New AI platform which analyses and predicts success rate of NPD is unveiled
Cambri has unveiled Launch AI™, a platform created to help companies launch more successful food and drink products and minimise the risk of market failure.
Developed by Helsinki and Stockholm-based global research-tech growth company Cambri, Launch AI™ uses artificial intelligence to analyse, advise and predict the success of new products. The tech company says their AI platform can transform NPD success rates from the market average, between 5 – 25%, to 73%.
Cambri says that its clients, which include Nestlé, Carlsberg and Electrolux, have benefitted from iterative testing, data and AI driven launch predictions and advice.
The Launch AI™ product expands the tech company’s current iterative testing cycle for NPD, but with additional AI generated processes – ‘Predict’ and ‘Advise’ – which Cambri says provide the most advanced proof points to success.
Launch AI™ ‘Predict’ generates a score to evaluate if a company’s NPD concept will be successful or not, by utilising a data set that combines survey data with post launch data. The two combined sets of data give a higher success prediction accuracy than traditional KPIs that have been the industry standard until now, the company states.
Launch AI™ ‘Advise’ offers advice on how to improve the NPD concept. Clients receive an AI generated, automated summary of the concept’s key strengths and weaknesses, and pinpoints sources of USP. The system generates new and improved value propositions, based on respondent feedback on strengths and weaknesses. The Advise function aims to give new ideas to experiment with, in the event that the Launch AI™ Score doesn’t recommend that the concept is ready to be taken forward in the innovation process. Additionally, Advise offers insight and ideas that can be taken forward to the next stage of the innovation process.
Ben Harknett, CEO of Cambri comments: “No longer is NPD about taking a leap of faith. Test early and test often has always been our mantra and by adding Cambri Launch AI™ driven predictions and advice, brands are able to edge closer to our mission in flipping innovation from 95% failure to 95% success.
“Global leaders must take the best traits of innovation from start-ups and leverage their scale of product launches to create a data moat.”
For Harknett, brands need to focus on four key strategies:
1. Low tolerance for failed product launches – For a start-up, launching a product that succeeds is business critical. For a large Consumer Packaged Goods business, failed product launches are not existential, but are rather compounding missed opportunities that can harm brand reputation. A strong focus on driving innovation success rates must be a core metric at the forefront of innovation and insight leaders’ minds to remain competitive.
2. Innovate fast – Speed to market is critical to be able to keep up with the modern consumer. With manufacturing time relatively constrained by production and supply chain partners, speeding up the innovation cycle is critical to remaining relevant.
3. Build with consumers – Whilst CPG start-ups can co-create directly with their first consumers, large CPGs must make consumer insights fundamental to the innovation process to launch successful products.
4. Adaptive learning – Innovation processes need to evolve with past failures and successes – at start-ups, the founding teams have the benefit of being able to see all innovations across the company and can apply learnings from past failures to improve the innovation process. At a large CPG, a different approach is needed due to the scale of product launches. Rich and consistent post launch evaluations are required, and they must feed back into future innovation cycles to drive innovation success rate.
According to Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, out of nearly 30,000 new products launched each year, 95% fail, making the need for better research, data and predictions extremely important for companies of all sizes, from market leaders to start-ups.
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