Affinnova’s Concept Studio provides an online visual workspace to create and manage ideas. Users are encouraged to submit a wide variety of alternative concepts, and resist the temptation to move too quickly toward a consensus. Assessing and gradually honing these divergent ideas is more likely to lead to highly successful ones eventually being picked out, the firm says.

Nutrisystem, which sells a weight-loss products, has already used Concept Studio to optimise the messaging it used to promote a new weight-loss programme.

Affinnova is combining the new platform with its ‘evolutionary optimisation’ system, which whittles down a large number of concepts to those deemed most likely to be successful, by asking online survey participants to compare different combinations of attributes in discrete choice tests.

By combining this with its new Concept Studio, president and CEO Waleed Al-Atraqchi (pictured) says the firm can help clients achieve “breakthrough innovation” rather than just incremental improvement. “We have created a seamless process that will allow our customers to innovate with higher success rates, in shorter time frames and at lower cost,” he said.