Launch or Don't Launch: How Nawa Nova Brings Objective Judgment to Beauty Innovation

AI has made it easier than ever to generate beauty ideas. According to Nawa Nova founder Nassim Belhaq, that is exactly why the ability to evaluate them now matters more. "Otherwise, we simply increase the number of proposals competing for the same development budget," he says.

Belhaq spent fifteen years in product marketing and development at L'Oréal, LVMH, Coty and Shiseido, then led innovation and NPD for two self-tanning brands. Now he is building an AI-powered decision intelligence platform designed to help beauty teams decide what to build, and when to walk away.

Intuition as compressed expertise

In creative industries, AI often raises a familiar fear: that it will strip away the human instinct that makes a product special. Belhaq hears this question every time he presents Nawa Nova, and he answers it by redefining intuition.

"I think of intuition as compressed expertise," he says. When a product developer senses that a texture or positioning will work, they are drawing on years of observation and association, even before they can explain why. A well-calibrated AI system, guided by domain knowledge and clear criteria, can also connect patterns to suggest something that wasn't immediately obvious. Belhaq is comfortable calling that a form of machine intuition.

But he is clear about its limits, for humans and machines alike. Intuition is a starting hypothesis that earns its value only when it is explored and challenged. "You would never go to top management, put your intuition on the table and say we should develop it right now," he says. "Intuition without context, knowledge and perspective is nothing more than intuition."

When AI reads a brand

What fascinates Belhaq most is watching the system read a brand's tone and DNA. Because it is calibrated to do so, it can build concepts or recommend technology platforms that make sense within that brand's territory, whatever the brand.

He believes beauty still has plenty of room to adopt this kind of AI-driven work, compared with other industries. One reason, he suggests, is that creative teams lean too heavily on intuition as the sole heart of creativity.

A tool without an ego

That thinking led to one of Nawa Nova's signature features, called Launch or Do Not Launch. It analyzes a full brief to examine the opportunity, potential roadblocks, missing perspectives and the conditions under which the proposition could succeed. It asks what supports moving forward, what weakens the case and what needs resolving before resources are committed. It also explores whether a different positioning or development route could make the idea more compelling.

Belhaq stresses that the feature supports decisions rather than replacing them. Its value lies in removing what clouds a team's view: emotional attachment to an idea and internal politics. It weighs consumer insight, brand credibility, desirability, uniqueness, market potential, feasibility and profitability. "Nawa Nova doesn't have an ego," he jokes.

This kind of rigorous evaluation has traditionally been out of reach for smaller brands. Belhaq believes every brand, at any scale, should be asking the launch question in every product development meeting.

Reading TikTok without chasing it

Social media has become one of the strongest forces shaping beauty demand, and Belhaq sees TikTok as an excellent source of signals. The challenge is timing. A product decision made today may not reach shelves for twelve to twenty-four months, so today's visibility cannot be the whole investment case.

Nawa Nova separates signals into three families. Ephemeral spikes are driven by a particular look or piece of content. Emerging signals point to a behavior or need gaining traction. Structural shifts change a category more deeply through new routines, expectations or technologies. "A viral texture can inspire a concept," Belhaq says, "but the more valuable question is which underlying desire will still matter when the product reaches the market." Belhaq credits the platform's code, and the industry experience behind it, with telling a structural micro trend from an ephemeral one.

Beyond AI as a faster search engine

Belhaq believes many beauty companies still underuse AI, treating it as a quicker way to find trends and summarize data. The bigger advantage, he argues, is reasoned judgment: challenging a proposition and laying out several credible routes forward with their trade-offs. One opportunity might support a quick extension using an existing supplier technology, or a more distinctive platform needing longer development.

"If all AI gives you is a quicker answer to what is trending, you are leaving the most valuable work on the table," he says. He expects brands that don't embrace this way of thinking to lose market share in the long run.

What should we learn next?

Looking ahead, Belhaq wants decision intelligence to guide where teams focus their effort. When a project carries several uncertainties, which one could change the decision most? Should the team run a technical test, talk to consumers, request a supplier quote or examine channel economics? Beauty also needs two kinds of feedback, he notes: product performance and human experience. A product can perform well technically and still fail to earn a place in someone's routine. Weak sales after launch, for instance, can reflect distribution or communication challenges as much as the product itself.

He also wants Nawa Nova to preserve the knowledge behind each decision: why a concept was chosen, which trade-offs were made and what was learned. Too often, that knowledge lives in individual people and leaves when they do. Keeping it, he says, helps a business keep improving as teams change.

For Belhaq, success means more deliberate investment choices and more distinctive products that people value. "I want every product decision," he says, "to begin with a clearer reason to exist."