The research generates plenty of data but struggles to make meaningful connections and insights. Many companies use conventional methodologies which typically only report on existing customer behavior.

  Customers often fail to articulate needs or benefits beyond what they’ve already experienced.

  Conventional research methods are plagued with pitfalls such as response bias and limited by format, duration and venue.

  Many companies use the same toolkit to gather customer insights so the results are undifferentiated and all competitors are chasing the same general trends.

 Recruitment and qualification of an on-line community with typically 150-300 members who are customers or potential users of your products and who participate for 5-9 months in the club.

  Strategic objectives to categorize and prioritize problems and opportunities in a specific area of products and services with a goal of defining 5-8 promising white spaces for innovation.

 Key criteria for analyzing opportunities including:

• Extent: how widely and frequently the problem is
  experienced
• Comparative disparity: how poorly current alternatives
  do the job given what the consumers want
• Importance: how critical is the problem
• Impact: how dramatically a given solution could increase sales
• Fruitfulness: how likely it is that a commonly accepted solution can be found

  Key deliverables including regular analysis reports and a final report with 5-7 major white spaces identified