Three Weeks. Twelve Consumers. Crystal-Clear Answers.

Fusion Insight Sprints replace outdated qual research methods with an agile deep dive that rips out the real tensions, validates your hunches, and hands you video-proofed next steps.

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Every brand in your category is shopping the same syndicated decks, running the same focus groups and surveys, and pitching the same “next big thing.”


The first team to crack a new tension wins shelf, mind-share, and margin. Everyone else fights for scraps or copies to try and keep up.

Get to tensions your rivals never hear.

Fusion Insight Sprints drop you into your ideal consumers’ lives for 3 weeks days, surfacing the why behind behaviors.

So you can move on the white space while everyone else is sleeping.

HOW OUR SERVICE SOLVES PAIN
BENEFITS /OUTCOMES

SNAPSHOT vs
JOURNEY

A 2-hour chat gives only a moment-in-time snapshot; you can’t track evolving behavior or emotion over days and weeks with traditional qual methods.

MULTI-METHOD RESEARCH

Our Fusion Insight Sprints ask consumers to engage in group settings, 1:1 interviews, journal entries, video recording of product usage, competitor shopping and more.

ITERATION LOOPS LEAD TO DEPTH

If a consumer does or says something that peaks our interest, we can dive deeper without worrying about time constraints.

CRITICAL
INSIGHTS

Our strategists facilitating Fusion Sprints aren’t just looking for trends, they’re looking for four critical types of insight… unresolved, tensions, dissatisfaction, opportunity.

COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

We work together with you in the sprint to decide what to explore next. In a shared Teams channel + bi-weekly meetings, you’ll be able to suggest iterations and dig sites in real-time.

HIGHLY VESTED IDEAL CONSUMERS


A 3-week commitment ensures you’re working with consumers who have passion around the same challenge you’re trying to solve.

testimonials

The work that the Valen Group led to extend the STA-BIL brand beyond fuel additives is culminating into breakthrough concepts and products which will lead the brand’s entry into new market categories with a competitive edge relative to very well entrenched iconic national brands
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-EVP Market Innovation

We were particularly impressed with the commitment, focus and ideas generated from such a diverse team in such a short period of time.

-SVP Global Healthcare

Valen’s research allowed our company to not only validate and fine-tune our product positioning, packaging design, and pricing ranges but also to adjust the concept for each socio-demographic target. The information then allowed our company to pitch the co-branded concept with another leading branded CPG firm and secure a market test.
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-Senior Director

A Proven 3-Step Approach

Phase 1 - Engage

Pre-consumer work, involves team alignment to define roles and communication methods. Just as important, we begin strategic work, where our team immerses themselves in previous learnings to identify knowledge gaps and hypothesize tensions and solutions to explore with consumers. This phase also includes the recruitment of ideal consumers who are vested in a solution to the problem.

A three-week phase consisting of one week of individual interviews for foundational learning and to whittle down our sprint participants to only the most articulate. Then two weeks of iterative learning with ideal consumers via multi-method research, including group meetings, asynchronous journal entries, competitor product testing, video recorded product usage, and more.

Fusion Insight Sprints have been used for early stage exploration, agile market learning, agile product testing, even go to market. Fusion Insight Sprints deliverables are different based on where the sprint is being used in the innovation journey.

Services for Every Stage of Innovation

Early-Stage Exploration

Uncover growth opportunities and potential ideas with targeted consumer insights and strategic concept development.

Agile Market Learning

Validate your concept with real users to hone its market fit, iterating based on product and consumer testing.

Agile market testing

Test models and concepts through custom studies, prototype visualizations, and feedback collection to refine ideas effectively.

Scaling up

Develop a robust launch plan, backed by a strategic roadmap and messaging that resonates with your target market.

Valen Strategic Plan

Week 1
Strategic Discussions
Week 2
Recruiting
Week 3
Fusion Insight Sprint
Week 4
Deliverables

Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers.

1. How is this different from the qualitative research we already commission?


Typical qualitative consumer learning might be a handful of two-hour discussions with your ideal customers. A Fusion Sprint is a 21-day relationship with hand-picked, vested users. We iterate learning goals, tasks, and questions daily, capture video proof, and end with clear insights you can put into action.


  • An Insight Map that pinpoints the unmet needs, dissatisfactions, tensions and opportunities competitors haven’t figured out yet.
  • A 90-second highlight-reel video your C-suite can’t unsee.
  • Custom deliverables depending which innovation stage you’re in. Early stage exploration deliverables will obviously look different than go-to-market deliverables.

Twelve vested, articulate users over 14 days generate > 20 hours of video and hundreds of data points—depth beats quantity when it comes to finding insights your competitors haven’t. If your leader needs statistical validation, we can follow with a quick quant survey, but only after the Sprint narrows the field to the 2-3 concepts worth the investment.

We value collaboration, so your team can be as involved as they would like to be. If you’re hands off, here’s what we need.
Roughly one hour total:
90-mins during strategic discussions and kickoff →
Two 30-minute learnings sessions each week, 6 total

90-mins for final deliverable reviews and edits
We run recruiting, tasks, edits, and synthesis while you keep your other projects moving.

Stakeholders have access to watch every interview from a backroom or on 2x speed for recordings. Your peers and leaders can be added into the learning platform to observe journal entries and activities. By the final read-out, everyone’s already seen the “aha” moments, so alignment is baked in. And if they’re hands off, but at the end suddenly become hands on, we position the findings in a way that’s applicable for the entire organization.

Absolutely. The highlight-reel video can be used to slot right into any deck and showcase the “Why should we believe you?” question in 90 seconds.

This happens quite often once you experience the power of a Fusion Insight Sprint. The majority of our clients rarely do one sprint; they tend to use it throughout the stages of the innovation process, adjusted for the different goals.

Whether you’re in early stage exploration, agile market learning, agile product testing, or getting ready to go-to-market, Fusion can yield invaluable insights to help you minimize risk and increase chances of a successful product launch.

Our team of strategists is trained to look for 4 types of critical insight… tensions, dissatisfactions, opportunity, and unmet needs. We’re strategists first, researchers second, so every insight ties back to a Jobs-To-Be-Done hypothesis or business decision.

Core sprint squad: Innovation lead, Insights partner, Finance or Brand P&L owner. Everyone else can observe asynchronously. Keeps decisions tight, politics light.

Yes. In fact, a Sprint is the fastest way to explore a platform deeply and and clarify the opportunity space.

Less than the cost of a single misguided prototype run—and a fraction of a failed launch. Drop us your learning goals and we’ll send you an estimate in 24 hours.

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STRATEGY CONSULTING

Valen’s Strategy Consulting Practice provides fact-based, strategic analysis that guides strategic decisions and creates a competitive advantage.

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INNOVATION

Valen delivers innovation using a proven agile, sprint-based approach that provides iterative learning to improve depth of insight, decision-making, and speed-to-market.
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BRAND LICENSING

As a Top 25 global licensing firm, we work with brand owners and producers to build long-term, sustainable programs generating multi-million dollars in royalty revenue.