Affinnova Introduces New Validation and Simulation Tools to Help Consumer Marketers Drive Product Innovation and Performance.

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Growing industry adoption of IDEA(TM) Technology spawns new tools for assessing market performance of new product concepts -- before launch

Affinnova, Inc., which harnesses the principles of genetic evolution to optimize concepts, products and brands for consumer-focused companies, today announced two new extensions of its widely adopted IDEA(TM) (Interactive Design by Evolutionary Algorithms) technology.

Affinnova has supplemented IDEA -- which has been successfully used by such consumer goods leaders as Procter & Gamble, Dannon and Cadbury Schweppes to explore, optimize and evolve product concepts -- with two additional tools to assess additional competitive and economic metrics: IDEA Validation and IDEA Simulation. Together, the three products create an integrated innovation platform to offer brand, product and marketing teams a highly nuanced assessment, not only of consumer choice drivers and attribute preferences, but of purchase intent; uniqueness; liking; stated transaction size; and probable purchase frequency.

"Dozens of global brands have used Affinnova's IDEA technology to better understand the subtle synergies between concept features and attributes, to allow thousands of consumers online to explore large and complex design spaces, and to develop stronger concepts reflecting the complex nuances of consumer preference," said David Andonian, Affinnova chairman and CEO. "Affinnova's extension of the IDEA platform into the crucial areas of market validation and competition now provides consumer marketers even richer insights -- coupling a rich understanding of the consumer landscape with key business metrics for better decision-making."

"Affinnova is clearly revolutionizing the NPD process. With the new validation and simulation abilities, Affinnova has given NPD teams exactly what they need to apply this revolution to their business, " said Jim Findley, principal of Findley Associates LLC and formerly executive vice president of analytic product management and development at Information Resources, Inc. "The net result is that Affinnova clients will come up with bigger ideas that are more likely to succeed, in less time and often at less expense."

Validation and Simulation

Affinnova's patent pending IDEA(TM) technology allows hundreds or thousands of consumers to interact with holistic designs and concepts via the Internet. Their collective feedback contributes to the evolution of the "fittest" designs and concepts -- those most likely to win market share in crowded and competitive market landscapes. IDEA enables product and marketing teams to improve product success rates by placing the consumer at the heart of product and brand development, exploring such concept innovation drivers as feature interaction effects, consumer choice/feature drivers and relative attribute preferences to generate optimized leading designs.

IDEA Validation and IDEA Simulation in turn subject these designs to a variety of economic and competitive metrics, supporting consumer-driven strategic and tactical decisions. While retaining the ability to inject vast amounts of consumer preference into the process, teams can now explore and assess across such critical success metrics as Year 1 Volume Potential, Year 1 Factory Sales Potential, price sensitivity, competitive share impact and additional design variations through a series of "what if" scenarios and analyses.

"New product success or failure is most often set in motion early in the development process, with limited customer involvement at the critical decision points," concluded Andonian. "The extended Affinnova IDEA platform we are introducing today is aimed at reducing the rate of new product failure by injecting broad consumer input into the earliest stages of design and market opportunity assessment."

Availability

For more information about Affinnova's IDEA(TM) platform, call [phone] or email [e-mail] or [e-mail].

About Affinnova, Inc.

Affinnova harnesses the voice of consumers to help companies develop more successful brands and products. Its unique, patent-pending technology uses genetic algorithms to "evolve" product designs in response to consumer preferences. Affinnova's technology has been adopted by a growing list of blue-chip customers including eleven Fortune 500 companies. Affinnova is privately held and headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. For more information about Affinnova, visit www.affinnova.com.

(C)2005 Affinnova Inc. Affinnova, IDEA, IDEA Validation and IDEA Simulation are trademarks of Affinnova, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.