My
new book,
Summary
Not enough people are involved early on the project. The more people you have involved the more likely you will detect errors. Executives are often brought in late to the project when their ability to influence its direction is small.
New Product Development: The more, the merrier
Over-involve is the new over-communicate
Typically when a group starts to work on a new idea, they
tend to work out its feasibility in a small, tightly held
team until they have a proto-type or at least a full-fledged
business case and plan. At this point, they start to get
the other functions involved to make the concept a reality.
This is when the initial team first learns that the manufacturing
process is untenable or the raw material costs are prohibitive
or the design impinges on someone else's patent.
In every new product development improvement initiative
I've ever worked on, we have identified the need to get
all the functions involved upfront to work on the concept
or prototype together. Yet because resources tend to be
so stretched, we don't want to involve people from other
areas on a concept that might not work out. Otherwise, we
look foolish. The flip side of this is, of course, we could
eliminate many more projects earlier on if we involved all
the needed expertise at the beginning and thus decrease
the total workload.
The critical success factor in developing new products is
to detect the problems and errors as early as possible in
the process. Getting as many people as you can involved
early means there are more people who can test, theorize,
research, and give input on how to improve the product and,
hence, enhance its chances of success. Even getting customers
involved in the development process greatly improves the
product quality. Yet, because we don't want to look foolish,
we often wait until we've "perfected" our concept before
we popularize it.
The higher, the better
A corollary to The More, The Merrier to also get the involvement
of the executive team early on in the development process.
Usually, executives don't review new product plans until
the plans or prototypes are fully fleshed out. This is for
the same reason as above. They are very busy and don't want
to waste their time on projects that won't pan out. However,
to paraphrase Chris Meyer at CalTech, the level of senior
management involvement on a project increases over time
as their ability to actually influence the project direction
decreases. These are the people who know the most
about the direction of the company and about past experiences
and the people whose support of a innovative new product
is most needed.
This is just another reason to make sure that your company
is not working on too many projects at once. Your leadership
team can only attend to a finite number of projects.
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