Reversible Research.. We have what you want, almost.

So we've been discussing a few of the methods that people get ideas for new products. Out of the four I'm looking in detail at Market Research and Reverse Engineering and how they might be used together to get a more accurate product for what people want and so be more effective as such.

Market Research:


This is basically what it says on the tin, checking the market by either running surveys or asking individual people what they believe is needed in a product in a specific field and if an idea is repeated from a number of different people and there isn't anything else that covers it already then there is a gap in the market for it. Another method is to simply think of what isn't in the market so far and then make it for yourself and let other people decide whether or not it's necessary.


An example of this is an idea brought to the popular TV show 'Dragon's Den' back in 2007. An inventor of a device that plates metal objects with gold had brought his idea to the 'den' and requested an investment in exchange for a stake in the potential business (as the show dictates). This particular request to invest culminated in an offer from one of the business tycoons 'James Caan' investing £60,000. Since then the business has sky rocketed and is one of the biggest gold plating suppliers in the UK. I believe this is a good example of good risk assessment in the field of using market research and determining what isn't already available and making it available.

Caan and Roomes, a new business deal.

Reverse Engineering:

 This is the method through which a final product that is similar to a target product is taken and de-constructed in order to figure out how it works and what methods can be used to remake the same product with the new aspects to make the new final product. Although this is a fairly simple concept, this method of construction and design development is illegal in many places, especially in the USA. In an example taken from the Defcon 9 computer safety conference in Las Vegas, a developer of ebook security from Russia named Sklyarov was arrested by the FBI just after explaining his research as it included references to the use of reverse engineering to make one of his own designs more workable due to the addition of something from Adobe. After a long legal battle between the American DMCA and Elcomsoft (Sklyarov's company), the Russian company was exonerated on a technicality due to not actually using the accused portions of software.

 The DMCA approach to reverse engineering is that it supports the use of material that would compromise copyright laws and hence make reverse engineering illegal.

Connecting The Dots:

 Given reverse engineering is not illegal in some countries due to it's usefulness despite copyright issues, it could be used alongside market research to create products that consumers already have that are missing aspects that the original manufacturer won't add to it. This creates a viable gap in the market that someone combining Market Research with Reverse Engineering can exploit, given that their country doesn't consider it as copyright breach or any other kind of illegal mumbo-jumbo.

-ZH-