Client Story: Pentair

While many organizations grow through mergers and acquisitions, organic growth is becoming more critical for consistent, strategic growth. When a market leader seeks new opportunities and explores adjacent markets, it must have a method for understanding the unique needs of customers and existing competitive threats. Pentair came to NC State to improve their model for new market entry.

Pentair is the world leader in innovative, high-performance, technologically advanced and dependable swimming pool and spa equipment. Pentair’s 3-D innovation model has been a key process in driving their product innovation. But the opportunity to expand into the developing Aquaculture market was an opportunity to test and improve that model.

Using data from the CIMS’ Innovation Management Maturity Assessment (IMMA), Pentair identified potential innovation management ‘gaps’, and worked with NC State Executive Education to improve their processes and tools in a custom two-day program. The program focused on analytic tools to understand customer needs and segmentation, such as conjoint analysis of product features. The design of the program was project-based, applying the new skills to specific product opportunities, with one team working on the marketing plan for Aquaculture.

Pentair was able to launch a significant entry into the market, and today is a leading equipment and service provider to the $135B market (2012).