IdeaSpex™ is brainstorming on steroids. This methodology involves thousands of your target customers in rapid harvesting and rating of new ideas simultaneously to evolve your brands, new product concepts and other innovations. Consumers and client teams engage in an online ideation process to identify unmet needs and/or issues, as well as to produce, develop and critically evaluate innovative ideas. IdeaSpex™ is one of the most powerful and efficient ideation engines available.

The IdeaSpex™ Process:

Step 1: Respondents are screened to ensure they qualify for the study. They will also answer questions about products they purchase to determine to which category cell they will be assigned.

Step 2: Respondents evaluate needs and problems associated with their assigned category; they then have an opportunity to submit their own category needs and problems. From this phase, Hotspex generates a list of consumer-validated needs and problems that can be used to refine existing ideas. Analysis of this information often initiates and inspires subsequent brainstorming.

Step 3: Respondents evaluate a random sample of ten ideas (within one category), drawn from the client's internal ideation workshops.

The IdeaSpex™ solution provides three key deliverables that generate breakthrough ideas with a higher probability of in-market success:

• Real-time access to the Hotspex Client Portal with a database of all the screened ideas
• Top 30-to-40 ideas (those that have the highest ratings and receive strong purchase intent scores) are flagged for further review. Ideas can be sorted by category, consumer segment and ranking.
• To help the brand teams advance these ideas through the client's innovation process, a one-page highlight summary will be created for each idea.

In the era of consumer-generated content, consumers want to be involved in the innovation process for their favorite brands. Clients can now unleash the intellectual capital of thousands of innovative consumers to develop and produce breakthrough ideas.