| Join Our List | |
Weekly Blog
|
|
Effective Early Stage NPD Processes |
Market Research and the Fuzzy Front End
Profitable New Product Innovation requires executing three  key foundational principles with excellence. Each of these principles is supported and maintained by the people that ensure effective organizational structure, easy-to-use systems and tools, as well as targeted market research to support the technical innovations. Sustaining the New Product Development (NPD), these foundational principles are summarized here.
· Senior Leadership Team provides clear strategic direction for the NPD team by defining the market, the technology, and the desired product.
· Timely Portfolio Management reviews focus resources on the right projects by evaluating match with business strategy, financial and economic models, and/or other scoring methods.
· Efficient, stream-lined NPD Processes enable and empower the NPD team by allowing effective and efficient market research methods within the advantaged market and technology platforms.
In this paper, we look at effective techniques for market research paired with the Fuzzy Front End. Read more at www.globalnpsolutions.com or download the paper - Download Now
|
|
|
|
|
Greetings!
First, we want to thank you for the continued overwhelming response to The Village and our monthly innovation white papers.
 However, with this fantastic popularity, we've had to conduct some behind-the-scenes upgrades to the Global NP Solutions web site in order to handle the traffic while still bringing you leading edge information. To defray some of these costs, we are unfortunately forced to begin charging a nominal download fee for each new white paper.
Or, you can register as a GNPS Premier Member here and have access to the white papers, the Idea Incubator weekly blog, and special discounts for PDH (continuing ed) webinars and NPD workshops.
Again, thanks for your continued support and Happy Innovating! |
|
Innovation Fun Fact | |
Summer is Here - Let's Surf!
On Captain James Cook's third expedition to the Pacific, his ships, HMS Discovery and Resolution, made the first recorded European visit to Hawai'i in 1778, when they stopped at the western end of the island chain on their way from Tahiti to the northwest coast of North America. After a frustrating year fruitlessly looking for a passage from the North Pacific into the Atlantic, Cook brought his ships back to the Hawaiian chain, this time stopping at the Big Island of Hawai'i. There, at Kealakekua Bay, Cook was killed by Hawaiians when he made a misguided attempt to kidnap their high chief to force the return of a stolen boat.
Lieutenant James King was made First Lieutenant of the  Discovery and was given the task of completing the narrative portion of Cook's journals. After Cook's death in 1779 but before the Discovery and Resolution returned to England, Lt. King devoted two full pages to a description of surfboard riding, as practiced by the locals at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona coast of the Big Island. This was the first record of surfing!
Today 2.5 Million Americans are surfers and over 60% of Australians are active surfers.
Click on the surfer above to see how surfboards are made. (5-minute video) |
|
Recommended Reading | |
Mastering Lean Product Development
 Ron Mascitelli has a winner on his hands with this new book. Mastering Lean Product Development will knock most traditional New Product Development programs on their ear. With practical advice and tools to speed the innovation process, Mastering Lean Product Development is a must-read for all NPD practitioners, managers, and designers wanting to improve their time-to-market from idea to launch.
|
| 3 Principles of Lean NPD | | |
An Introduction
Recently, the New Product Development (NPD) literature has been packed with references to "lean". One firm reports an improvement in cycle time from one year to just over five months using lean NPD methods. But, just what exactly is lean?
Lean manufacturing generally refers to the Toyota Production system, which revolutionized the automobile industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Thorough analysis of factory lay-outs, worker/machine interfaces, time queues, and spare parts/inventory management processes led to drastically improved productivity and quality measures. Soon, we began hearing about "lean enterprises," "lean office," and now "lean new product development."
Fundamentally, lean is a philosophy that shifts from a linear sequence to an integrated approach. Lean methods are designed to remove variability from the process, yet what it takes to develop a new product is very different than what it takes to maintain ongoing activities. Therefore, lean NPD should be viewed as a subset of a lean strategy for an entire production system. And, of course, lean techniques cannot turn a bad idea into a great product with high profitability.
In this paper, we will focus on three steps to lean.
1. Customer Focus,
2. Rapid Feedback, and
3. Eliminate Waste. Download Now |
|
|
