(PRWEB) July 17, 2006 -- Brown & Company LLC announced today an online audit tool for evaluating the market viability of new product ideas. Called the Product Viability Index®, it was created specifically for the product idea generation and screening process that takes place prior to formal New Product Development (NPD), often called the “Fuzzy Front-End.”
“ The ‘Fuzzy Front-End’ represents about a third of all risk in a product’s lifecycle, and this is an area that is not well supported with good measurement tool... ”
"New products fail at an extremely high rate for a variety of reasons," said Ronald Brown, principal of Brown & Company LLC. "The ‘Fuzzy Front-End’ represents about a third of all risk in a product’s lifecycle, and this is an area that is not well supported with good measurement tools."
Companies find traditional evaluation tools, like focus groups and tracking studies, too expensive to use on a frequent basis, especially in the idea-generation phase. At the same time, many internal systems for managing product development details lack the organization and structure for systematically assessing consumer-related strategic issues.
The Product Viability Index is a customer-centric approach. Its ability to track and standardize market viability attributes leads to more consistency and predictability — in itself an important step toward reducing product failure rates.
About the PVI:
The Product Viability Index is an online scorecard, so participants can provide feedback regardless of geography. Used in conjunction with well-defined customer use cases, it measures and tracks a series of critical success factors developed from a number of sources related to product failure,
business models and investment criteria.
Data is primarily collected from internal team members in a variety of functional roles, although it is easy for outsiders to participate. Responses are ranked on a five-point scale. Each of the statements is weighted in terms of importance in a particular category and crafted to gather a specific kind of information. Categories include channel efficiency, differentiation, competitive response, customer need, market dynamics, positioning strength, product design, targets, and team efficiency. Responses are expressed as an Index number. Index numbers can be compared to industry averages.
About Brown & Company:
Brown & Company is a new products consulting firm that created a unique methodology for measuring product viability in the marketplace. This approach, called Idea Indexing™, greatly simplifies and standardizes regular measurement of qualitative product attributes from one reporting point to another, and is inexpensive enough to be used regularly. In this sense, Idea Indexing is similar to product quality programs such as Six Sigma that strive for continuous improvement. It also helps create a common ground that closes gaps in communications among different functional areas. Brown & Company's principals have extensive new products experience in technology, consumer electronics and consumer packaged goods industries. More information can be found at www.browncompany.com.
