How To Prioritize New Product Ideas for Better Launch Odds

You did the work. You ran the brainstorm, filled the whiteboard, and walked away with a stack of product ideas that all sound pretty good. Now what?  And if you want more information on generating lots of ideas check out the blog on Innovation: Using Consumer Insights for Idea Generation.

This is the point where a lot of teams get stuck. You can't take fifty ideas into development, and you can't research the hundreds you came up with either, since budget doesn't work that way. The real challenge isn't generating ideas at this point. It's figuring out which ones deserve your time and money.

It's a little like cleaning out a closet. Everything felt necessary when you bought it. But you can't keep it all, and you definitely can't take it all with you when you move. You need a system for deciding what stays.

That's where you need to prioritize new product ideas with more than a gut check. This takes two steps: applying your own internal criteria first, then letting consumer research narrow the list even further. Skip the first step, and you'll spend your research budget testing ideas that were never going anywhere anyway, which is an easy trap to fall into when a deadline is looming and testing feels like progress.

And before you toss anything, archive it. The ideas that don't make the cut this time are a head start on your next brainstorm. Sometimes the idea you need next quarter is already sitting in an old file, waiting for the timing, budget, or capability to catch up to it.

Narrow Down Before You Test

Testing costs money. If you're spending it on ideas that don't meet your own basic requirements, that's money you didn't need to spend.

The most efficient way to prioritize new product ideas at this stage is to build a scorecard. Take your list of ideas and rate each one against a consistent set of criteria, whether that's high to low, 1-5 stars, yes to no, or whatever scale makes sense for your team. The scale matters less than the consistency. Every idea should be judged against the same bar.

You'll need to build criteria specific to your business, but here's a starting list:

Manufacturing capability: can you run this on existing lines or is capital investment most likely required?

R&D capability: do you have the internal know-how or does it need to be outsourced?

Cost of ingredients: are they prohibitive to the margin requirement?

Development Time: can you do this now, or is it a three to five year project?

Regulatory and claims feasibility: can you substantiate what you want to say?

Fit with brand positioning: does the idea reinforce what the brand stands for, or dilute it?

Supply chain and sourcing feasibility: can you reliably get what you'd need

Unmet need and consumer insight fit: does this idea address something you already know consumers want, or is it purely an internal wish?

For example, one of your ideas needs an ingredient your supplier doesn't carry, rests on a claim your legal team can't clear, and requires two years of R&D you haven't budgeted for. That idea might still be a good one someday, but it’s not a good one to spend research money on right now.

Run every idea through this filter before a single consumer sees it. This is the step that keeps your research budget focused on ideas that have already earned a shot, not the ones that were interesting to talk about in a meeting but were never actually feasible.

Use Consumer Testing to Prioritize New Product Ideas Even Further

Once ideas clear your internal criteria, it's time to bring consumers into the process. Say you started with 300 ideas. Internal criteria gets you down to 50, still too many for any organization to act on. This is where consumer testing makes the difference.

The methodology here is usually fairly simple, though there's more than one way to do it. Sometimes you're testing ideas one at a time to see how each stands on its own. Sometimes you're putting several in front of the same consumer and asking them to rank or compare. Either approach can work. What matters is that you're clear on what you're trying to learn before you pick one.

You need to know more than whether consumers like an idea. Would they actually buy it? And does it beat what they're currently buying? Plenty of ideas score well on appeal and then fall apart on that second question, because liking something in a survey and switching what you buy at the store are two very different commitments.

Give consumers enough to go on. A simple concept description or sketch is often enough. Just make sure it's clear enough that they're evaluating the idea you actually mean, not something they've imagined on their own. A vague description gets you vague feedback, and vague feedback doesn't help you prioritize anything.

Pulling this together takes time internally, but it's worth it. Getting consumer feedback early saves you from chasing an idea for months only to find out it never had much potential in the first place.

Once results come back, you'll see a natural split, ideas that rise and ideas that fall. If more ideas perform well than you expected, that's a good problem to have. You'll still apply internal prioritization on top of it, since not everything that tests well can move forward at once, but you're building a stronger innovation pipeline either way.

The Quick Take Away on How to Prioritize New Product Ideas

Narrowing down is just as critical as generating the ideas in the first place, maybe more so, since this is where you decide where the time and money actually go.

Apply your internal criteria first. It protects your research budget from ideas that were never going to make it. Then bring in consumer testing to protect you from launching the wrong idea. Together, these two steps are how you prioritize new product ideas with confidence instead of guesswork and set your innovation pipeline up to succeed.