Growth Strategies Seminar VIII
Issues In Innovation Series
Part 4 of 7
By: Anne Orban, MEd, NPDP
Question from GSSVIII:
What is the new product development process on the horizon? (Cooper’s basics seem to be out of favor).
“A Stage-Gate® system is a conceptual and operational road map for moving a new-product from idea to launch. Stage-Gate divides the effort into distinct stages separated by management decision gates. Cross-functional teams must successfully complete a prescribed set of related cross-functional tasks in each stage prior to obtaining management approval to proceed to the next stage of product development.” Product Development Institute Inc.®
The basics never go out of style and that is true of Cooper’s basics. The Stage/Gate® process developed by Robert G. Cooper was published in his book Winning at New Products: Accelerating the process from idea to launch in March, 2001. Since that time, PDMA best practices research, done in 2003 and 2004 and published in 2004 as the Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS), has shown that the best performers in new product development have a NPD strategy, formal development processes, and major reduction in cycle time. To a large extent, the best performers have strategically and effectively implemented a Stage/Gate process to provide the rigor and discipline for formal development processes that result in major reduction in cycle time. All of these elements contribute to improvements in the success of new product introductions.
If Stage/Gate is old news, then that’s good news for new product developers, because over 75% of companies in North America have a gated process, according to Ken Huskins, Director, Implementation and Training Services for Stage/Gate Inc. By its very nature, new product development represents high risk and therefore companies have to manage that risk. Stage/Gate helps manage risk and a well-implemented and managed Stage/Gate process helps do that optimally.
A common challenge for Stage/Gate implementation, like any business process when introduced, is the need for strong leadership. Since Stage/Gate requires changes and people are notorious for resisting change, then strategic and strong leadership is essential for buy-in at all levels of a company. A lack of awareness of theory and optimal practice of Stage/Gate can cause sub-optimal implementation reducing the process to what some have observed as a punitive process of pushing paper and checking boxes.
Balancing the Stage/Gate with the degree of complexity required by your company, or simply put, designing gates with the right metrics and amount of measurement -- not too much or too little, optimizes implementation and effectiveness. An optimized Stage/Gate process also enables the role of gatekeepers to make informed go/kill decisions with the right data, avoiding the trap of creating data for data’s sake.
The big, recent ah ha from Bob Cooper has been around the need for and role of process at the front end of innovation to fill the idea box. Chris Miller, founder of Innovation Focus has been onto that for years now. The Innovation Focus process Hunting for Hunting Grounds provides the needed process rigor and discipline for generating a portfolio of ideas for the first gate in Stage/Gate -- the idea screen after what Cooper calls the Discovery Stage.
There are critical success factors that all companies need to acknowledge, in addition to what is indicated above, that underlie excellent new product development performance. Stage/Gate as a system is only as good as its implementation and there is nothing new on the horizon to supplant it.
