Artificial Intelligence and Consumer Product Development

In a recent discussion about Lean Startups (see Steve Blank – Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything) and developing “minimum viable products” (MVP) as a way to get to market and learn quickly from real customers in order to revise or pivot as needed,  Dr. G. proposed that Artificial Intelligence may help predict validity of an MVP before building it.

This topic bears further exploration but a few initial thoughts that come to mind include the following:

• Could A.I. be part of the quality testing process?  By this I mean it might reduce human interface design to the various paths available through the navigation and match it to consumer decision trees?

• Comparing the MVP’s features to the wants/needs of consumers as captured by tools such as Google Trends could help tailor product features to market demand.

• AI may even be able to plot an outline for a pre-launch advertising campaign, teasing/alluding to the eminent arrival something that will fulfill the needs that many have already expressed through keyword searches rather than by sifting CRM databases of personal information and past purchase history.

Perhaps a search of Google Scholar, (keywords "predictive analytics", "artificial intelligence", "consumers", etc.?) is in order.