NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSWhy do you need a product development process? Quite simply it controls the costs and time taken to develop a new product. More importantly, it helps your organisation to look on product development as investment rather than risk. When you examine companies that succeed in product development (3M, Sony, Black & Decker, Polaroid) they have one thing in common, the development is divided into a number of stages. Because this article discusses products in their widest sense, covering not only hard products but services as well, we have created an idealised set of stages that should be applicable no matter your industry or the size of your project.
attacking problems? How do you capture and assess these ideas and distil them down to the ones that are worth investing more time and effort in?
expected return? This requires a number of questions to be answered. What is the market potential? Is it technically feasible? What are the timescales? How will it affect existing products? How will the competition react? And so on. On this information, the decision to go ahead and invest will be made.
translation into some form of prototype or pilot service. The key is that perceived customer needs are translated into a possible solution to these needs. In reality, the design or development of the product or service will continue into subsequent stages as the product or service is refined to the point that is released to the market.
so that the sales, customer, manufacturing and support organisations can test and modify the product. One outcome of this stage could be that the concept was wrong, there is no market, and the product should stop prior to committing to the expense of releasing it into the market.
correct sales channels, ramping up the volume of business and supporting the product.
Unfortunately, when this activity is not planned the need to develop new products is often triggered by falling sales. At this point, there may not be enough time for new products to be developed. |
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