Fire in the machine
In Fire In the Machine, Jonathan Tofel and Carolina Sasson share insight gained from decades spent working within and consulting to Fortune 500 companies. They share the strategies that have helped their CPG clients harness the startup mindset with big business systems to unleash the best of both worlds.
How nature and coin flipping help decision making
The ability to make good decisions is one of the most important skills in business. Innovation requires numerous decisions to be made: what price, what package, what flavor, what size, where in the store… the list can seem daunting.
So, what can you do to improve your decision-making skills?
Strengthening your intuition and thinking probabilistically are two good options.
When Results Surprise You
Recently, one of our clients were surprised- in a good way- as we shared the results of their in-market test.
They wanted to evaluate the impact of moving their current brand from a highly penetrated category where it was a small fish in a big pond, to a different category and aisle where it could be a big fish in a small pond.
Mission Field Receives award
The team of us here at Mission Field are extremely honored to have received the Financial Times 2022 award for The Americas Fastest Growing companies. This is the second time we have been granted this important award from the Financial Times (having previously earned it in 2020) and we are grateful for the 2nd round of recognition.
Moving from “Say” to “Do”
Actions speak louder than words and that is never more true than when conducting learning experiments to help create, refine or launch new products. Time and time again we have seen that it is better to observe what consumers and shoppers DO when given a chance to behave without observation vs what they might SAY out of context of their real lives.
It’s Innovation Day 2022!
Happy Innovation Day 2022! Here are some tips we use to help spark innovation ideas all year long.
when good ideas fail… and how to mitigate that risk!
Can a good idea fail? It sure can- that’s why Mission Field is developing ways to mitigate the risk!
Side Effects of Consumer Research
Conducting consumer research effects on the researcher, aka questioning my life choices.
What your favorite products can teach you about innovation strategy
As professionals who study human behavior and are immersed in innovation strategy and new product development, its easy to forget that our own behavior can teach us a lot. Sometimes when the researcher becomes the subject, it reminds us that there are human truths that we cannot out-innovate.
Innovators’ Book Club: The Innovator’s DNA
Today, you can get your DNA tested for almost anything. You can learn about your ethnic background, who your long-lost relatives are and even what food and medications work best with your body.
But can you be tested to see if you have the innovation gene? Not yet, but luckily the authors of The Innovator’s DNA have determined that being an innovator is more nurture than nature.
Ideas are not the problem…
There is a myth in new product innovation that good ideas are hard to come by, but we find that most of our client are swimming in a pool of possibilities. The real challenge of new product innovation is aligning the team to a singular innovation strategy based on the needs of a well-defined consumer target. Getting to a good understanding of the needs of the target begins with deep empathetic focus. By that we mean a deliberate design target - the tightest, most homogenized consumer group that has a set of real problems that can be served with differentiated solutions.
How can a Random Forest Help my innovation?
Random Forests are one of many statistical regression tools used by Mission Field in the analytical process of projecting your innovations’ success potential. It is one of four key machine learning models we are currently using within our advanced metrics package on transactional tests of innovations, and we believe it is a key anchor for leveraging these test and learn experiences into driving future launch successes. To understand why we are using Random Forests, it helps to know what one is and how it works…
3 Keys to Winning Product Innovation
Creating a winning new product innovation is no simple feat and can be downright challenging. It takes clarity of your target audience, understanding of their needs, deep insight, and great ideas. Once you have distilled the work to a few lead ideas, check them against these three key criteria before diving deeper into development, execution, or launch…
Innovators’ Book Club: Think Big Act Small
A summation of Mission Field's philosophy and the title of a great book is Think Big, Act Small. In the book, Jason Jennings shares anecdotes of how America’s best performing companies keep the start up spirit alive. At Mission Field, we apply lessons we learned while building small companies to innovation challenges of big companies. The parallels between the two are one of the reasons we decided to kick off our new Innovators’ Book Club with a book that has the same title as a Mission Field mantra.
Jennings writes the book with the organization as a whole in mind, we read the book with the lens of how to apply the best practices to innovation.
Successful Virtual Ideation
All innovation starts with an idea in someone’s head. Or at least a kernel of an idea. Many entrepreneurs take their own idea and talk to friends & family to test it out and improve it in their discussions. Most CPG companies use a variety of more formal research tools to extract & hone a set of ideas that could turn into innovations that drive incremental growth for a specific part of their business or with a new target audience.
Celebrating innovation day 2021
We are celebrating the introduction of our EMBR Innovation process by honoring innovators like you with a $10 donation in your name. Head over to Mission Field and help us select one of four worthy innovation causes that we think are sparking change. A quick visit is all it takes to learn more and vote.
What a gas leak can teach us about launching successful innovation
The Mission Field approach to transactional retail testing encompasses 5 different data sources to pressure test the crucial elements of successful innovation. After 3+ months in market, you can understand where all the leaks are, fix them and create a viable and successful launch.
New Beginnings
A new year brings a new look and feel for Mission Field. Introducing our new EMBR (Energize, Make, Burst & Roar) offerings.
All of us at Mission Field wish you and your families a happy, healthy 2020 and bright new beginnings for 2021.
Belief and Emotional Attachment in Innovation
As a researcher who studies consumers’ wants, needs, and beliefs, the past year of national upheaval has been very interesting to observe. Whether it was politics, protests or mask-wearing - the contradictive narratives were a good reminder that people’s internal belief systems and their emotional attachment to that knowledge is a primacy that must always be adhered to when developing new innovations.
Surprising Innovation Lessons You Can Only Learn in the Real World
The real world is in a state of flux right now. What is certain, is that during times like this, the ability for people to predict what they will do is even more difficult because there are so many unknowns about what the future holds and how it will impact them.
Instead, observing actual behavior is much more reliable. At Mission Field, we encourage our partners to use transactional testing because we believe consumers “vote with their wallets” and the best predictor of what someone will do in the future is what they do today, not what they say they’ll do tomorrow.
Studying consumer behavior in an actual store with real product on the shelf is the best way to understand what is working, what is not working, and why they do or do not decide to buy something.