Posts Tagged ‘npd process’

2012 Innovation Resolution: Turning Ideas Into Money

Monday, January 9th, 2012

happy-new-year-2012Innovation is an indispensable force that turns ideas into money. It is the lifeblood of any organization. In order to implement sustainable Innovation in 2012, you need to define innovation in a manner that makes strategic sense for your organization, and have the know-how to properly construct and use a process, plus the will to keep the process on course.

The task may seem daunting at first, but it’s possible to develop a disciplined strategy that delivers Innovation time and time again for sustained long-term profitability. Make developing that strategy your 2012 New Year’s Resolution. “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” outlines specific steps to implement Innovation. Here are some tips:

1. Define your organization’s needs. What type of innovation are you trying to achieve? An incremental innovation that introduces a new process or feature? Or a transformative breakthrough that completely changes the marketplace? The latter is more difficult to achieve but holds the greatest potential. Choosing the path that makes the most sense for your organization will help in the Innovation process.

2. Formulate a New Product Development process. Each organization’s NPD process can have a different number of steps, so long as they form a structured plan. A three stage plan may include: Stage 1 Product Definition where a product is examined for its brand strategy, profit potential, and competitive analysis. If the product is a “go” then it moves to Stage 2: the Qualification process where a first article product is made and tested for quality assurance. Finally, Stage 3 is Revenue where the product is launched.

3. Create a road map to success. The key elements are examining Quality of projects, Capability of managing them successfully, and Capacity of the organization for maintaining a portfolio of well-managed projects. No matter what NPD process you decide to use, stick to the road map to ensure that each stage, and tasks within each stage, are clearly defined.

4. Some more guidelines for progress: remember to stick to your go/no-go criteria for moving forward with developments. All projects should undergo the same scrutiny, regardless of who suggested it! Also, many organizations are incorporating a “discovery phase” into the Innovation process to allow for more experimentation. This step is beneficial for making decisions based on long-term sustainable Innovation, and not on current budget restraints alone.

In a world of increasing business competition, Innovation is key to a company’s survival. Creating an Innovation strategy that makes sense for your organization is entirely feasible, and an absolute must for creating profit for your company.

Here’s to a New Year of Innovation!

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Keep the Idea Highway Open to All

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Innovation advances your company towards the future – generating new products or services, boosting profits and increasing stakeholder value. To develop Innovation, the first step is to Inspire and Initiate your organization’s members. Innovation leaders need to provide the right support, both material and emotional, to stimulate new product development (NPD).

What are effective methods of inspiring innovation? For starters, keep the idea highway open to all. Good ideas can come from anywhere within your company and from any level. Communicate your innovation goals to the organization and encourage everyone’s feedback. Setting regular monthly in-person NPD meetings will ensure that the innovation process doesn’t fall off course. Hold your team members accountable for attending on time and actively participating at each meeting. Monitor progress, make new decisions and set target goals for the next meeting to steer the innovation process along.

The best way to stimulate innovation is to take team members out of their regular comfort zones. Knock down silos in the organization so that groups who don’t typically interact can form cross-functional teams. Take innovation champions from marketing, operations, finance, sales, customer service – or any other department of your company – and communicate to them simply and clearly your innovation goals and how your vision will shape the future of the company. By working with other departments, team members can see how their position fits into the organization as a whole and how they can contribute their specialized knowledge.

Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization and in order to achieve it, CEOs and Management team should lead by example. Encourage, inspire and initiate your team to be creative and to make breakthroughs. Let them dare to take risks, and accept failure along the way as a minor setback for the price of Innovation. By openly communicating and providing ample support, your team members will trust in you as a leader who wants to inspire a culture of Innovation.

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How to Measure Innovation

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

No matter if it’s a test score, sports game result or a sales figure, what we measure is what goes down in history. After all, “what’s measured is treasured.” It’s human nature to look back at past results as a basis for comparison and for improvement in the future. For this reason, it is absolutely essential to carefully observe and measure performance in the New Product Development process. In each of the different stages of the process, keep track of how much time is being spent so you know if you are ahead or behind schedule compared to past NPD cycles.

What gets measured is what gets done. Therefore, it’s necessary to set leading and lagging indicators for how the NPD process is going. Leading indicators such as the number of new ideas in the database, number of projects in the hopper, patents applied to, and amount of time and resources spent are all important information that give you insight on the NPD progress. Lagging indicators could include number of new products introduced, patents granted, new product sales in the first three years after launch, and how close your team is getting to the goal of introducing “at least one new product per year.”

By the way the traditional measurement of % of R&D spend is no guarantee for success!

Things will not always go as planned so now is the opportunity to make corrective actions. By measuring performance, you will be able to address your team on what’s working and what’s not for continuous improvement.

