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A manager has thought of an idea for a product or service, and identified the consumer needs – the things that consumers would like the product or service to do. The manager has collected many concepts for the whole product or service, or for parts of it, that could possibly meet those needs. She would now like to choose a small number of concepts to examine in more detail, with a view to developing an actual product or service. This blog post describes a method that the manager can use to select the best concepts for further examination. The method works in six steps. In the first step, the features to look for in a concept are identified. In the second step, the presence of the features is assessed in each of the concepts. The third step revises the concepts, and the fourth step assesses the revised concepts. The fifth step compares concepts using the results from the fourth step, and selects the best among them using the results of the comparison. In the sixth step, concepts are combined if they describe parts of the product or service, rather than its entirety. Figure 1 shows the sequence as a flowchart, which is also available as a pdf download at the end of the post. An example from the Democratic Republic of Congo will be used to illustrate the approach. Figure 1: Flowchart for concept selection  Method for selecting concepts for further examination Step 1: Identification of features to look for in a concept Many features to look for in a concept can be obtained from consumer needs (grouped together as described in this blog post (link)). Each need group states something that consumers would like the product or service to do. The corresponding feature is that the concept would do it if it was developed. Up to twenty features can be found from the consumer need groups. When a concept describes how part of a product or service works, rather than the whole of it, then not all the consumer needs will be relevant. The manager can decide which need groups are relevant for that part, and use only those as features when considering that concept. Other important features connect the concept with the organisation’s ability to develop and deliver it. One such feature is that the cost can be paid easily by the organisation, and others are that the organisation’s employees have sufficient skills for the activities and have sufficient time to work on them. Another consideration is that the concept fits well with the organisation’s other work – for example, it should not place demands on the organisation’s resources which hinder its basic non-innovation operations. Step 2: Assessment of the presence of the features in each of the concepts The next step finds out how many features are present in each of the concepts. The manager takes the list of concepts and chooses any one of them. She takes the list of features as well, and for each feature she asks whether it is present in the concept. If it is, she writes a tick. Otherwise, she writes a cross. For instance, if one feature is “the cost of development can easily be paid by the organisation”, and that is true for the concept, the manager writes a tick. After working through the list of features, the manager adds up the number of ticks, and the total is the number of features that are present in the concept. The manager repeats for all of the concepts. Step 3: Revision of the concepts The previous step assessed the presence of important features in the concepts. In step 3, the manager chooses any one of the concepts, and considers the features that it does not have. The manager tries to think of ways to revise the concept so that it could obtain at least some of those features. To think of revisions, she may use some of the same techniques as she used to generate the concepts. These techniques, such as the nominal group method, were described in the last blog post (link). The manager may also combine different concepts in order to identify new concepts that have more features than its precursor concepts. The manager repeats for the other concepts. It may not be possible to revise some or all of the concepts. Step 4: Assessment of the presence of the features in each of the revised concepts This step repeats step 2, but for the revised concepts. Step 5: Comparison and selection of concepts The comparison and selection of concepts uses the assessments of the concepts (both original and revised) from steps 2 and 4. The comparison can be made by looking at the number of important features that are present in each concept, and selecting the concepts with the highest number. This approach is quick and easy, but a manager may want to consider some other elements of the assessment before making their decision. For example, the manager may consider certain features to be very important, and so may strongly prefer that any concept has them. In the case of a concept for a bus service, the presence of the feature “the service provides connections between the major population centres” may be highly desirable. A concept without these very important features could be rejected, or concepts with them could be favoured over other concepts without them but with the same number of other features. It is possible that no concepts will be acceptable. The manager can then return to concept generation (described in this link) to find alternatives. If the new concepts are not acceptable either, then the manager can loop again, or discontinue the innovation process. If the concepts describe the whole of a product or service, then the manager can select up to three concepts for further examination. When more than three concepts have similar assessments, the manager can use her judgement to select the best three. If the concepts describe parts of a product or service, then up to two concepts can be selected for each part, and the manager can progress to step 6. Step 6: Combination of concepts for parts Step 6 applies when the concepts describe parts of a product or service, rather than a whole one. In the step, the manager chooses a combination of concepts that work well together to give a concept that describes the whole product or service, using their own judgement or the judgement of their team to select the best combination. The manager then performs the same action twice more, each time selecting a different combination of concepts, if possible. At the end of this step, the manager has up to three concepts describing the whole product or service. Example: selecting concepts for fire insurance of market traders Fire is a serious risk for sellers in markets in the DRC, with large fires able to destroy an entire market, taking the sellers’ stalls and merchandise and severely compromising their ability to earn a living (link, link, link). An insurance company is planning to launch an insurance policy for sellers that pays them in the event of a fire. The company’s manager has discovered that the sellers have the need groups in table 1. Table 1: Sellers’ need groups for an insurance policy against fire damage
The manager has identified the concepts listed in table 2. Each concept describes part of the policy, rather than the whole, and tries to satisfy one of the need groups. For each need group, there are two concepts. Table 2: Concepts for an insurance policy against fire damage  The manager then follows the procedure described above, with details below. Step 1: Identification of features to look for in a concept The first set of features are the need groups, and are listed in table 1. As each concept in table 2 describes how part of a product or service satisfies one of the need groups, it is suitable to use that need group as a feature to assess that concept. The second set of features relate to the organisation’s ability to develop and deliver the concept. They are: the cost of development can be paid easily by the organisation; the cost of running the insurance can be paid easily by the organisation, including in the event of a major fire; the organisation’s employees have sufficient skills for the activities; the organisation’s employees have sufficient time to work on them; and the concept fits well with the organisation’s other work. Step 2: Assessment of the presence of the features in each of the concepts The manager starts this step by taking concept 1: following the report of a fire, the company immediately sends an inspector to investigate and assess the damage, and the company pays the amount assessed. For assessing this concept, the relevant features are: the policy pays compensation quickly; the cost of development can be paid easily by the organisation; the cost of running the insurance can be paid easily by the organisation, including in the event of a major fire; the organisation’s employees have sufficient skills for the activities; the organisation’s employees have sufficient time to work on them; and the concept fits well with the organisation’s other work. The manager assesses the concept as follows:
The manager repeats for concept 2, which she gives six ticks. She does the assessment for all the other concepts in table 2. Step 3: Revision of the concepts The manager looks at the concepts. She decides that concept 8, “the company does not pay the replacement cost of the stolen products”, can be revised to ensure that it has the feature “the policy pays compensation for products stolen during a fire”. The concept changes to “the company pays the replacement cost of the stolen products, minus a fixed amount (‘an excess’) to encourage the policyholder to avoid losses”. Step 4: Assessment of the presence of the features in each of the revised concepts The manager assesses the revised concept 8 from step 3, and gives it six ticks. Step 5: Comparison and selection of concepts The manager compares concepts using their assessed number of features, and uses her judgement to select a single concept for each part of the policy when they have the same number of features. Table 3 shows the concepts that the manager has selected, and the parts that they describe. Table 3: Selected concepts and the policy parts that they describe  Step 6: Combination of concepts for parts Only one concept is selected for each part of the policy, so there is only one possible combination for a concept describing the whole policy. The concept is described in Table 3, and is selected for further examination and development. 
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The blog and site are written by James Waters. He is a British economist. Archives
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