New Product Opportunity Identification: A Perspective from Inside the Intuitive Phenomenon

Innovating comprises generating offers that make the preexisting ones obsolete. It implies in the creation or recognition of new forms of differentiation, the Opportunities Identification (OI). These may be due, among others, to new solutions or new problems to be solved, the latter a less explored path in the Product Development Process. There are studies aimed at systematizing OI, but present a discreet behavior in front of intuitive approaches. These rely on individual talent, a non-unanimous resource. As innovation is time-sensitive, there is room for artificial stimuli to intuition, which relies on the need for a close understanding of the phenomenon. This paper presents the descriptive research outcomes from a broader prescriptive study, which adopted the Design Research Methodology structure. Because OI is primarily a cognitive process and difficult to observe by a third party, one of the researchers submitted himself to the experience and recording of the phenomenon. The experience constitutes a unique case of OI accompanied during 2590 days. During this time, the study recorded 137 potential opportunities (units of analysis) by serendipity. Through the interpretation of the experienced phenomenon, the results comprise three perspectives: i/to the interaction of influence factors pointed out in the literature; ii/to the opportunities emergence; and, iii/to the opportunities identification. It is evident the challenge of considering opportunities as problems by its tendency of incubation. The work presents new research questions, hypotheses, and explanations valid to the case that potentially stimulate new exploratory or confirmatory researches or both.