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What's The Best Way to Innovate? A Comparative Look at Human and Gen-AI-Driven Product Development

Updated: 2 hours ago

The Twin Goals of Innovation: Effectiveness and Efficiency

Innovation has long been one of the hottest debated topics in business. With thousands of books written and countless corporate strategies developed around it, asking “What’s the best way to innovate?”


Let’s begin with a simple but powerful truth: the goal of innovation is to develop products that consumers want to buy. This is the effectiveness objective - creating something that resonates so strongly with users that it drives real market demand.


But effectiveness alone isn’t enough. If two companies deliver similarly attractive products, the one that gets there faster or with fewer resources will win. That’s where the efficiency objective comes into play. Reducing time-to-market or minimising development costs translates directly into a greater competitive advantage.


So, how do you optimise both and be most competitive?

 

Our Study: Comparing Three Innovation Approaches

Trying to contribute to this question, we analysed three ways to generate innovations – in our case product concepts:


  1. Traditional Human-Led (#1): Concepts developed step-by-step by product teams using established innovation methods – in our case one coming from Kärcher and one coming from Somfy.

  2. GenAI-Prompted (#2): Concepts generated by GenAI based on category prompts only.

  3. GenAI + Consumer Need-Gaps (#3): GenAI guided by consumer-generated stories revealing unmet needs, based on our MassQual technique applied to survey-based research.



Why this test now? Because until recently, GenAI wasn’t good enough. But it has evolved, and it is time to check how it can help to improve the way corporations innovate.

 

What Did We Learn?

1. All Three Approaches are Effective, but Integrating Consumer Stories Suggests Bringing a Cutting Edge

All approaches yielded strong and comparable results. In our test, though, the approach that added consumer stories to GenAI (#3) yielded slightly better results for the Insight identification and formulation. Therefore, it promises to better resonate with consumer needs and sentiments than the other two approaches.


This finding goes in line with results from our Brand Growth Study in which we interviewed nearly 2.000 marketing professionals. In essence, our test confirms the importance of consumer listening and understanding for innovation, which is replicated in the #3 approach in a targeted way, contrary to the generic GenAI (#2) approach, applying only general training data.


Fig.: Overview of key concept test results of the 3 different approaches we compared – one times for Kärcher-concepts and one times for Somfy-concepts

 

2. GenAI Dramatically Speeds Up Development

Time savings are where GenAI shines. What used to take months now takes days or weeks. This acceleration allows companies to test more ideas faster, crucial in today’s competitive markets.


3. GenAI Widens the Innovation Funnel

GenAI doesn’t just work faster - it creates more. In many cases, 20, 30 or more viable concepts are generated per brief. This explosion of options makes prioritisation and screening more critical than ever.


4. Consumer-Fueled GenAI Drives Greater Variation

Concepts from approach #3 (consumer-story-guided GenAI) were noticeably more diverse. They addressed a wider range of needs and hinted at new product categories altogether. That makes this method especially useful for radical, disruptive innovation.


5. The Human Guidance is of Great Relevance

The GenAI-approaches require human guidance to produce insights and ideas/concepts. Marketing skills and know-how are helpful in this regard – e.g. by filtering output not in line with strategic directions or when capabilities to produce or distribute are lacking. But even knowledgeable interactions do benefit from a consumer orientation, and this is what consumer stories from the MassQual approach bring to an iterative process of generation: They help to consequently align the process “outside-in”, i.e. from a consumer perspective.

 

In Conclusion: Gen-AI is as Effective - But More Efficient

Our research confirms that GenAI, when guided thoughtfully, matches traditional concept development in quality today. By adding consumer stories generated via MassQual and adding human interaction by going through different iterations, it will generate strong insights and concepts.


But its real advantage lies in efficiency: lower resource use, faster turnaround, and broader exploration. That is why we have developed a new approach to generating and testing concepts in short time frames.



What This Means For The Innovation Strategy More Generally

So, how should innovation processes evolve?


Two key shifts should be considered:

  1. Widen the funnel further – Use GenAI to explore more opportunities at the start. This increases your chances of finding better ideas.


  2. Shorten cycle times – Validate ideas faster and use the time saved to reinvest in exploration (see 1).


This isn’t about replacing humans. It’s about empowering them to do more - faster, and smarter to make your brand become (even) more competitive.


Get In Touch

Martin Hellich


Martin has nearly 25 years of experience in professional services, helping clients achieve commercial success through cutting-edge innovation solutions. A passionate advocate for advancing innovation research, Martin regularly shares his expertise through publications and industry events.

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