Five reasons why new product developments fail
Many organisations are looking to innovation and, in particular, new product development to power them out of the recession and back into growth. In many cases, this requires companies to reinforce and reorganise their product development capabilities. Repeatedly introducing new products to market successfully certainly requires discipline, commitment and organisation; however, there are many potential product development pitfalls which can still catch out the unwary. Here are five major issues which can significantly affect the payback from a new product development:- Lack of customer focus- simply “listening to the customer” does little to guarantee a successful new product development.
- Lack of robustness and reliability- trying to "add" reliability and robustness late in the development process.
- Poor control of cost- decisions sometimes unconsciously taken during the specification, design and optimisation phases can lock in large costs which can subsequently be hard to reduce.
- Missing the market opportunity- projects become caught up in endless iterations of problem solving and quality improvement on the critical path, especially if it involves new technologies
- Working in functional “silos” - despite the importance of good communication, many new product development activities are still organised according to functional specialism, e.g. software, electronic hardware, mechanical etc.
Find out how to avoid these problems using Design for Six Sigma, DfSS.....
