A close look at historical data reveals that new and surprising products were invented by a variety of people, some of whom had no knowledge at all about the market for the products they had developed. It appears that an alternative source for deriving new product ideas to those used at present may be to examine information embedded in the product itself. Just as market research attempts to identify trends in the marketplace on which to base a new generation of products, so market trends can be identified by analyzing the product itself in order to predict the basic characteristics of a new product. Because Creativity Templates inherently carry important codes for the evolution of successful new products, they can be exploited to generate a competitive advantage based on minimal market information. In Part I we describe the traditional methods of new product ideation, and assess the usefulness of market- versus product-based information, as sources of new product ideas.