This is the process of filtering through the ideas brought to the table by your team, picking the ones that are most likely to turn a profit, and dropping the less favorable ones. On the other hand, the idea may have come from external sources such as customers, suppliers, distributors, or even competitors. This idea may have been generated by internal sources such as research and development (R&D), market research, or employees who are not part of R&D. This is what’s known as a product idea-a new product that a company could potentially offer to the market.
Imagine that you’re a marketer for a food processing company, and you believe there is a gap in the market for a high-protein freeze-dried yogurt powder that can be added to juice to make a nutritious, low-fat, fruit-flavored smoothie. Instead of looking at the new product development process in abstract terms, let’s discuss a potential product idea and follow it through all the steps of the process. The purpose of this stage is to focus on the products that are more likely to turn a profit so you can reduce the product development expense later in the process and develop profitable products. With idea generation, you are working to create as many ideas as you can. Figure 10.3 Stages in the New Product Development Process (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
