Case Study

Consumer Healthcare: Translating Breakthrough Technology into Clear Product Stories

The Client

A global consumer healthcare R&D and innovation team developing a breakthrough health technology with the potential to redefine their product category.

The Challenge

  • The team faced a familiar FMCG challenge: extraordinary science, but high complexity with multiple potential applications, unclear prioritisation, and difficulty translating technical mechanisms into simple, credible, consumer-ready product stories that R&D, marketing and leadership could align behind.
  • They needed a consumer led way to reduce internal debate, and move forward with confidence with product story-led opportunities.

The Results

  • In a single, focused innovation sprint, the team crystallised four distinct, consumer-relevant opportunity platforms, each grounded in real consumer Jobs To Be Done and underpinned by a clear future focused Product Story.
  • The work delivered aligned, early concepts and innovation pathways that R&D, innovation and marketing could collaborate on. The direction became actionable, prioritised and strategically coherent.
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Untapped Approach

  • Asset mining of internal expertise, unlocking tacit knowledge from scientists and partners that was previously fragmented.
  • Highly structured, fast-paced workshops designed for optimum collaboration of the multi-functional team.
  • Applied our Ideal Product Model (IPM) framework to identify and connect Jobs To Be Done, product Attributes and scientific Mechanisms, creating a shared language across R&D, innovation and marketing teams.
  • Used our Product Story thinking with emergent cultural and cross category inspiration to translate user needs and complex technical modes of action into clear, differentiated and future focused product narratives.
  • Multi-opportunity mapping, allowing the team to see, compare and prioritise growth platforms side-by-side.
  • Gave teams tools they could immediately use for further concepting, internal alignment, partner conversations and next-step investment decisions
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“Going into these Product Story workshops, I really wasn’t sure what to expect and what the results would look like.

I am astonished at the level of detail and thoroughness of the process that Untapped took us through, building up the story from the early consumer and technology understandings, and using expert insights and team participation to build layer by layer the Ideal Product Model, identify the pain points, the jobs to be done, create compelling product stories and finally 20 different insightful and engaging product concepts.

I appreciate the huge amount of work and thinking that Sally and her team put into creating this, and I feel like the results fully justified all the effort that went in; We now have 4 different directions that have taken our thinking way beyond what we anticipated. We have lots of strong starting points, together with a portfolio of images and language, that will enable us to refine, test and develop these new directions further.”