NewEdge is a dynamic innovation consultancy bringing a fresh approach to growing business and brands through upstream and downstream innovation.

Our clients often tell us that our approach to innovation is unlike other innovation consultancies. Perhaps it’s our focus on opportunities rather than ideas, or the way we blend the disciplines of research, strategy and design. This helps our clients stretch their thinking, create breakthrough innovations and develop new products, services and brands that deliver growth.

With a world-class team of strategists, trend analysts, researchers and designers we partner with our clients to deliver breakthrough innovation through collaboration, co-innovation and disruptive thinking.

Our founders

With combined roots in academics and practice, business and design, our founders have a rich perspective on innovation. Pam Henderson, with a Ph.D in business strategy and as a former professor at Carnegie Mellon, brings valuable academic insight. Paul Stead, former CEO of Fitch, one of the largest design firms in the world, brings creative expertise in driving growth through innovation worldwide. Together, Pam and Paul have built our unique, integrated approach to innovation.

Our unique process

Through our work with professional organizations like the Industrial Research Institute we have clarified the drivers of breakthrough innovation and use this to assist our clients with innovation alignment, openness and acceleration.

We work closely with innovation leaders such as P&G, Kraft Foods, John Deere, and DuPont. We tailor our approach with each program to stretch our clients’ thinking.

Disruptive Market Research® is a unique research methodology that does not follow conventional research by searching for commonalities. Our research specialists look for divergence and disruptive points of view, which uncover unarticulated needs, leading to opportunities.

Our team of business and design strategists map innovation onto business goals, developing new solutions that move our clients forward into new markets and deliver bottom-line growth.

Our Antennae Trends Team continually explores emerging design trends, ideas and creative thinking – from global product innovation through to changing consumer lifestyles. This work keeps a steady stream of fresh insight flowing through our work, and helps ensure that we spot new opportunities before they develop.

Our design studio has a record of delivering award-winning products, brands, services, and packaging across numerous categories. Our design team consists of industrial, graphic and digital designers who work to visualize strategy at the front-end, ensuring design is central to the innovation process. Our full service agency is experienced in providing successful go-to-market solutions.

Together our innovative team of research specialists, strategists and designers combine fresh thinking and sound commercial knowledge with global experience.

"NewEdge executes unique methods superbly to uncover non-obvious growth opportunities in new markets but founded in technical core competencies of the firm.  Because the new market opportunities are rooted in a firm's technical capabilities they tend to have lower financial risk profile."

Opportunity Toolbox

Trends

We understand the market changes affecting your business. Utilizing our global reach, our expert analysts seek out emerging seed trends and correlate these to map out how they will impact your business. In addition we publish a monthly trends publication, Antennae, that explores global innovation and lifestyle trends.

Market landscaping

We explore the extremities of your market. Our research specialists can ascertain all the direct and indirect competitors in your market, identifying the success and failure models, highlighting where the white spaces lie.

Ecosystem / consumer insights

We uncover the purchase drivers and barriers of your target market, as well as unearth your consumers’ unspoken / unmet needs, existing habits and compensatory behaviors. Through the facilitation of focus groups, surveys and ethnographic research we understand the needs of your consumers, and anyone who influences the value chain.

Workshops

Our facilitators run a number of different workshops to develop opportunities with you.  

Opportunity Storming™ is our proprietary method of expanding identified opportunity spaces and populating them with big ideas in a collaborative manner with you, relevant SMEs, and even consumers. The end result is a refined list of robust opportunities ready to be visualized and tested.

Commercial innovation / brand strategy workshops seek to engage internal stakeholders in exploring and defining your brand in an effort to capture the essence of your company, products and services. Our brand team looks to enhance your brand, or help you create new propositions, including naming sessions.

Visualization

We understand the importance of visualization and the positive results that a clear concept can bring to your business. Our talented designers can bring your ideas to life. Our visualizations are produced to the appropriate level to sell your vision internally and externally (sketch renders through to photo-realistic visuals).

Opportunity cases

We build a compelling business case for markets that don’t yet exist, based upon a clear understanding of the market and your brand. Our professional business strategists form a compelling argument for new opportunities for you to innovate within, including market sizing and key business attributes.

Building design executions

We can work with you to develop a great idea and successfully take it to market. Our experienced design team layers on our technical expertise to develop refined marcomms (style guides, websites, logos), products (CE, FMCG) and packs.