Get comfortable with it. And then you take it out on the road. To the stores. Go around to three or four.
  
Take lots of pictures. (And the latest cellphones let you not only pretend you're checking your email while you take them but even zap them straight to the design team.) Buy as many of the competition's products as you can. Use them. Compare. Benchmark. Talk to some customers -- housewives from the neighborhood. Ask your wife and daughter what they think. Ask the field reps. Talk to the people stocking the shelves and whoever else will talk with you. Run simulations. Even do some mental what-if exercises. And slowly refine your thinking. Who is going to purchase this? Who is gong to use it? Who is going to make the decision to stock it? Who will actually sell it? Look at it from all of these perspectives.  Learn whatever you can from wherever you can. And figure out what you should have done in the first place. Which is backwards.
  
Let's do the legwork and research _before_ we draw up the plan. As Bayside Shakedown's Sergeant Aoshima says, "Things don't happen in the conference room. They happen where they happen."
  
Nitou Shouhei
Ajinomoto Communications