Innovation isn't improvisation. And improv certainly doesn't scale.
When leadership asks for innovation without providing the proper foundation, what they'll get is a performative act that might look creative in the moment but lacks the substance to succeed in market.
True innovation requires structure, methodology, and most importantly, genuine consumer insights. Ones that surprise you, challenge you, and inspire you.
If you're a Product Development Scientist wanting to transform the way you're tackling innovation, this article will help you:
Innovation that starts and ends in R&D risks falling apart on the shelf.
R&D alone can't carry the weight of innovation. Marketing needs to translate the product's value. Legal needs to sign off on claims. Ops needs to execute at scale. Sales needs to believe in what they're pitching. Consumers need to want it. And that means: everyone has skin in the game when it comes to avoiding a flop.
The smartest teams work cross-functionally from the start. But that only works if everyone's looking at the same insights—and those insights need to come from the only people who actually matter: your customers.
If you're only relying on surveys, trend reports and lab testing to validate your products pre launch, you might as well be testing in a vacuum.
These methods aren't useless—but they're woefully insufficient when your product is destined to live in households, not slide decks. And they rarely spark new ideas for innovation. Unlike these 15 brands that used IHUT for innovations that their customers loved.
In-home usage testing (IHUT) makes innovation a shared effort that is deeply rooted in reality. It gives everyone a view into how the product fits (or doesn't) into consumers' daily lives.
IHUT pushes your research beyond "what do consumers think about this product" to "how are consumers using this product (even when they're not thinking)"—which also gives you a much more honest answer to that first question.
When you and your competitors are all pulling from the same types of surveys, you're all building off the same assumptions.
Even when you benchmark, you're all passing the same bench – which means you're practically doomed to create products that your audience will find hard to differentiate between. IHUT allows you to find non-obvious whitespace and uncover emotional value props that benchmarking misses. Especially for CPG products, this is often what can set your product apart.
Think about it: If you're making decisions based on the same industry reports, focus group methodologies, and survey data as your competitors, how can you possibly create something distinctive? Sure, you might be efficient in your development process, but you're efficiently creating what everyone else is creating.
Original research with IHUT breaks this cycle by providing proprietary insights that no one else has access to. When you understand how consumers actually interact with products in their homes—the workarounds they create, the unexpected use cases they discover, the parts they ignore entirely—you get competitive knowledge that makes your product better, and easier to sell.
Innovation shapeshifts, depending on your objectives. Here's a simple breakdown of how different types of innovation map to specific IHUT methods:
|
Innovation Type |
What You Need to Learn |
IHUT Solution That Delivers |
|
New product concepts |
Is this idea viable in real life? |
Innovation Co-Creator + Prototype Tester |
|
Product enhancements |
Does the update improve user experience—or confuse it? |
Product Refresher + In-Market Diagnosis |
|
Packaging changes |
Does the packaging perform well in real-world conditions? |
Packaging Evaluator + Course Corrector |
|
Flavor/formula tweaks |
Are the sensory aspects meeting expectations? |
Sensory Evaluator + Feature Prioritizer |
|
Sustainability upgrades |
Does the sustainability story resonate and drive purchase? |
Messaging Generator + Claims Substantiator |
|
Category expansions |
Do new use cases or occasions feel natural to consumers? |
Occasion Generator + Expansion Explorer |
These are just a few examples from Highlight's 24+ tailored IHUT solutions. Want to see them in action? Here's how a well-known hand sanitizer brand used IHUT to stand out on the shelves.
Innovation isn't about hiring a "creative" team and letting them run wild (don't let Mad Men tell you otherwise). It's about building systems that let all teams contribute to better ideas, earlier. Here's how to build an agile innovation team:
Get ready to ask for the tools and methodologies you need to validate new concepts earlier in the process. Because when testing becomes integrated into development rather than a final gate, you build better products from the ground up. It improves ROI, builds confidence, reduces the risk of failure – the list goes on.
Innovation happens in small steps, not by taking big leaps. Don't just settle for the traditional stage-gate processes that treat consumer testing as a hurdle to clear at the end of development. Make a case for testing earlier and making it more iterative.
Early-stage concept testing, even with rough prototypes, can provide critical directional guidance before you've invested significant resources.
All teams—from R&D to marketing to sales—need to have a common understanding of who your consumer is and what they need. This alignment prevents the all-too-common disconnect between what's developed and what's promised in market.
Cross-functional workshops centered around IHUT findings can help build this shared understanding. When everyone sees the same consumer behaviors, it's harder to maintain departmental silos that undermine innovation.
Consumer insights should be the starting point of innovation, not just a validation tool.
The observations from in-home testing often reveal unexpected pain points or usage patterns that can inspire entirely new product concepts or features.
Some of the most successful innovations come not from asking consumers what they want, but from observing what they struggle with and finding new ways to address those challenges.
Create a culture where learning from failure is valued as much as celebrating success. The insights gained from understanding why something didn't work often lead to breakthrough innovations. Testing should guide what to build, not just whether what you built works.
If your product doesn't reflect a real need or behavior, it won't survive—no matter how clever the innovation sounds in strategy meetings. Likewise: if you can't explain why an innovation makes sense in terminology that resonates with consumers, it'll be lost on them. See? It is all connected.
Highlight's IHUT methodology acts as a connective tissue across your entire organization. Each team speaks a different language, but they all understand this one: the consumer's lived experience. It’s data that puts everyone on the same page.
That experience—captured at home, over time, in moments of real use—becomes the shared ground for better collaboration and faster decisions. Because it's hard to argue over subjective preferences when you've got clear footage of someone fumbling with your packaging at 7AM while holding a toddler. That's not opinion. That's insight. Can't argue with that.
We offer a more honest way to innovate: one that reflects how people actually behave, not how they fill out surveys. One that invites other departments to the table without creating chaos. And one that makes you feel confident in the product you're building, before it launches. Plus, we'll help you interpret the outcomes of your IHUT research, so you won't miss a single opportunity hidden in the results.
While your competitors are running the same surveys and chasing the same trends, we help you collect stories, data, and visuals that no one else has. This proprietary insight becomes your competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.
We're not here to tell you what you want to hear. We're here to help you see what others miss. Start your innovation with observation with Highlight today.