A concept qualification qualifies and selects the best performing concept ideas among a larger pool of concept ideas.
It is done when the first concept ideas have materialized in an innovation process. Typically, these concepts are developed with input from a market assessment and only exist as a short concept description with a simple visual mockup.
Concept qualification is a method used to speed up the innovation process by, on an early stage, point focus on those few concept ideas that resonate with the audience before you invest too much in developing inferior concepts. It is a "kill your darlings" approach that will make your innovation process more efficient, so that winning concepts are developed faster.
A concept qualification will give your organization the ability to focus the resources on developing the right concept(s) in a fully market-oriented way. Early-stage input from consumers will not only increase the chance of success, but also reduce time to market as no time is wasted on inferior concept ideas.
