Business Analysis

Classic American Design Approach

Our approach to business analytics is comprehensive throughout the product development process. Whether it’s doing a competitive market analysis or an investment plan for a new venture.

Protohaus is a firm believer in the approach pioneered by IDEO and other American design firms such as Doblin Group, which optimize innovations around the three domains of viability, feasibility, and desirability.

This is the first and last test that a concept needs to overcome to be successful in the market. Good business analytics looks to understand the boundary or best fit between capabilities and market.

Strategic and Structured Business Innovation

Fundamentally there are four main functions where you can focus and innovate any modern business model. Innovation can happen at the process, offering, delivery, and finance categories.

The Quality Pyramid is a concept pioneered by Charles L. Owen at the Institute of Design IIT.

The concept is that design thinking can be applied to three levels of product integrity at the foundation level is craftsmanship, next details, and the capstone is concept. Concept has to be understood as continuous escalator delivery of innovations.

Companies that focus on quality and product integrity will find that their products are significantly more competitive insofar as brand, margins, and pricing power are concerned.

Excerpts from Recent Publications:

Here are two examples from a recent analysis on the U.S. FDM 3D printing market:

U.S. Market The U.S. market is highly competitive, highly advanced, and highly specialized. Over the last 10 years the U.S. market has become much more resilient to foreign supply chain shocks. Covid-19 has accelerated the trend of re-shoring capabilities to the U.S. home market. In many ways this is an ideal moment for 3D printing technologies but as the technology has not lived up to the hype many manufacturers are relying on tried and true technologies. The labor pool in the U.S. is familiar with more traditional machining tools and will default to CNC technologies whenever possible. For there to be large-scale adoption of 3D printing there needs to be a bottom-up training effort and testing regime put in place. Industries advance as their training and testing regimes mature. Even the simplest of technologies will fail to be adopted by industry if these tenets are not followed. An illustrative example is the use of recycled rubber in asphalt pavements. By many measures adding recycled rubber to asphalt is a better way to build roads, leaving aside environmental concerns. This 'technology' was developed in Arizona in the 1960's and yet 60 years later the use of recycled rubber in asphalt roads has only been adopted by less ⅓ of the U.S. states. This 'failure' can be attributed to entrenched business interests, poor training, and lack of strong testing regimes. If a company wants to be a trailblazer in the U.S. market then leading the way in training and testing is the fastrack.

Analytical Approach

Here is an example of how we use semantic differential scales to analyze markets for effective ranked priority:

Motorbike Sports: Essentially FDM Maker should be very selective and careful about engaging in this industry. To FDM Maker's credit making inroads in the Motorbike Sports market is a keen approach. This is a similar approach that Honda took in the 1960s when entering the U.S. market by focusing on small motorbike engines as their entry point. FDM Maker would be wise to build on its success with Kawasaki Racing and focus on motorbike racing in the U.S. Focusing both on track racing as well as dirt racing. Dirt racing will be a particularly useful market to engage in. The breakage of parts and demand on rider configuration of bike and body gear make it a very interesting market for FDM Maker.