Case Study
How global insight helped prioritise the right healthcare NPD innovation
The Client
A global healthcare manufacturer wanted to determine which early-stage innovation platform offered the greatest commercial and clinical potential before committing significant development investment.
The Challenge
Like many healthcare innovation teams, the client had multiple promising technology platforms competing for limited R&D funding. They needed robust evidence of genuine unmet clinical need, commercial opportunity and adoption potential before progressing through Stage Gate. At the same time, the market was becoming increasingly influenced by conflicting information and changing clinical beliefs, making future demand difficult to predict.
The Results
- Created User Journeys for current procedures with pain points and opportunity areas
- Developed a size of prize calculator to quantify commercial opportunity
- Recommended prioritisation of technical innovation pathways to progress, which required additional clinical evidence, and how each concept should be positioned to maximise future adoption.
Untapped Approach
Combined AI-powered social data mining, quantitative market analysis and deep qualitative research
1. Mined thousands of global professional conversations, scientific publications and market data to identify emerging behaviours, unmet needs and commercial opportunity across treatment pathways
2. Conducted 23 in-depth interviews with specialist healthcare professionals across two countries, capturing multiple clinical perspectives and healthcare system differences
3. Used behavioural and projective research techniques and Jobs-to-be-Done thinking to uncover how clinicians want future treatments to transform clinical practice
4. Evaluated future product concepts amongst health care professionals
“The strongest innovation opportunities aren’t always the most technically exciting. By combining behavioural insight, AI-driven market intelligence and commercial analysis, we helped our client invest with confidence in the innovations most likely to succeed in the real world.” Sally Kemkers
