Innovation is a vital tool for brands wanting to stay ahead of the pack yet System1 state that an alarming 95% of product innovations fail, which amounts to a huge waste of $6.4 billion. Find out how you can test your innovation.

Each year, around $6.7 billon is poured into innovation and new product development as brands strive to stay ahead and drive business growth. Yet, despite this hefty investment, it's alarming that 95% of these product innovations fail. This staggering figure amounts to a potential waste of $6.4 billion.

Several factors can contribute to a product flop: Is it competitively priced? Is it effectively cueing the right brand? Are timing and marketing execution on point? The good news is that nearly all these factors can be controlled. While there will always be variables beyond a brand's control, there's one thing brands can readily do to safeguard their innovation investment: test the product with real consumers before launch.

Becoming the 5% of Successful Innovators

Predicting success isn't as straightforward as asking consumers whether they'd buy your product. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman's work has shown, humans are inherently biased when it comes to rationalising our decisions—in other words, we don't always do what we say or say what we do. The key to unlocking predictive insights into consumer behaviour lies in understanding people's emotional responses.

“The answer to a simple question – how do I feel about it? – is an excellent proxy for the answer to a far more complex question – what do I think about it?”

Daniel Kahneman

Leveraging the predictive power of emotion, System1 analysed over 200 concepts across 5 countries. The findings revealed that products evoking more Happiness held the greatest commercial potential. While Surprise or excitement is often believed to drive innovation success, it was discovered that the most successful innovations skew 80% towards Happiness and 20% towards Surprise.

Coined as 'Fluent Innovation' by John Kearon in his book System1: Unlocking Profitable Growth, this term denotes that the most successful innovations in-market tend to be more familiar than new. Richard Shotton, behavioural science consultant and author of The Choice Factory alluded to this idea in The Greenprint USA in relation to the evolution of electric cars, stating that “the most advanced, yet most acceptable” route is often the most successful—rather than launching futuristic, hovering electric vehicles, manufacturers created something that looked and felt familiar but operated differently.

Becoming the top 5% of successful innovators doesn’t have to be left to luck. By understanding the emotional resonance a new product has, brands can benchmark and refine ideas to maximise in-market success.

 Create with Confidence

At System1, we understand that Happiness holds the key to unlocking in-market potential. That's why we've developed a platform that harnesses the predictive power of emotion.

Test Your Innovation integrates three core measures to generate an overall Star-Rating, validated against in-market performance. These are:

  • Emotional Pull – how does your idea make people feel? The happier people feel, the greater your commercial success. In addition to capturing emotions and the intensity of these emotions, Test Your Innovation also provides Reasons for Emotion, or verbatims, that can help you improve your ideas.
  • Share Trading – which idea will attract the most investment? We ask people whether they would buy or sell shares in your ideas to accurately predict the potential for commercial success.
  • Speed of Trading – how quickly will people decide whether to buy or sell? Fast decision-making means that an idea is easy to understand and more likely to be chosen.

With Test Your Innovation, you can predict, understand, and enhance the effectiveness of your ideas swiftly. In as little as 24 hours, you'll receive actionable insights and clear benchmarking to guide you on the path to success. 

Discover Test Your Innovation at the System1 cabana at MAD//Fest or schedule a call in our team’s calendar here to learn more.  We can’t wait to help you bring your ideas to market!

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