In 2011, the world watched in amazement how IBM’s AI named Watson won at Jeopardy!. Right afterwards, IBM decided to use this power to revolutionize the healthcare system. AI doctors would change everyone’s lives. Sadly, Watson did not revolutionize healthcare. It did not prove to be as useful in reality as was anticipated. How could this happen? In short, IBM started with a very specific use case, then invented a super high-tech solution for it, and then started wondering how it could actually be useful. This example actually illustrates the problem that CrossGuard has. Luckily, CrossGuard’s problem is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than it was for IBM. CrossGuard is a company that has developed a protective glove for so-called Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), or medieval sword fighting. The glove is called the ProGauntlet. It has been designed to withstand high-impact blows from steel swords repeatedly, to protect the users’ hands from virtually any type of impact during HEMA.
Not only do they protect very well, they also let the user move their hands naturally, without restricting the freedom of movement. It is the ultimate HEMA glove, but as the HEMA market is relatively small, CrossGuard wants to make the ProGauntlet useful for other purposes, too. Therefore the aim of this project has been to find the next market for the ProGauntlet. This is where IBM’s example comes in. Just like Watson, the ProGauntlet is a technological solution that is looking for a problem to solve. The initial aim of this project was precisely this: finding another market for the ProGauntlet. The research method consisted of a product analysis, literature research and user research, mainly in the form of interviews. The most promising markets were researched in-depth: ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, kendo, Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) and motorcycle riding. Of these, the only people that would benefit from the ProGauntlet (besides HEMA) is a certain niche of the FMA. This group consists of about only 500 people, so this is a nice addition to the total market for the ProGauntlet, but it definitely isn’t a sustainable market for CrossGuard. Since there is no viable future market for the ProGauntlet, the main focus of this project has become to determine the most interesting market in which to introduce a redesigned protective glove. Based on the research, this appears to be field hockey.
Therefore, a strategy for entering the field hockey market is proposed. The most important quality of a field hockey glove should be that it does not restrain the user in any way. The suggested positioning for the field hockey market is therefore: unrestrained protection. A great advantage of this positioning is that it could also work for the ProGauntlet and simultaneously opens a clear path to future innovations for CrossGuard. Real-world implications Partially due to this research, CrossGuard has started developing a glove for field hockey.