What are the five best strategies to socialize a new product idea within a business as a consultant?

Interesting question. Depending on the context of the idea and the desired recipients of the idea, the strategy would vary. Socializing an idea in the general public or socializing within a company or within a social specific group would require completely different actions. For the case of socializing an idea within a company, I would suggest a mix of concurrent actions in a combined bottom-up and top-down approach, by convenient selecting the strengths of the idea which will be best absorbed by each group. Not all recipients of the idea will value the same features or same characteristics of the idea and everyone should feel that the idea has been built just for him/her, helping them to appreciate and value each of the strengths of the idea. When such ideas flow from top to down and from bottom to up levels, all of them would perceive a valuable idea.

Some good questions: 1) What problems do you have? 2) What is the impact of that? If you don’t fix this in 12-24 months (for example), what would be the cost of this to you and/or your business? Look for where there is alignment between their problems and your product.

It is easy to have some of the company people adopt the new product idea since it will positivly impact there business. But you have to be careful of the people how will have negative impact. Because they will fight back. So you have to anaylise the people and the new product impact (business or personal benefits etc..) before start socializing. In a case I lived in. New product solution was delayed 3 years because it was affecting one department manager. Even though the new idea will saving big amount of $$$$$

This is a typical challenge any one with a thought process will ultimately face when working in any organization. It is not so that some organization will be more attuned to the culture or some not as organizations are ecosystems that have people as stake holders and stake holders irrespective of the environment, still remain their own inherent psychology. Anything initiative or idea when brought up actually addresses the stakeholders that can be easily divided into three types… 1) who embrace change and welcome progressive new ideas 2) those who fear change even while portraying progressive thinking and actually become the resistance and 3) those who are non biased and will decide the idea and its efficacy based on how it affects them or what is n it for them. Whatever the culture and organizational values talked about, its human nature to have these three thriving in any ecosystem so the challenge to introduce the idea is a very simple approach. a) Identify the stake holders who are due to nature of project and related factors will be interested and highlight the interest areas to pitch the idea nd create buy-in and support B) from senior position of power and authority, it is a must to have some one in this group c) identify neutrals and those who will evaluate and customize core value points respective to them to bring their support as buy-in d) do focus on the resistance and counter it but remember these are always going to be there and making all pitch and focus centric to bring them on board will be akin to loosing sight of the others who can actually make it happen. Hope this is simple and outlines approach method.