STRENGTHEN FUTURE GROWTH

Growth doesn't happen by accident. It's built by knowing what's real, what's worth testing, and what's ready — before anyone has to decide what to fund.

“Our approach is rooted in design thinking developed and refined inside P&G — one of the most rigorous innovation practices in CPG — adapted into structured sprints for organizations that don't have a P&G-sized R&D budget.”
—Ellen Craven, Principal, 75+ sprints facilitated by our team

Only 34% of global CPG launches in 2025 were classified as genuinely new products — down from 47% in 2015 and 75% in 1995 — according to Mintel's Global New Products Database, announced March 2026.

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The problem

Most organizations don't have too few ideas. They have too many, and AI has made that worse, not better — generating concepts is now nearly free, so pipelines fill faster than anyone can tell which ones are grounded in something real: a genuine white space, a shift in the category, an unmet job the customer is hiring a product to do. Concepts get generated in bulk, tested too late, or never tested at all. By the time leadership has to make a capital decision, they're often choosing between options nobody has properly pressure-tested, just more of them than ever before.

The framework — Double Diamond, run through sprints

  1. Discover — surface opportunities from signal, category shifts, and unmet need — using AI-powered competitive intelligence and AI-moderated interviews to cover more ground than manual research alone." competitive intelligence and trend translation surface where the real white space is

  2. Define — jobs-to-be-done and journey mapping ground the opportunity in an actual customer need

  3. Develop — ...generate concepts and refine them through iterative, AI-simulated shopper testing — fast, directional, built for cutting weak concepts early, not for final proof.sprints generate and shape concepts fast, in days not months

  4. Deliver — ...confirm what survives through real-respondent research alongside AI-moderated testing, before committing to production or shelf.research partnerships validate which concepts are actually ready to test in market

What we do

We work the front half of the innovation pipeline — separating what's real from what AI can now generate in bulk, before anyone has to decide what to fund.

  • Find the white space — competitive intelligence and trend translation that turns market noise into a real, ownable opportunity

  • Ground it in the customer — jobs-to-be-done and journey mapping, so concepts start from an actual unmet need, not an internal hunch

  • Shape and test it — structured design sprints that generate concepts fast and pressure-test them before they cost real money

  • Validate it properly — partnering with research to test which concepts actually hold up, not just which ones sound good in a room

By the time a concept reaches a capital or portfolio decision, it's been through real scrutiny — not just internal conviction.

Contact us for pricing

  • Stage-gate manages a project through funding checkpoints. Design thinking generates and pressure-tests the concepts before they enter a stage-gate process. We use the Double Diamond method — Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver — run through structured sprints, so what reaches your stage-gate process has already been shaped around real customer need and validated against evidence, not just internal conviction.

  • It works alongside your team. We run the discovery, ideation, and validation sprints that generate and pressure-test concepts; your R&D and innovation teams retain ownership of development, technical feasibility, and execution. We're not a replacement for internal capability — we're capacity and methodology brought in for a defined sprint, not an ongoing department.

  • This is built for mid-market food, beverage, foodservice, and hospitality companies — generally $200M to $2B in revenue — where the innovation pipeline is active enough to need real prioritization, but not so large that a full internal design-thinking practice already exists.

  • You walk away with validated, evidence-tested concepts ready for a funding decision — not a slide deck. Depending on the sprint, that includes concept prototypes, customer validation findings, competitive and trend analysis, and a clear read on which ideas are actually ready to move forward.

  • Success is measured by decision quality, not just output volume: how many concepts survived real customer and market pressure-testing, how much time and capital were saved by not developing weak ideas, and how confidently leadership can move forward on what remains.

  • Yes. We treat your existing stage-gate or PLM process as the system of record for what happens after a concept is validated. Our sprints feed evidence-tested concepts into whatever gate structure you already run — we don't ask you to replace it.

  • Cost depends on sprint scope, timeline, and how many concepts are in play. Contact us for pricing specific to your pipeline.

  • We validate through structured customer research, jobs-to-be-done interviews, journey mapping, and research-partnered concept testing — methods that surface real purchase intent and unmet need before a product ever reaches production or shelf.

  • A research firm typically measures reactions to concepts you've already defined. We do that and the step before it — using competitive intelligence and trend translation to find the white space in the first place, then design sprints to shape and pressure-test concepts, with research partnerships built in to validate what survives.

  • By separating discovery from evaluation. Concepts are generated through structured sprints grounded in outside signal — competitive intelligence, trend data, and customer research — and pressure-tested against evidence rather than internal conviction, so an idea has to survive scrutiny regardless of who in the room likes it.