Another great way to make the clothes not meet the needs of our target market is to make sure that they shrink in the wash, and that the colors bleed.
In addition, the clothes should be in a very limited selection in terms of design. Our customers want choice so we should make sure not to give them that. Ideally, the clothes will be priced at a very high price point. Pregnant women need to adjust their clothes as they get larger, so the customer should have to replace their clothing every month at high cost.
The objective of reverse brainstorming is to determine the characteristics of the product that the consumer specifically will not want. This helps to avoid pitfalls that can occur in the design and development process. By defining what the product should not be, it helps the creative process by focusing better on what it should be.
SCAMPER is another tool, specifically designed for product creation purposes. The acronym stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, and reverse (MindTools, 2009). Taking the basic concept of maternity clothing, we can generate the following.
Substitute can result in a myriad of decisions with regards to different fabrics, different colors and different designs. Each of these represents a specific decision that must be made, and a different solution to the problems that are faced. The types of fabric options should be identified and their relative merits outlined.
Combining elements is in part how this product idea emerged in the first place. The combination of maternity wear and activewear was the genesis of the product. The process was a simple examination of different types of clothing that could be combined to find a niche that is perhaps underserved.
The line could be derived as an adaptation of an existing product line, either an activewear line or a maternity line. In this case, it is worth considering the key factors that will determine the success of the line. Given the attention to materials and design, an adaptation of an activewear line is more appropriate.
Put to another use takes an existing product and...
A new product is not created, but the new use gives the company a de facto new product. Viagra is a good example of this type of product development. In our case, there is little "new use" to be derived. The unique shape of maternity clothing rules out using other products for this purpose.
Eliminating elements of a product can lead to a new product. For example, if we already had maternity activewear, the activewear component could be eliminated to yield a simple maternity wear line. This could be done, for example, by shifting from materials suited to the needs of activewear to more conventional materials.
Reverse would be to find a new product opportunity from the existing opportunity. For example, if it was determined that our clothing required fabrics that do not yet exist, we could invent such a fabric and then market it to other companies as well as use it in our line.
Different creativity tools serve different purposes. SCAMPER is a useful means to frame a brainstorming session based on an existing product. Attribute listing and morphological analysis can help to identify the properties that the product should have, while reverse brainstorming is a tool that can help us to identify the characteristics that the product should not have. With just these three tools, our clothing company can identify a new product that is needed in the marketplace, identify what the product should be like and guide the development process away from specific pitfalls. The result of this process for our clothing line is a new line of maternity activewear, with simple stylish design and high quality materials at an affordable price.
Works Cited:
No author. (2009). Attribute listing, morphological analysis and matrix analysis. MindTools. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_03.htm
No author. (2009). Reverse brainstorming. MindTools. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_96.htm
No author. (2009). SCAMPER. MindTools. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm
