Abstract
Identification of innovative products is at the very front end of Innovation Value Chain. Identifying the right products is much more influential than making the product right. So far, the great majority of enterprises mainly depend on either flash of genius or random brainstorming approaches to identify ideas for innovative product. There has been few systematic processes of identifying innovative product opportunities. Furthermore, other things being equal, producing products in a fiercely competitive “Red Ocean” market is more difficult to succeed than that in a no-competition “Blue Ocean” market. This research integrated the concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy with the method of innovative product opportunity identification. Systematic structured processes were developed to establish both strategic directions for blue-ocean product criteria and the innovative product ideas. On the strategic direction side, Market Analysis, Main Parameters of Value (MPV) analysis, Strategy Canvas, Environmental Analysis, and Five-Action Framework were used to develop new value proposition and thus the criteria for blue-ocean products. On the product idea side, various tools were used or developed to generate ideas for innovative products which hopefully can delight customers. The product ideas surviving the benchmarking with past and existing products are screened using the blue-ocean criteria provided by the selected strategic direction to ensure that the selected new product ideas support company’s blue-ocean strategy. The final result is the set of product definition(s) that can be fed to the research and development team to further develop the innovative products. The contributions of this research include: (1) Combining managerial and technical dimensions to establish a process for innovative products opportunities identification which support the company’s blue ocean strategy; (2) Establishing a set of systematic process and structured forms with examples and usage instructions to facilitate practical usage; (3) Adding two new opportunity identification tools（Function-Market Expansion and Tangibles/Intangibles) to identify innovative product opportunities; (4) Integrating innovation benchmarking, feature transfer, and Pugh matrix to prevent patent infringement and integrate non-exclusive ideas for better products.