Global Market Research for Value Proposition Innovation Amid Pandemics

Abstract

AbstractPandemic situations impact the ability of the startups to identify the product features that have match with market needs: the activity that requires direct interaction with the customers at the same physical space. Online tools can overcome this limitation, but early-stage startups have too limited resources and lack of access to the potential customers, which make their online interactions quite limited. The divergent creativity is required to identify the requirement elicitation methods and tools that could help startups to identify product/market fit with limited same physical space interaction with customers. The open innovation involving academia, experts, and researchers could help startups to get access to the market needs. This chapter reports one such consulting experience of the author with the Madrid (Spain)-based startup which successfully identified its market in pandemic time through global market research driven by secondary studies, primary research involving potential clients (or users) through online means, and limited interactions at the same physical space. Daily brainstorming with a team of researchers, experts, and professors helped to generate divergent ideas about identifying markets amid the pandemic and testing them in real context that proved to be successful for the startup. Overall impact is the ability of startup to innovate its business model for foreign markets.KeywordsStartupsStartup-academia partnershipsCoronavirusBusiness model innovationCreativityGlobal market research