White Space Analysis
White Space Analysis is a process used by companies to produce strategic inventions. In this analysis, companies usually find a white-space gap within a sector and, considering how the gap could be filled, they introduce their inventions. This is a pre-patent filing duty that needs to be performed to understand the market a company is entering, enabling them to develop their product or invention accordingly.
This can be better explained with the help of an example. For example, a company decides to enter the Indian market to provide their users with a cheap and affordable way of transportation. Hence, they introduce an app that works only on one simple concept of carpooling. This sounds extremely easy and economical. The company conducted a white space analysis and concluded that taxi services already exist in India and foreign apps such as Uber and domestic apps such as Ola dominate their respective segments. Therefore, they launched this app with their target audience being mostly students, and it proved to be an amazing invention.
The process of White space analysis starts with the search for what has already been discovered and explored. Companies brainstorm about what new addition they can make to the existing invention which is known as creating a gap. When somebody has successfully created this gap, they have completed the first and most important step of white space analysis. After finding this gap, a targeted search is done to find out how many patents exist around the same invention as your idea, this is usually done to find out if the white space is heavily populated or not. If the market is not heavily populated, then it is an ideal time to enter the market and introduce your invention.
White space mapping is usually performed from two perspectives, either an externally focused perspective or an internally focused perspective. Externally focused mapping is done by identifying the existing products and services in the market and determining if all the needs are being satisfied by the existing commodities. If the customers are not satisfied with the existing items in the market, you have found yourself a gap which you can leverage to your benefit. This is a very common phenomenon in restaurants, where a restaurant usually starts off well and gains popularity, but a few years down the line they end up dropping their quality and increasing the price of their food. Hence, there’s an external gap and because of this gap, newer restaurants keep on opening and old ones die down.
Internally focused mapping focuses on an inward look, where an individual enhances their own company’s abilities to discover newer opportunities that their competition could never capitalize on. Companies are able to succeed by investing significantly in human resources. Large companies such as ‘Nestle’ and ‘Unilever’ invest abundantly in their employee training programs, ensuring their employees become the best assets for their companies. Nestle holds a monopoly in the Indian food market, where they provide instant noodles and instant coffee. There is no comparison to Nestle in the Indian market. Similarly, the same is the case with Unilever where they are the producers of many household commodities that hold sentimental value in the hearts of their Indian customers. Both of these companies are respected giants in their own fields, able to suceed because they acted in their respective markets when no one else did. They identified a gap and took advantage of it. It is very important for companies to understand the markets they seek to enter, or else it could be a huge disaster for them.
In conclusion, white space analysis is an important part of patent filing and it comes with a set of challenges that every company needs to overcome. Challenges like technological uncertainty, inability to interpret patent claims, and the vast amount of data analysis that needs to be done require a lot of human effort. This can never be fully handled by AI tools, even though there has been immense growth in the AI field. AI tools can’t take over and provide companies with gaps and business opportunities in the future. They can surely provide a direction and some guidance but cannot analyze the gap in the market. Thus, it is advisable that every company that wants to enter a specific market should conduct a white space analysis to view the market from a consumer’s point of view and understand consumers’ needs.
Author:–Lakshya, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us at support@ipandlegalfilings.com or IP & Legal Filing.