Strategic Product Development
Objective: An innovative medical device company developed a revolutionary material that literally has hundreds of potential medical applications. Snowfish was asked to provide strategic evaluation for some of the most promising product concepts. The company was relying on the analysis to make multi-million dollar product development decisions. They also needed to compare one product opportunity against another.
Methodology: Snowfish developed an overall product evaluation matrix. Each product analysis involved several months of work with very detailed analysis. We leveraged multiple primary and secondary data sources including:
- Physician interviews
- Procedure and diagnostic data
- Stock analyst reports
- Clinical trial results
- Association data
- PubMed
- Corporate websites
- Press releases
- NIH data
- Tradeshows
- Annual reports
- SEC filings
- AMA data
- Etc.
Results: Snowfish was able to develop a very clear and compelling analytic framework for the company to compare multiple product opportunities in vastly different therapeutic areas. We were able to evaluate each product concept along the following business and clinical concepts:
- Physician interest
- Product differentiation
- Patient interest
- Product revenue
- Market profitability
- Entry barriers
- Market growth
- Distribution/physician population
- Competitive intensity
- Rate of adoption
- Untreated patient population
Snowfish also assigned a relative weighting to each variable that was client driven. Based on the relative weightings, the client was able to get a very clear picture of the market opportunity. This has enabled the company to focus their development efforts and avoid wasting millions of dollars on product concepts that were very unlikely to ever pay off. Snowfish continues to work with the client on multiple projects.
| External Factor | Product A | Product B | Product C | Product D | Product E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physician Interest | 10 | 8 | 2 | N/A | 9 |
| Product Differentiation | 10 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| Patient Interest | 9 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Product Revenue | 8 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 9 |
| Market Profitability | 5 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 9 |
| Entry Barriers | 5 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Market Growth | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Distribution/Physician Population | 7 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 5 |
| Competitive Intensity | 8 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
| Rate of Adoption | 9 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Untreated Patient | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Average | 7.6 | 5.2 | 2.3 | 2.3 | 6.0 |