• PART 1
• Which segment would you recommend targeting first and why? Given your recommended target segment, what do you recommend for:
• 1.Specific product attributes andkeep in mind the likely must-haves versus nice-to-haves for the recommended segment. In addition, consider incorporating concepts related to diffusion of innovations for that segment.
• 2. Make sure to support your recommendation with analysis and logic, such as superior benefits relative to competing products. Make sure to think broadly of competing products from the customer segments perspective.
• The Evolution of Reading and Writing Surfaces

With a history of over 5,000 years, writing had been an integral part of human development, allowing people to store and transfer ideas across distance and time. Given this critical function, writing systems and the media upon which they were recorded ha d, not surprisingly, undergone numerous transformations. Cave drawings constituted an early format, yet were extremely limited in terms of portability and the amount of information that could be conveyed. Cuneiform, developed around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, was one of the first sufficient forms of writing. Using a sharpened reed to form precise slices, scribes would form characters in damp clay and then leave them out in the sun to dry. This created a durable archive for city officials and served as a reliable method of keeping track of temple goods. However, the hardened clay had its drawbacks. T he heavy material proved difficult to transport and ineffective for sending messages.

The Digital Age Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of personal computers spread their influence to reading and writing.2 Word processors and keyboards, in particular, shifted peoples expectations and habits. In many respects, t yping on a keyboard was more efficient and required fewer sensorimotor skills. Changes could be made more easily, and standardized fonts freed readers from spending time deciphering messy handwriting. With the advent of the internet in the 1990s, using a computer added an immediacy dimension to how people expected information to be sent and received.3 Through emails and instant messaging, communication by typing on various computing devices became almost as immediate as oral conversations, and information could be pulled and distributed within seconds. Computers also showed immense potential for improvement, from the original black -and-white screens to high-resolution color displays (like Apples Retina) and growing memory. By drastically increasing speed and convenience, writing with computers gained massive popularity. Yet even with the rise of computing , many people continued to show a strong preference for the familiar look and feel of paper .4 Millennials grew up surrounded by technology, and electronic versions of books were generally easier to transport and cheaper to buy, making them appear as the clear choice relative to traditional textbooks. Nonetheless, in a 2015 study conducted by American University, 92% of college students reported a preference for hardcover textbooks over electronic versions.5 Students said that paper textbooks didn t give them the headaches and eyestrains that electronic books did, and did not produce as many distractions. T

