Understanding the Opportunity: Stakeholder Analysis and Ethnography

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2011 - 2012 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

Understanding the Opportunity:Stakeholder Analysis and Ethnography

Robert MonroeInnovative Product Development

February 20, 2012

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2011- 2012 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

By The End Of Class Today, You Should:

• Be able to identify important stakeholders that you need to consider as you develop your POG into a product concept

• Understand how your ethnographic observations and other research can be used to identify the most important Value Opportunities and Product Attributes

• Have a better understanding of how combining the artifacts from your observations and research can be used to provide a deeper understanding of the needs, wants, and desires of your target customers


Phase 2 Overview: Understanding The Opportunity

Phase 2Gate1

Gate2

Phase 1 outputs:• POG statement• JTBD’s• SET Factors• Scenario(s)• Value analysis

(graphs, attributes)

Phase 2 activities:• Look, listen, learn• Stakeholder analysis• Ethnography: - Interviews - Field observations • Story and scenario

generation• Task analysis• Detailed secondary

research• Detailed data

analysis

Phase 2 outputs:• Prioritized value

opportunities• Detailed

scenarios• Prioritized

product attributes

• Prioritized stakeholder list


Stakeholder Analysis


Stakeholder Analysis: Key Concepts

• A stakeholder is a person or group of people who purchase, use, maintain, or are in some way affected by the purchase, use, maintenance, etc. of the product or service

• You will rarely delight all stakeholders with your innovative product or service.

• The goal is to delight and inspire those stakeholders you determine to be the most important, and to not turn off those negatively affected enough to prevent the purchase and use of your product


Stakeholder Analysis: Common Stakeholder Groups

• Those who make the purchase, pay the bill, or affect the purchase decision

• Those who use the product or service directly• Those who need to store and maintain the product• Those who are affected by the use of the product or

service• Those who provide important complementary products

and services• Others?

– Sometimes, it depends on the product or service


Stakeholder Exercise: iPhone

Identify specific stakeholders:• Those who make the purchase or

affect the purchase decision• Those who use the product or

service directly• Those who need to store and

maintain the product• Those who are affected by the use

of the product or service• Those who provide important

complementary products and services

• Others?


Stakeholder Exercise: OXO Goodgrips Peeler







• Others?


Stakeholder Exercise: Karwa Taxi Service







• Others?


Stakeholder Exercise: Family Vacation Photos







• Others?


Stakeholder Questions

• How do you prioritize the identified stakeholders?– … and when do you do so?

• As an exercise, how would you prioritize the stakeholders for the family vacation photo example?– Should your priorities change depending on what your

company does, and who your most valuable customers are?– How so?– How does changing the priority of your stakeholders change

the way that you approach your ethnography study? How does it change the questions you want to answer about your customers, their needs, wants and desires?


Selecting and Refining Product Attributes


Selecting and Refining Product Attributes

• Once we really understand our target customer and the challenges that they face, we then need to identify opportunities for a new product or service to provide significant value by improving the experience, the results, solving a problem, reducing costs or other undesirable outcomes, etc.

• We express these as prioritized and abstract Value Opportunities (VO’s) and then turn those VO’s into specific Product Attributes that our new product or service needs to have


VO’s to Product Attributes Example

Value Opportunities• Low cost

• Easier to carry

• Reduce number of devices to carry

• Improved durability

Product Attributes• No more than 100 Riyals

• Weight < 200 grams,Size < 6 x 6 x 1 cm.

• Camera should be integrated with phone or another device customers already carry daily

• Should be able to bounce around all day in handbag, occasionally be dropped on floor, and work in rainy conditions


Refining A Scenario At The End Of Phase II

• Phase 1 scenario: helping elderly women in the kitchenMary is 70 years old and lives alone. She loves to bake and often entertains her family for holidays. She has developed arthritis and is no longer comfortable reaching into the oven to lift things out. Losing the ability to bake things has been very depressing for her to contemplate. Mary is hesitant to have her family over and no longer feels confident entertaining in her home.

• Refined scenario at the end of phase 2:– Mary has arthritis in her lower spine and shoulders that limits her range

of motion. She has also lost strength in her back and arm muscles. A device is needed that fits in the context of a standard oven that will compensate for her limited motion and reduced strength and allow her to easily put in and remove a variety of pans and baking dishes in the oven. The device will have to lift items that range in weight from ½ to 7 kilos.

Source: [CV02] pages 120-125.


Supplementing A Scenario With Product Attributes

• Revised Product Opportunity Statement, with specific product attributes identified:

The team will develop a product that will integrate with a standard oven and will be easy to install and clean. It must have a simple mechanism and must cost no more than QR 150 to buy and install. Any installation should be easy enough for a family member to do. While the primary market will be senior women with arthritis between the ages of 70 and 85, the primary purchasers will be family members

Source: [CV02] page 125.


Ethnography Workshop


Collecting Observations Artifacts


Challenge Problem 3: Due In Class Next Wednesday

• Collect a set of artifacts that tell a story about your customers for for the vacation images example we used in class today

• Come to class on Wednesday prepared to put up a collage of the artifacts you have collected on the wall, or on the tables, and talk through what you have found for the class.

• The goal of this exercise is to see how resourceful you can be in collecting observations about your customers and using those observations to tell a compelling story about what they are trying to do, how they currently do it, and where they have challenges doing their JTBD, and/or where the products and services that they are currently using fall short of their expectations.


Planning Your Ethnography Study

• What are we trying to learn? – What questions should we be answering with the study?

• Who should we observe? How many observations?• When should we do the observations?

– What, specifically, are we trying to see?• How will we conduct the observations?

– Discretely or as a participant?– Staged events or “in the wild”?

• How will we record what we observe? – Do we need participant permissions?

• Where will we do our observations?

Source: [SSD09] pp 21-26


Upcoming Assignments

• Challenge problem 4 posted to wiki– Continue vacation image capture POG with final gate-2

scenario, prioritized value opportunities and product attributes

– Due at the start of class on Wednesday, February 29– Same groups as challenge problem 3

• Final Project– Details posted on wiki home page– Please review carefully and form teams of 3 people– No two groups can address the same POG


References

[CE09] Robert G. Cooper and Scott Edgett, Successful Product Innovation, Product Development Institute, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4392-4918-5.

[CV02] Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel, Creating Breakthrough Products, Prentice Hall, 2002, ISBN: 0-13-969694-6.

[KL01] Tom Kelly with Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation, Doubleday, 2001. ISBN: 0-385-49984-1.

[SSD09] David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, Neil DeCarlo, The Innovator’s Toolkit, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-34535-1.

Documents

Understanding the Opportunity: Stakeholder Analysis and Ethnography