Exposing concepts to a regulatory environment review early in the development process will help focus your efforts on products with global potential, accelerate launch timelines and align cross-functional teams. Equally applicable to challenger brand products, the exercise is designed to deliver greater efficiency, agility and profitability in the search for better products.

Developing new products is a costly and often inefficient exercise, especially when seeking to push boundaries including enabling claims, moving to natural and clean formulations. But the challenge is not just technical; the internal dynamic between stakeholders with differing perspectives, marketing, R&D and regulatory, can create a tension that is not always positive.

The benefit of a regulatory environment review?

As soon as a concept is ideated, we recommend implementing a regulatory environment review. This exposes the concept to a regulatory and policy assessment of your target markets to qualify its multi-market potential. Factors such as claims, formulation permissibility, packing, communications and manufacturing processes are all considered, enabling early identification of potential hurdles. This allows issues to be brought to the fore at an early stage, driving an evolution of the concept, it’s
positioning, or a complete re-think.

Clearly this is no panacea. The consumer mood in each market is not necessarily reflected in policy and regulation, but this is a quick, early-stage screening that ensures the resulting solution – a multi-market product concept – is better suited to enable the business to leverage its scale and drive efficiencies. Furthermore, the resulting clarity on innovation boundaries channels a more targeted approach from the R&D function, which allows them to focus on the aspects of development that really matter: better products, faster to market.