new product development

Intelligences

Creating a Creators’ Market: How Ethnography Gave Intel a New Perspective On Digital Content Creators

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KEN ANDERSON Intel Corporation SUSAN FAULKNER Intel Corporation LISA KLEINMAN LogMeIn, Inc. JAMIE SHERMAN Intel Corporation Download PDF This case demonstrates how ongoing ethnographic research from within a corporation led to the re-segmentation of a market. The first part of the case focuses on how a team of social science researchers at a major technology company, Intel, drew on past research studies to develop a point-of-view on the increasing importance of content creation across a range of populations that challenged the findings of a quantitative market sizing study. Drawing on earlier qualitative work, the team was able to successfully argue for the value of ethnographic research to augment these findings and to show how research participants’ orientations toward technology constituted a more significant, and more actionable way of segmenting this new market than professional status, the differentiator used in the quantitative study. The second half of the case highlights the process of driving business change...

Intelligences

It’s Not Childs’ Play: Changing Corporate Narratives Through Ethnography

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ANNE MCCLARD Intel Corporation THÉRÈSE DUGAN Facebook (formerly Intel Corporation) Case Study—After discovering that there were over 25 projects going on in various business units in the company that involved children as end users, and that most people had a limited understanding of children's play, the researchers proposed a multi-cultural ethnographic project called ChildsPlay. This case study illustrates the many ways that a well-planned ethnographic study can influence the trajectory of a company's culture, highlighting institutional challenges, describing the ethnographic methods and theoretical underpinnings that guided the research and its analysis, and touching upon the importance of play as an anthropological focal point. The case study closes with a discussion of a notable shift in the narrative around Intel's child-focused product efforts, and the tangible outcomes of the research with respect to product development....

Intelligences

When ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’: Performance, Complicity and Constraints on Communication in Corporate Attempts at Innovation

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JOSH KAPLAN Download PDF When ethnographic or market research is employed to help de-risk potential products and services, the focus is typically on understanding markets, cultures and contexts external to the organization that would launch them. This paper shifts the focus to the sorts of organizational practices, beliefs, and dynamics inside large corporations, which can create the conditions in which new products are brought to market despite evidence of their risk of failure. Keywords: Innovation, New Product Development, Ethnography, Risk [CEO at a town hall meeting, announcing an upcoming, public sneak preview of a major product launch] ….I realize the full platform won't be ready until January, but our Nucleus division assures me they are ready for this challenge. [Engineering teams following the meeting:] [Speaker 1] He does know that converting the whole platform to middle out has put us six weeks behind schedule, right? [Speaker 2] Well I'm not gonna be the one who tells him we're that far behind. —Scene...