Pinpointing New Problems for Existing Solutions

How New Markets for Existing Products Can Be Found Using Open Innovation

Finding new markets and applications with Technological Competence Leveraging (TCL)

Challenge

Our client, a large international company, produces a material that has a specific resistance against certain chemical substances. It is mainly used in the food sector: it protects the packaged food against harmful external influences and extends its shelf life significantly.

The client was searching for new business opportunities and markets to increase benefit from this successful product. Winnovation was approached to find fields in which the specific properties of the material could be beneficial and where it could be advantageous compared to existing solutions. By using Open Innovation and a methodologically valid and structured process, winnovation found surprising answers.

Solution by winnovation

The Technological Competence Leveraging (TCL) method was applied. The TCL method was developed for the systematic identification and evaluation of new markets and business opportunities for an existing product or an established technology. The core idea is to overcome functional fixedness and allow a creative approach to extend the problem-solving capacities of this technology.

As a first step, the main user benefits of the material were determined. They were used as a starting point for the second step of the TCL - the explorative search for alternative application fields in different industries. More than 70 possible application fields were identified and evaluated with the help of expert interviews, online communities, and secondary literature.

Result

After an intensive search and evaluation phase, winnovation was able to present 12 new application fields in diverse industries. The fields were then evaluated by the client and used as a starting point for the development of new markets for the materials/technology.