Our Approach to Innovation

Our Approach to Innovation


ASG uniquely combines the analytical rigor and approaches often associated with institutional management consulting firms, with the consumer insight and creativity generally associated with boutique, new products “idea shops”. The result is breakthrough innovation that is actionable and supported by sound analytical/strategic fundamentals.

Our comprehensive approach recognizes and incorporates four fundamental pillars of successful innovation:

» Consumer Insight
» Business Dynamics
» Innovation Patterns
» Creativity

By understanding how each of the four pillars drives winning innovation and incorporating corresponding tools into our approach, ASG helps clients find — and translate — opportunities into sustainable growth.

Consumer Insights


The process begins with a comprehensive, deep dive into the world of the consumer. We utilize progressive techniques, including ethnographies, affinity groups, and leveraging our strong relationships with “future” experts across a wide variety of disciplines to assure a forward-looking solution. Our approach taps into unarticulated needs far better than traditional approaches alone, and gets to deeper insights that help drive big creative ideas later in the process.


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Business Dynamics


ASG provides deep rigor on the “fuzzy front end” of the innovation process. We delve into the brands and the organization to better understand the internal view, including equities and core competencies. We also look externally, conducting a deep assessment of competition and the market landscape. This work is necessary to uncover potential new “news” about the world and importantly, to identify what leverage a client organization might bring against future opportunities.


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Innovation Patterns


At ASG, we also bring a unique understanding of innovation, along with proprietary resources that have been honed through years of research and real-world application. The result is the Innovation Tree®, a predictive model that helps analyze and reveal evolutionary innovation patterns and emerging trends in core and ancillary categories. This potent tool allows us to identify high-potential, future innovation opportunities. We can better identify unarticulated consumer needs, and create a Future Market Map™ that highlights paths an organization might take to be truly differentiating in its brand innovation.


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Creativity


Integral to the process is ASG’s ability to see the world through different lenses. Whether it is how we look at the marketplace, how we approach predictive modeling, or how we translate identified opportunities into product concepts, we “connect the dots” to bring true insights and real creative opportunities to clients. This creative synthesis is the thread that runs through and helps define our work. In particular, we bring a creative process of ideation, concept development and refinement that results in a full pipeline of benchmark-beating product concepts. Concepts that are actionable, ownable, built from company leverage points, and integrated into a complete roadmap of how to build the business over time.



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"Your work is the best! From business analysis to creative visioning your work is grounded, practical and actionable. Looking forward to working with you again in the future"

VP, Marketing/R&D
Household Products