Innovation and Ontologies

66 Roadmap for the Fuzzy Front End
Focus groups are consequently a useful, relatively effortless tool for exploration, especially if
there is little prior knowledge about a particular problem (Achenbaum, 2001; Reid & Reid, 2005).
By encouraging discussion among group members, rich, descriptive information can be collected
(Hartmann, 2004; Henderson, 1992). Their benefits make focus groups a useful tool for concept
gathering in the development stage.
The most important risk of focus groups is the identification of the right participants: participants
must (a) have the appropriate information and (b) be willing and able to share it (Hartmann,
2004). Thirdly, knowledge spill-over might be a problem to consider if topics are specific enough.
Usually, companies tend to invite a representative mixture of their (possible) customers. Other
strategies like selecting participants at random can be used, too.
Today, the integration of the internet in focus group methodology should be considered.
Possibilities include virtual focus groups (Reid & Reid, 2005) or the use of existing online communities
(Dahan & Hauser, 2002; Franke, 2005; Henkel & Sander, 2003). With respect to the latter,
Herstatt & Sander (2004a) differentiate between
• passive online integration: i.e. observation of ongoing discussions in an existing community and
• active observation: that is, the establishment of an interactive relationship between customer and
company, e.g. via idea competitions or toolkits for user innovation (Franke & Piller, 2004;
Franke & Piller, 2004; Franke, 2005; Thomke & von Hippel, 2002; Walcher, 2007).
Disregarding the improvements in terms of cost and speed realized by virtual focus groups and
online communities, Gerybadze states that face-to-face communication in innovation
communities can hardly be substituted by any different form of communication (Gerybadze,
2003). As another drawback, online communities often involve problems of adequate sampling
(similar to online conjoint analyses, cf. 2.2.3.3).
2.2.3.6 Compression
The method described in this paragraph is not only last in the list, but should also be the final
step of Ideation. Compression is a method which can only be used after multiple ideas have been
derived, by use of one or more of the methods suggested. These early fuzzy solutions to
problems are heterogeneous drafts that need to be structured in order to be assessed by the Jury
of Ideas during the next phase.
Structuring is done by compression, that is, an analysis and synthesis of the draft ideas at hand
(Brandenburg, 2002; Gerhards, 2002). Sometimes, analysis already takes place during Ideation.
Especially with interactive settings like lead user workshops, it is a natural closing activity to
jointly cluster the developed ideas. In this case, this step is integrated in the respective interactive
session.