Company History and Initial Research The Epiphany

As he reflected on his days of working as a consultant in a large firm, Wanberg couldnt help but dwell on an ironic inconsistency. At the many meetings he took part in, he and his colleagues would all bring various advanced digital productsfrom laptops to tablets to smartphones and in every conference room, there were large monitors with dozens of cool new features. Amid all this technology, though, everyone still seemed to show up with the same archaic tools: a pen and a stack of documents, often distributed electronically beforehand, and printed on paper. During the meetings, people would look at the presentation on the monitor or listen to someone discussing the content of a report , yet invariably took notes on the physical printed version in front of them. So much of the work was done digitally, yet everyone, including himself, still reverted to the centuries -old paper-and-pencil method for note taking. As he thought more about it, he recalled that even in college, as a computer science major, he was fixated on paperprinting assign ments and jotting notes in class with a pen o n dedicated notebooks. To Wanberg, this discrepancy in the workflow and study flow seemed odd: Why are we still paper people? You have this dinosaur of a technology that hadnt changed since ancient times and everyone was still embracing it . Wanberg, along with fellow BCG consultant Mads Gedde, who shared his ambition, began their quest by exploring possible technologies that could help bring the paper writing experience to the digital world. Their first thought was to build on the technology used in e -readers. As E Ink was the biggest player in that market, Wanberg reached out to the company. It was then that he learned he wasnt the first to try to tackle the e-writing problem, and that in the electronic paper industry, faster ink was the holy grail of innovation. There had already been several serious attempts, with Sonys soon-to-be-launched Digital Paper device represent ing the most notable endeavor . E Ink representatives explained that while e-reading wasnt bothered by latency, because it was acceptable for consumers to wait a bit for the screen to load a new page to read, the lag between when a pen tip passed a certain point on the display and the time pixels were visible a t that point caused major problems for the digital writing experience. E Ink executives indicated that if he could solve the slow- ink problem, it would be a major breakthrough and, with a bit of sarcasm, that he should come back if he managed that feat. Faced with the dilemma of whether to attempt to do something that giants like Sony had failed to accomplish or abandon his idea altogether, Wanberg chose the former option. The Basic Research Phase: A Breakthrough Is Achieved For the next 18 months, Wanberg and his company, named Magma at that time, worked diligently to solve the latency problem. The goal was to create a product in which the time between a mark and its digital appearance would be short enough that the human eye would perceive it as instantaneous. Generally, movies ran at 24 frames per second, or 41.67 milliseconds between consecutive frames, and gave a continuous viewing experience. Research showed that this would be a good target to reach for digital ink responsiveness. Until then, the fastest writing display times companies were able to achieve were between 100 and 120 milliseconds, far too slow for the typical user. Wanberg believed that by making advances in both hardware and software and, importantly, by integrating them to work in concert, he could solve the latency issue with electronic paper and thereby emulate the paper-and-pen writing experience. Wanberg reached out to several experts in the field of digital display to serve as advisors and contracted with software and hardware developers in India. They created a multilayered technology, consisting of a physical surface, pen sensors, and a writing friction layer, as well as compatible software that connected the layers instantaneously. With each improvement, the milliseconds between marking and displaying dwindled, and by the late spring of 2015, Magma had made significant progress. Its technology, which Wanberg coined Flux, had achieved a latency of about 50 milliseconds. Wanberg described ecstatically: Flux redefines how the hardware and software handle the journey from when the pen sensor reports the pens tip position and a command is given to the relevant pixels to light up by creating a shortcut of prioritized processor commands. He continued, An analogy could be the knee-jerk reaction that occurs when a doctor taps just below a persons knee cap. The reaction is very fast because the signal doesnt first register with the brain and then require a command through the nervous system to the knee ; there s a reflex shor tcut. The combined set of complex technologies that mimics this process is our secret sauce.

The Development Phase: A Work in Progress Even though Wanberg viewed this breakthrough as the start of the digital writing revolution, he knew there was still a long way to go before he had a final product ready for prime time. He believed it was critical to get customer input to help decide what features and capabilities to include in the device, and that it was imperative to hire more people to assist with product development. Starting in the fall of 2013, Wanbergs company engaged in a series of market research initiatives. Based on initial one-on-one interviews, it became evident that people still had a strong fascination with various aspects of reading and writing on paper (see Exhibit 3 for a visual mapping of words people associated with paper). Wanberg noted, It became obvious to us that even some of the most devout digital people, with the latest and greatest gadgets on the market, still clung to their notebook and printed documents for comfortable reading. The interviews also helped Wanberg create a list of attributes and features that could be relevant for including in the device he was developing. To prioritize among the items on the list, as it would be inconceivable to work on all of them given that funds and engineering staff were limited, Wanberg decided to run a series of focus groups with 20 to 30 participants, mostly between the ages of 25 and 35, drawn from the general population. In the first focus group, each participant was shown a sketch and given a text description of a hypothetical new digital device with paper -like qualities ( code-named XO; see Exhibit 4). Participants were probed on whether they understood what the device could do and whether they would be interested in purchasing it at $499. Subsequently, they were provided with 10 cards, each listing a different feature such as Organized archive, S imple sharing, Marker and brushes, Handwriting recognition, PDF reading, and Calendar functionalityand asked to classify the features into one of three bucketsmust have, nice to have, or dont care. From these responses, it was possible to rank the various features in order of average desirability (see Exhibit 5).