Summary of Blueprinting steps in B2B front-end of innovation... and how to explain it to colleagues
New Product Blueprinting is an integrated set of methods, tools and skills for the front-end of B2B innovation. New product development teams work their way through the steps shown in the illustration:
Market Research: The team considers several possible market segments (clusters of customers with similar needs) and targets an attractive one to pursue.
Discovery Interviews: The team conducts several qualitative, divergent customer interviews in the target market segment… to uncover as many outcomes (desired end results) as possible.
Preference Interviews: The team data-mines its Discovery interviews and conducts several quantitative, convergent interviews. The customers are asked to rate each outcome on a scale of 1-to-10 for importance and satisfaction.
Market Case: This 2-page report covers 6 sections such as Strategic Fit, Market Attractiveness, etc. In the Value Proposition section, a Market Satisfaction Gap profile shows which outcomes customers are most eager to see improved (high importance and low current satisfaction). For some projects, a satisfactory Market Case is all that’s needed to proceed into the development stage. In other cases, a full Business Case is required.
Side-by-Side Testing: Using customers’ recommended test methods (gathered in Preference interviews), the team conducts competitive benchmarking against competing products.
Product Objectives: The team now has deep insights into customers’ needs and competitors’ capabilities. It uses this to plan a new product design that will be seen by the market as the most desirable.
Technical Brainstorming: Until now, the team has focused on customers’ desired outcomes; now it considers possible solutions to satisfy these outcomes. In this step, the team brainstorms and selects the most attractive technical paths to pursue if/when they enter the development stage.
Business Case: This is used to gain management approval to enter the development stage. It contains 12 sections… the same 6 that are included in the Market Case plus additional sections with more detail on recommendations for the development stage.
Explaining Blueprinting to others:
- Videos: Check out Blueprinting methods, training and software with these 3-minute videos: www.NPBoverview.com, www.NPBtraining.com, and www.NPBsoftware.com.
- PowerPoint: Use this 31-slide presentation to explain Blueprinting. Download New Product Blueprinting Overview.pptx and check out the speaker’s notes. You can also download the PDF version. For a brief 5-slide version download Brief Blueprinting Overview.pptx
The "Why" behind Blueprinting: To see "why" Blueprinting is needed, check out the B2B Organic Growth video series by Dan Adams... 50 free 2-minute videos you can receive daily or weekly.
Keywords: New Product Blueprinting, Blueprinting steps, B2B front-end of innovation, Discovery interview, Preference interview, Market Case