A little word about product development

Business Dictionary defines product development the following way: "The creation of products with new or different characteristics that offer new or additional benefits to the customer.

Product development may involve modification of an existing product or its presentation, or formulation of an entirely new product that satisfies a newly defined customer want or market niche."

So that's about what we are working with - creating product with new or additional benefits to the customer. But how that is done?

Picture taken from https://bit.ly/2UOLYSC

One quite most used way for development is this:(http://insights.btoes.com/resources/lean-production-and-product-development)

It all begins wit this so called Fuzzy Front End, in this point everything is still little messy and the project is just beginning.  Since the field and company was little unfamiliar for us. so we actually started the product development process with getting know the company. (Something that isn't necessarily part of the process). In the start we also were being little crazy and just coming up with all kinds of ideas for possible products.

Picture taken from https://bit.ly/2GEq1lt

Like one can see on the picture the process continues with creating and screening the ideas: We had our own brainstorming sessions and we discussed about the ideas with the company and got new insight from other members from the team as well.

In the picture/process next up is concept development and testing. We haven't yet done testings, but we are working towards it (and have actually agreed a date on that as well). But concept development is something we have done quite much. We are in the situation, that we have more than one product concept that we are still developing, so everything has more work to do than with only one possible product. Just to give the idea that we use many working hours, even though it might does not look like that, with "only" development. 

We have actually done some business analysis on the stores. We have looked into similar already existing products. How those are placed in stores, how many different potential competitors, how does the products look like in the shelves, what kind of product design and functions. We have also done tastings of different products already on the market. We actually got a nice Excel-form from our PO to list out different features of the products. 

Picture taken from https://bit.ly/2I9HAfC

 So we have been to the stores researching, tasted several products, developed our ideas with more information about process and production, searched information about all of the above, tried to create functional recipes, thought about the visual side of the product and package, tossed around ideas about the flavors and branding... Just to mention few aspects of our product development process so far.