How effective is your innovation and new product development growth engine? Is it firing on all cylinders or sputtering? Do any of these statements seem familiar to you?
We have lots of ideas, but not enough resources to act on all of them, and no consistent way to select the best ideas. We waste scarce and valuable resources on mediocre and low value projects. Consequently, we struggle to launch truly breakthrough new products.
Less than 30% of our sales come from new products launched in the previous three years. We are living with our past success and are losing our competitive edge and market share.
We have too many “solutions looking for a problem.” We have a lot of promising technologies and inventions but we struggle to identify viable markets and customers who want them. So, we throw them over the wall and hope sales can figure out how to sell them.
The market landscape has changed but we haven’t kept up with the new realities. We are drifting along with no compelling vision or goals. We frankly do not know what direction to take. Consequently, our decision making process suffers and we muddle our way through hoping things will get better.
We get most of our market and customer inputs from our sales and internal resources. Consequently, more often than not we really don’t know what customers want and end up developing new products with poor and missing requirements, and loaded with features customers don’t value.
We are working hard and trying to get more done with less. Morale around here is really suffering. We need to rethink our product development priorities and processes, or risk major burnout and defections from our employees.
We have too many “zombie” projects. Projects that just won’t go away despite our efforts to kill them. Consequently, we go back and forth killing and reviving these projects, wasting precious resources on questionable projects and never fully committing to promising projects.
We have too many custom solutions, requiring too many resources to support “one-offs,” resulting in too few resources for new product development.
We never have enough time to do projects right the first time but always have enough time to do it over again. Consequently, development cost and time-to-market objectives overrun and market share is lost.
We have lost our entrepreneurial spirit. Too many of our early ideas are dismissed because they are deemed distractions and not worth the risk.
If two or more of these statements seem familiar to you, isn’t it time you reexamine your product development strategy and processes? Developing and launching successful new products on time and within budget is possible. It doesn’t have to be a struggle.
There are specific skills, methods and practices associated with new product planning, development and introductions that can help any company improve its ability to detect, define, develop and deliver the best ideas with the best chance of success.
But don’t wait for things to improve on their own, they won’t. Take action and rethink your product development strategy and plan for success.
Here’s to your new breakthroughs!
Kevin
PS: Schedule a complimentary no-obligation Innovation Strategy Session to discover how you compare to the “best in class” successful innovators, what’s working and not working with your current NPD systems, and new ideas on how to breakout of the product doldrums and launch breakthrough new products. You will leave the conversation clear about the issues you are facing in creating customer attracting new products and excited about what’s possible.