Future Capabilities Assessment
GEN TRIZ works to determine the future of a client's business, markets and technologies to help predict what R&D capabilities they must develop and/or acquire to support the firm's short to long-term business goals.
Based on objective forecasts of future technology and market trends, GEN TRIZ innovation experts conceptualize multiple future innovations that will occur in the client's market. The future innovations are then analyzed in technical detail to determine the range of practical requirements needed to take the concept through to development, including: R&D capabilities, enabling technologies, partners, vendors, and manufacturing processes (including equipment).
Approach
- Determine markets and market segments where growth is predicted
- Identify unmet market needs and predict future market needs in those market segments
- Identify the fundamental technical problems that need to be addressed to meet the predicted needs
- Conceptualize innovations that will be developed to meet the future needs by resolving the fundamental technical problems
- Identify specific technologies that were applied to resolve the fundamental problems and to conceptualize the innovations
- Determine what platform technologies underlie the specific technologies
- Define the capabilities required to apply the platform technologies
- Determine how to acquire the specified capabilities (partners, vendors, acquisitions)
Prioritization
A future innovation plus its capabilities requirements, called a Product Portrait, is prioritized on two dimensions: (1) performance on critical market needs, and (2) development time. GEN TRIZ experts and the client team select a subset of Product Portraits to create a mix of short- and long-term, incremental and breakthrough innovations; their consolidated requirements become a road map for capabilities development.
Benefits
A key advantage for the client is that all elements are logically linked and aligned; from future market and technology trends, to future product development, to long-term business goals, to capabilities requirements. Because of these intrinsic connections, it is possible to perform high-level checks over time and make adjustments for tactical reasons that then affect the entire chain.