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Welcome to F-Stop*
Faulkner Strategic Consulting's monthly eNewsletter
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This month's topic is the second in a series about Free Insights Sources for Innovation and focuses on Industry & Competitive Sources.
Customer and market insights are some of the most critical elements in assessing future business opportunities, developing new products or services, and building existing businesses.
Traditional market research can play an important role, but there isn’t always the time or money (or expertise) to execute large scale, formal research. The good news is that there are myriad sources and approaches available with virtually zero investment.
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Flickr Creative Commons, photo by: PhotoSteve101
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Building on last month's understanding of the size and growth potential of a particular market, it’s now helpful to get a deeper sense of the industry and its players.
This step tends to involve synthesizing many disparate data points, examples, case studies, and trends to develop a holistic story which can inform strategy choices and strengthen ideas. Different lenses can help teams create a robust view of the industry and existing (or potential) competition.
- Think like a Customer—visit any retail locations or see if there are public tours of their facilities, shop their website or stores, talk to customer service agents or store staff, read customer reviews (e.g. product reviews on Amazon or user reviews on Yelp, etc.), look for company “lists” in the popular press (e.g. Forbes’ “Worlds’ Most Innovative Companies”, Working Mother’s “Best Companies for Working Moms”, etc.)
- Think like an Investor (for publically traded companies)—download the annual report, join an analysts’ call or read analysts reports, research the stock, search for financial articles and company profiles, look on investment/brokerage sites, set up a Google alert for news articles
- Think like a Student: look for case studies in business or higher education publications (e.g. Harvard Business Review or FastCompany), look for reports or articles published by big consulting companies (e.g. McKinsey), search Google Scholar for industry journal articles. Consult with the reference librarian at the local public library to access a variety of specialized reports and publications.
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Thanks for reading this month's issue of F-Stop. Next month will conclude the series, focused on free ways to learn about New Ideas & Early Prototypes. Feedback is always welcome and please feel free to forward to friends and colleagues!
Sarah Faulkner
Principal, Faulkner Strategic Consulting
Faulkner Strategic Consulting guides companies with unique, meaningful and compelling insights that give direction to future innovation and help brands reach their full potential.
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*Why F-Stop? In photography, F-Stop is a measure of lens speed which controls the brightness, or illuminance, of the scene. These concepts are central to innovation as well. The goal of F-Stop is to provide resources, information, and inspiration to illuminate and accelerate innovation.
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