October 8, 2002 The Dow Chemical Company
North West Office Building
Midland, Michigan 48674
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
The eBusiness Department of The Dow Chemical Company is responsible
for a variety of new business development activities that are outside of
the existing businesses that Dow is currently engaged in.
The goal was to define a new business platform valued at $1 Billion
in sales revenue within 10 years in a new business platform including:
Home Health, and Safety. The subset of this topic that WinOvations was
asked to lead involved contamination control. This is truly a “fuzzy”
new business arena, or “white-space” to Dow. This activity required
experienced, professional support to help us facilitate brainstorming
activities, and then further refine and shape the ideas into a few major
business concepts for further development.
WinOvations provided professional facilitation services in
support of these goals by:
- Facilitating an Internal Dow Idea & Need Generation Session,
which included prioritizing against size, fit with Dow’s strengths,
regulatory issues, time to market and marketplace entrance fees.
- Front-End Scoping of Marketplace: needs, potential
target market size and current industry leaders.
- Facilitating an “End-User Unmet-Needs-Identification”
Focus Group, with key decision makers from industry. This service
included video taping the entire one-day session, a full transcription
of same, analysis of results, and prioritization of unmet needs and
proposed solutions. The use of brainstorming techniques to help
understand customer Needs was a key part of WinOvations’
offering.
- Conducting Later In-Depth Exploratory Interviews:
with customers and experts to assist in further shaping the top few
new product development concepts identified.
The expert End-User Unmet-Needs Discussion was one of
the most effective components of this process and was performed in an
exemplary fashion, in a short period of time and at less than one-third
of the cost of other leading consultant “Executive-Summit Brainstorming
Facilitation” services. WinOvations’ approach has assisted us in
evaluating nearly 180 product concepts in twelve broad market categories
based on market needs. From this they assisted us in selecting the top
few product concepts, which we believe could meet our growth objectives.
Based on these results, we have confidence in their front-end product
concept shaping capabilities and would highly recommend their services
to others.
Sincerely,
Welton C. Washington
Program Executive
Home Health & Wellness Platform |
Kerry J. Kelly
Director,
The Growth Center |
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