Innovation Strategy: Teardown the incumbents for competitive advantage

The Challenge

A leading consumer products brand was considering how to enter a new digitised category. Recognising it was not an expert in electronics, our client asked us to tear down a range of the existing products in the marketplace to help them understand if any of the incumbents had a technical competitive advantage.

The Approach

We started with a forensic review of instructions, understanding the software functionality (by trial) and interrogating CE/FCC information about the history of the hardware. In order to evaluate the functional performance, we conducted technical tests for each of the products. We then disassembled the products to extract the hardware and created a costed Bill of Materials (BOM) for each. We analysed the PCB construction and the key electronics components, identifying device operating principles, implications for manufacturing, relative design choices and the comparative technical advantages of each device.

The Outcome

We compiled a report of our findings with estimated costs and our conclusions about the relative technical advantage of each product platform. The report was shared directly with the divisional CEO who is feeding the data into their strategy for entering this new market.

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