Strategic Innovation:
Product Roadmap
Product roadmaps
define new product and service initiatives within a market of technology
context. They embody a large percentage of the
corporate strategy and provide a degree of tangibility that helps bring
together other choices in direction, technology, marketing and so forth to
the surface. Furthermore, starting with product roadmaps forces people to be
explicit about how their ideas translate into new products or services.2
It is vital for developing product roadmaps to discover assumptions beneath
the selection of products...More
Product / Service
Innovation
Product/service innovation is the result of bringing to life
a new way to solve the customer's problem that benefit both the customer and
the sponsoring company.3 "New product
innovation is where the source of growth and prosperity is. It is also now
possible, with the range of new product
innovation metrics tools
available, to measure new product innovation much more precisely and
intelligently."4
Innovation Portfolio
The innovation portfolio provides
visibility that allows your firm pace the introduction of new products and
services. You should balance the introduction of
revolutionary products with
incremental improvements in others so as to maintain a steady flow. By
having a comprehensive view of your initiatives over time, you can avoid
either overwhelming or underwhelming the marketplace...More
Critical Milestones
The critical milestones in you customer value creation and
new product development program can be divided into four groups:
-
Identify customer needs
-
Understand the market opportunity
-
Prepare to enter the market, and
-
Succeed in generating revenue...More
Research
Research should be a vital ingredient in your
company's
strategies, particularly over the longer term, if you are to maintain a
stream of competitive products on the market.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is not just a valuable creative tool at the
fuzzy front end of projects. It's also "a
pervasive cultural influence for making sure that individuals don't waste
too much energy spinning their wheels on a tough problem when the collective
wisdom of the team can get them "unstuck" in less than an hour."4...More
New Product Metrics
You cannot manage what you don't measure.
New product metrics motivates managers and leaders across your
organization to embrace innovation
broadly and give it ongoing priority. The adage "that which gets measured
gets done" is no less true of the innovation
process than any other.
Case in Point:
Intel
Intel uses the innovation portfolio
approach to adjust the rate at which they introduce new microprocessors
based on the margins they can get for the existing products. "Their
portfolio provides visibility across products and product generations,
enabling them to maximize the profits they reap from each other."5
Case in Point:
New Product Performance Problems
Management of a major chemical company cited the following
new product performance problems4:
-
Unclear career path for commercial development / new
product personnel
-
Unclear assignment of ultimate new product responsibility
-
Lack of formalized screening and
measurement criteria
-
Concerns regarding
management's
real commitment to new products
-
Insufficient
incentives to encourage risk taking
-
Lack of a well defined divisional
new
product strategy
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