How Boveda built a structured approach to exploring new markets
Strategyzer
February 10, 2025
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min read
When Boveda wanted to explore new markets for their humidity control technology, Head of Innovation Brian Rice faced a challenge: how to validate opportunities before investing millions. By implementing Strategyzer's structured approach to innovation, Boveda transformed from gut-based decisions to evidence-driven exploration, enabling systematic market validation that fits their company size and culture.
Companies that are prepared for disruption are constantly reinventing themselves. They don’t believe they are invincible. The main task of leadership today is to constantly reinvent your organisation.”
Despite being a market leader in humidity control, Boveda’s approach to new products relied on internal excitement rather than customer data. Boveda desired to develop a more systematic way to validate new market opportunities.
Boveda implemented Strategyzer's structured innovation process, combining guided experiments, self-paced learning, and clear methodologies. This enabled their cross-functional teams to explore opportunities while building innovation capabilities across the organization.
Within months, Boveda transformed from gut-based decisions to evidence-driven exploration. They now maintain a focused portfolio of 30-40 ideas, systematically validating opportunities before investment, with leadership engaged through bi-weekly progress reviews.
In order for Boveda to continue being the market leader, we made the strategic decision for me to step out of R&D and into the Head of Innovation role. But knowing there's so many different ways to de-risk and explore ideas, the pain was developing a process and we needed to design the right one for our company size.”
Brian Rice,
Head of Innovation at Boveda
The challenge: Moving beyond gut feelings
For over two decades, Boveda has been the market leader in two-way humidity control solutions, protected by strong patents and serving markets such as cannabis, tobacco, and music. But despite Boveda’s technical expertise and market position, they faced a common challenge: its approach to bringing new products to market wasn't grounded in customer evidence and had no structured process.
“Looking back at our history of how we brought products and services to the market, it was not grounded in visible evidence that somebody, our customer, is going to purchase it,” Brian reflects. “It was based off of our internal excitement with a little bit of gut check.”
This approach had led to costly misses. “On one project, I think we spent close to 2 million dollars to develop a new product into an existing market. Its truly an innovative product never seen before that we are very excited about. But we don't yet have any significant ROI post development. Simply put, it’s extremely difficult to sell your own excitement,” Brian shares.
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The turning point: From technical innovation to customer-led exploration
Boveda is always looking to innovate beyond its current markets. They knew their unique humidity control technology could serve many other industries, but they needed a way to validate these opportunities before making substantial investments again.
As the head of R&D, Brian had spent years perfecting Boveda's technical capabilities. Now, stepping into the Head of Innovation role, he faced a different challenge: how to structure the exploration of new markets and opportunities in a way that would work for their 70-person company.
“I'm wearing multiple hats,” Brian explains. “I'm acting as a team lead, I'm also acting as a Coach, but I also need to learn and educate myself within the Strategyzer process.”
Building a systematic approach
Working with Strategyzer, Brian began implementing a structured innovation process that would allow Boveda to:
Systematically explore new markets for their technology
Validate opportunities with customer evidence before making major investments
Build innovation capabilities across the organization
The process needed to work within Boveda's constraints – cross-functional teams working part-time on innovation, with about 10% of their time dedicated to exploring new opportunities.
Key elements for success
Three components proved crucial for Brian's success:
A pre-structured innovation process with clear phases:“Having the process structured and laid out allows me to see it, anticipate, and react when I need to,” Brian notes. “It also allows me to help other teams that are working on new product development – I can provide guidance even when I'm not there in person.”
Self-paced learning for both coaches and teams:“What do I need to know? What are the tools that I need? How do I apply them?” The self-paced e-learning modules helped Brian and his time constrained teams build capability at their own pace.
Pre-structured experiments for gathering evidence: This was particularly important as it tied directly to their goal of making evidence-based decisions. “We're trying to de-risk ideas from a consumer standpoint but also make sure that what we are working on can make a profit. These experiments help to prove there is market desirability.”
Having the process structured and laid out allows me to see it, anticipate, and react when I need to. It also allows me to help other teams that are working on new product development – I can provide guidance even when I'm not there in person.”
Brian Rice,
Head of Innovation at Boveda
Early results and ongoing journey
Within months of implementing the new process:
Leadership reviews progress every two weeks
The team has built a backlog of 30-40 ideas ranging from explore to exploit
They've established a ranking system to prioritize ideas based on business impact
Most importantly, they're building evidence before making major investments
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Looking ahead
Boveda is now positioned to explore new markets systematically, with a process that fits their size and culture. “We want to get into new markets and new applications,” Brian shares. “Now we have a way to validate these opportunities before we invest.”
The company maintains a focused approach, working on one or two opportunities at a time rather than diluting efforts across many projects. This allows them to maintain quality while building their innovation capabilities.
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Strategyzer
February 10, 2025
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It was a tremendous amount of work and we are extremely thankful to the whole team at Strategyzer. We learnt so much: three years ago we didn't really know how to start, and now I think we have built robust program that generations after us can continue to run.”
Henning Till
Head of Corporate Innovation, Bayer
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