Patent Based Method to Evaluate the Market Potential of a Product

Within TRIZ literature, only a small part is focused on the management of the requirements. In the majority of cases, they are treated at a mere technological level rather than marketing, by taking into account the requirements that have the greatest market potential. According to the market potential technique, in the early stage phases of design, the product to be innovated is divided into a list of different properties that will be assessed individually in terms of importance and satisfaction. In order to support the evaluation made by product experts (R&D Team and Marketing Team), a search for knowledge must be carried out. This involves, for example, the research in each requirement for information contained in brochures, commercial catalogs, patents literature and scientific articles with the aim of extracting trends, statistics, emerging technologies and unresolved problems. This procedure requires time and a large economic investment, especially if integrated with market research, often costly and time consuming. To overcome these limitations, the novelty proposed in this article consists in a method to automate the estimation of the importance of each requirement, or at least those for which information is available in the various document sources. An exemplary case dealing with an aerogel panel for civil application is proposed, stressing the geographical area in such a way as to define the investment and how it integrates into the potential market.