Microsoft

website: microsoft.com

Challenge
Microsoft asked The Brewery & NewEdge to explore the potential for development of a new hardware and software platform based on their innovative new touch-screen based technology. The concept was geared around launching a potential replacement for the personal computer but before it’s development it needed a solid route to market, business proposition and strategy.

Insight
Our approach covered all aspects of who will buy, what will it be used for and what applications should be developed. Working with NewEdge, we ran six ideation sessions with developers, executives and finance teams from Microsoft and selected third parties in order to develop the business module and obtain the key insights which would form the basis of the programme. From this, we identified four main potential applications: The consumer, point of purchase (advertising & retail), entertainment and the office environment.

Solution
We then developed a clear pricing structure and implemented a plan to identify who potential customers would be. From this we worked on visualising the hardware, and software applications for all form factors, user scenarios and each of the graphic user interfaces (GUI) for each of the applications.

Using this visual stimulus we conducted a series of interviews with a comprehensive list of participants to discover what would the product mean to them, where would and wouldn’t work and developed principals of what drives the value proposition and identify potential development stage partnerships.

We then conducted an extensive consumer research programme and interviewed those who spend $10,000 or more per year on consumer electronics. Based on the insights gained we defined the applications that would need to be developed, determined form factors and identified what they would pay and when they would be prepared to purchase.

We also undertook a market sizing exercise and forecasting based on each market for each application, their adoption rates over time and looked at potential revenue streams including advertising, licensing and hardware sales.

Solution
Following the research, strategy and design stages, we developed the launch strategy and helped Microsoft to prioritise which applications to develop first and delivered a
launch plan to work over a 3 year period covering visibility for the device, followed by sales for each market.

We also identified potential development partners and built relationships at high levels.

Microsoft successfully received the necessary funding for the project to go ahead and have since developed the strategy exactly as proposed.