Brian Burns: The Tangle Free Electronic Wire

Problem: Take a look at any (or every) wire on the electronics you own. They are always tangled up into knots that form even when you haven't even touched the wires. Removing these knots is extremely tedious and time consuming. All people want to do is play a video game or listen to music, and they first have to spend time to deal with the annoyance of tangled wires.



Solution: Develop a line of electronic wires that resist tangling. This will be done by putting an electromagnetic charge through the wires which will cause them to resist each other. If the wires are designed to stay apart, there will be no tangling. Some may say why not just make everything wireless? I'm sure that will eventually be the answer but until that technology is developed, there is a huge opportunity here to seize a large portion of the market with this new development in the electronics industry.



Development Journal: I was riding in the car on the way to a football game and reached into my bag to get my ipod so I could listen to some music and maybe play a game or two. I was dissapointed to find that my headphones were wrapped into a tight knot. I spent way more time than I would have liked untangling this know and I realized this was always something that annoyed me. I thought, why haven't we come up with a way to prevent this from happening? This frustration ended up being the genesis for this idea.



New-Product Strategy: The overall product strategy is to make an aspect of the electronics easier to use, and more customer friendly. This product will certainly achieve that. However, it is only the beginning. Electronics is an industry that is constantly evolving and our products will evolve with it. Through our engineering and research/development department, our company will continue to make improvements on each and every innovation the market provides. This product strategy is consistent with our companies marketing strategy because we stress innovation, improvement, and convenience. We are looking to make a huge splash in the electronics market with this cutting edge product.



Idea Generation: This product idea is born from the need customers have to make electronics simpler. For this project, the idea came from my own needs and wants, however, if a company were to use customer surveys, polling employees, asking electronics distributors, and consultants, they would probably come up with a similar idea. Our competitors, no doubt, also realize the need for this product so it is important to "beat them to the punch" with this idea.



Idea Screening: I am confident this product would get through the process of idea screening with ease. By conducting internet reasearch, it is easy to see that many people share my frustration with tangled wires. One problem we run into is how do we screen this product without tipping off our competitors that we aim to release it? Concept tests will prove difficult. Perhaps we could use very general questions for consumers early on in the process such as what are your main concerns with the wiring on your devices? Or, what bothers you most about your electronics. Right before we are prepared to release the product, we would follow up with more detailed descriptions and visual tools for the consumers to react to. This should give us an idea of whether or not our product passes the screening.



Business Analysis: I believe the demand for this product will be enormous and will very positively affect the sales, and profits of our company. We are aiming to realease this product first so we look to control a large portion of the electronics wiring market. This would includeseveral sub-markets such as, but not limited to, headphones, gaming controllers, computer wires, and electronic adapters. This product will definitely cannabilize our curent electronic wiring products but we are prepared to slowly phase them out as the demand for the new product overtakes demand for the old. As i said above, our focus is on constant innovation and improvements so we believe we can seamlessly move from old to new. Customers would definitely benefit from this convenenient product and will react positively. This will help the image of our company, and help us establish ourselves as industry leader in innovation. We should be able to make this product in our current facilities, with only a small change in employee staff. We will need some new employees familiar with the technology that is going into this product. Because of the anticipated success, we don't anticipate any layoffs or downsizing. Our competitors will likely try to jump on this product very quickly, which is why it is important to release it first and establish favorable distribution agreements with companies who will want to use our product. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, and Dell would be examples of the people we need on our side. With any product there is risk, and the risk here is significant. If for some reason our technology fails after release and wires start to tangle again, we will have failed. That is why our development, and testing must be flawless.



Development: Our R/D department will develop a prototype so we can determine the cost, and efficiency of producing our anti-tangling wires. We will also work on the branding, packaging, and labeling of our product. We are a modern company aimed at innovation and convenience so we want our brand to reflect that. We want the colors, lettering, and image of our products to differentaite themselves from the rest of the market. No boring computer wire packaging or headphone packaging. This is a brand new product that will change the way people think about electronic wiring. We need to reflect that. Shiny metallic packaging will be used with bold lettering that will announce our products presence. Maybe a slogan such as "Leave science to the scientists..Hard to develop, easy to use". We will release early advertising of our product to magazines, televisions, and electronics stores. We aim to release the product at a major electronics tradeshow at which time, we will display how our product works in tandem with the devices from other companies which we have entered into agreement with. The price will be set a higher than that of the current technology and will be adjusted accordingly as time goes by. Finally, we anticipate heavy demand, so distribution will also be heavy. All electronics stores, music stores, gaming stores, and most every retailer will receive this product. It will be included in products like Ipods, Playstations, computers, and televisions. However, we require that our brand is recognized on the packaging for these items because we believe we are providing essential hardware to these companies.



Test-Marketing: I have chosen to use simulated market testing for this product. First of all, we do not want this idea leaking out to our competitors. secondly, we want our test marketing to be cost-effective, and relatively fast. We will emply research firms to find focus-groups or mock shoppers to test our products on. Everyone will be compensated for their involvement but will also be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement which will be drawn up by our legal department. We hope this prevents any leaking of information.



Commercialization: This is the stage we have been working towards. At this point, we will have our new staff in place, our new materials will be shipped to us, and will have been tested, and we will have started production. After releasing the product at the trade show mentioned above, we will ship to all distributors. The companies that are using our hardware will also be authorized to release their products that contain our technology. We will put our advertising campaign into full force and hope to mentioned in other companies ads. We will submit our product to websites, magazines, and bloggers for reviews. We anticipate success based on our commitment to customers, and new product development. Our advertising must reflect our excitement and make the customers as excited as we are.