social impact, the environmental impact, and the repercussions of innovation on sovereignty.
There are 4 main types of product innovation:
- Incremental innovation which is to expand the current set of features to include something new or redesign something to work better;
- Disruptive innovation which causes a major shift in technical capabilities used, such as the move from mobile to smartphones for example;
- Architectural innovation which reconfigures an existing product or service to create something new, for example an apple watch which brings together two very different usages;
- Radical innovation which introduces something entirely new disrupting existing markets or creating new ones. This often includes the adoption of a whole new technology or a very new way of doing something, for example the introduction of 3D printing or blockchain technologies.