Success in product development is seen as one of the top indicators of the future performance of a company. To sustain Innovation, companies need to continuously improve their new product development capabilities. Quantitative and qualitative measurements of new product development will lend insights into a company’s strengths and weaknesses.

Measuring performance doesn’t stop after your product is launched. Now it’s time to measure the fruits of your labor. Some very important and telling information can be collected during the first three years after the launch of a product. In a survey of 200 companies that design and develop new products, they shared these key performance indicators.

1. Measure Research & Development spending as a percentage of your total sales.

2. Look at your total number of patents filed, pending, awarded and rejected.

3. Track your total R&D head count, hours or days spend.

4. Measure the current year percentage of sales due to new products released in the past year, past three years, and past five years.

5. Count the number of new products released.

These metrics should be examined after every New Product Development cycle so you are clear on your spendings and ROI for each product. Look at your ratio of new product sales compared to total sales. Now you have a basis for comparison and can set a target goal for the next new product. This management by objectives style uses ongoing monitoring and is an effective method for keeping the NPD team focused on achieving goals. By looking at opportunities in the New Product Development process to increase ROI, companies are able to improve performance and ultimately, increase shareholder value.

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Is Your Team Held Accountable?

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

Before the start of any project, do you ask yourself, “Are my team members held accountable? Do they feel a personal responsibility to deliver the goods?” If you haven’t made the steps to communicate that message yet, it is essential to lay down that foundation in the beginning. For that reason, Accountability is the most important of the ten imperatives in Robert’s Rules of Innovation. In his book, Robert Brands describes the ten factors that must be achieved in order to create and sustain Innovation in business – and it all starts with Accountability.

Accountability is an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions. After all, as the leader of a New Product Development team in any organization, how do you expect your team members to deliver satisfactory results within the desired timeframe? Make it clear from the beginning exactly what is expected of each team member and that they are held accountable for their work. Let your team know that, as members of the organization and members of the NPD team, it is their responsibility to contribute, to pull their own weight and to hold firm to deadlines. Otherwise, deadlines can slip with no real improvements made, and the end result may lead to finger pointing for who’s responsible. Don’t let that happen to your NPD process. (more…)

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Innovation Requires Risk Taking

Monday, November 15th, 2010

“If you’ve never failed… you’ve never lived” is a popular video on YouTube describing the failures of people like Thomas Edison, once called “too stupid to learn” by his teacher and Walt Disney, who was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination”. Not every idea succeeds, and indeed, some of America’s most triumphant inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have most likely failed at some point in their lives. But without risk and the possibility of failure, there can be no Innovation and no success. That is precisely one of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” imperatives: No Risk, No Innovation. (more…)

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Innovation and the Necessity to Inspire

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

In order for organizations to successfully achieve Innovation – the lifeblood of any company – Robert’s Rules of Innovation gives ten imperatives to follow in order to attain sustainable growth. The ten imperatives begin with the first step that needs to be accomplished before any progress can be made, and that is to Inspire and Initiate. After all, every team needs inspiration to begin a New Product Development process that will drive them towards successful Innovation.

Inspiration for companies comes from the leaders, so it is the leader’s responsibility to initiate and drive the innovation program. For the program to be taken seriously and incorporated as part of the company’s culture itself, the CEO or designated leader must set a schedule of regular meetings. Regular, in-person meetings are the only way for team members to accept the serious non-wavering intentions, recognize the goals and deadlines of the project and ensure that the innovation program will not just fall off the map. It’s easy to instruct team members to be conscientious of Innovation, but new products will not come to fruition unless members feel a sense of accountability and urgency for the NPD process. (more…)

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Observe & Measure for Continuous Improvement

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Of the ten imperatives of Robert’s Rules of Innovation, this step is all about continuous improvement. It is necessary to Observe and Measure throughout the Innovation process, or else, how would you recognize successful Innovation? A system of metrics will objectively show your progress and success each step of the way. Plan. Do. Check. Act. It’s essential to follow a course of actions that produce ongoing improvement.

So first, gather initial observations and measurements at the beginning of the NPD process. It’s necessary to establish a baseline or starting point and measurable facts versus subjective assessments.

Secondly, to have an optimal measurements, one should establish leading and lagging indicators – leading to show where you are heading, and lagging to show you rearview mirror observations.

Examples of leading indicators can be patents filed, ideas created and in the hopper, as well as development time spent. Lagging indicators include patents granted, new products introduced and percentage of new product sales compared to total sales. (more…)

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Why Results Require Rewards: Encouraging Action With Incentive

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Imagine a company that has taken the time to consider the role of Innovation in the corporate mission. Employees were encouraged to be part of the innovation process but their reward was compensation linked strictly to output.

Does that encourage value-added thought process? In my mind, it encourages work, which should need no encouragement at all.

(more…)

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