Simple Ways to Implement Successful Innovation in Your Firm

          Success in New Product Development (NPD) is an oft-studied, yet sometimes elusive, objective of even the most progressive firms.  While some firms view success as achieving the technical goals of an innovation program and others view success as being first to market with a new idea, most companies view success in terms of profitability.

          For example, only slightly more than half of new products introduced by firms in the previous five year period were successful.  A mortality rate of 10 out of 11 projects, coupled with an average of three years to commercialize a new product (1), are facts that clearly illustrate that most companies have significant room for improvement in their innovation processes.  About one-third of firms revise and update their NPD processes every three to five years (1).  Furthermore, the companies that perform the “best” realized a 75% success rate in new product commercialization as compared to only 54% for the “rest” (1). 

          Literally reams of case studies are published yearly as examples of success in NPD.  But how do you translate one firm’s success in another industry to innovation in your field of expertise?

          In this paper, we present five simple steps to profitable NPD.  Each is easy to implement.  These steps can be put into practice by senior management, NPD project leaders, NPD team members, and/or cross-functional development teams.

  1. Create a Process.
  2. Keep it Simple.
  3. Communicate.
  4. Kill Bad Projects.
  5. Conduct Post-Launch Reviews.

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Reference

 

1. Trends and Drivers of Success in NPD Practices: Results of the 2003 PDMA Best Practices Study. Barczak, Gloria, Griffin, Abbie and Kahn, Kenneth B. 2009, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 26, pp. 3-23.

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c 2011 Global NP Solutions, LLC

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