Difficulties in New Product Development BY rajahs In business and engineering, new product development (NYPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths Involved In the NYPD process: one Involves the Idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and counterclaiming new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market hare.
There are a number of risks and challenges faced by organizations while they are developing new products, some of which are: – Failure of the new product development process – Failure of the product at the testing stage. – Problems in market acceptance. – unsuccessful launch of the new product. The firm can mitigate these risks and challenges by Investing In appropriate R & D practices, developing products according to demands and requirements of the market and investing appropriately in marketing and promotion of the product. New product development can stress an organization.
Change brings conflict! To manage stress involve other departments In the decision. Sales will eventually have to sell It, manufacturing make It and logistic ship It. So periodic meetings can keep everyone up to date and Limit surprises. Many new products fail. To minimize this possibility companies need to make sure their new product matches well with their customers needs. If the product benefits are matched by another in the marketplace, what incentive to customers have to switch. Some products fail because the market is too small.
Again good market research can help solve this problem. Companies can perform economic analysis to see if the arrest will generate sufficient profits to make it worthwhile to pursue. The Seven Sins of New Product Development company become seduced by the power of the dark side of new products. And from this experience we’ve seen seven common mistakes that even the best companies make when developing new products: or as we lovingly call them, the Seven Deadly Sins of New Product development. Pride – Not knowing your brand and its limitations.
Successful new products, like successful brands, are both relevant in some urgent way to the consumer and meaningfully different from the competition. Like everything else you do, your new products are more likely to be successful when they’re built on your brand promise. Sure, with enough money, Frito Lay could acquire the technology to manufacture and sell computer chips under the Lays brand name. But Lays core brand essence – flavor, crispness, and fun – doesn’t translate well to the computer-chip business, the essence of which is speed, accuracy and reliability.
Does that mean your company can never enter new markets? No, but you may have to adopt a different brand strategy. When Toyota wanted to crack the luxury-car market in the early ‘ass, they had to create a new brand, Lexus, because search revealed that people would not pay $45,000 for a Toyota. The Toyota brand promise didn’t stretch that far. New – Copycat innovation. We’ve all seen it. Your competitor beats you to the market with a cool new product. Your natural response is to get in on the action as quickly as possible.
Coors Elite, Chevy Venture and Pampers Easy Ups were not first in their category; nor do they have a real competitive advantage. They Just hope that they’ll get a piece of the pie because they happen to be there. Sometimes you have to play “me too. ” But if you really want to take leadership in a category created by a competitor, don’t Just look at heir success and try to copy it. Take your brand to the next level by finding a consumer insight that will change the rules of the game again. Bud Light did this by going beyond the functional benefits of light beer – “Tastes great. Less filling. – and gaining a deeper understanding of the emotional and social benefits light beer drinkers desire. Anger – Blaming others for our stupid mistakes. Not every new product idea is going to be commercially viable. Some may not attract a big enough market; some may not be technically feasible; and some may solve a problem nobody really has. The key is to learn to fail quickly and let go. Don’t get mad at engineering because they don’t have the technology to make your new plasma drive system. Don’t blame the consumer because they don’t see the benefit of vitamin fortified candy canes.
Get over it and get on to what’s next – the quicker the better. That means designing steps into your process to share ideas with consumers early and cheaply. There are many companies that use the Internet, consumer panels and other survey methods to help you do this. If you can’t explain your new product and its benefits in 100 words and a couple of quick drawings, you probably don’t have an idea. Sloth – The line extension trap. Line extensions seem to make so much sense. They’re easy and the trade loves them. So how can line extensions not be the right thing to do? Okay, this is a trick question.
In some cases, they are. In fact, many brands need line extensions to keep them fresh. But sooner or later every line will run out of places to which it can extend. Nobody wants asparagus sorbet (at least not enough to make it commercially viable). So if you want your brand to continue to grow, you have to find new platforms for growth. Don’t Just focus on line extensions to the exclusion of the next big idea that an transform your business and your category. By opening your mind to bigger poss. b lie sees, to the tar reaches to where your the Greed – Biting off more than you can chew. Rand mix NT stretch , you might Just tint One of the biggest mistakes we’ve seen in developing new products happens when companies try to solve everyone’s problem instead of one person’s problem. It’s really hard to create the perfect solution for 10 million people at once. You’re better off focusing on a few people who epitomize your target. Get to know your customers, not in focus groups and large-scale surveys, but by going in to their homes and seeing owe they live. Watch them in scientific ways. Listen to them with open ears and be prepared to learn from them.
Be there to see the friction points in their lives and feel their pain. Then make their lives easier with a killer new product idea. By understanding their frustrations, you create opportunities for your brand to improve their lives. The idea for the Black & Decker Snakelike came from being there when one person Gluttony – Too many people feeding at the trough of new products. New products are sexy, exciting and fun. In many companies, NYPD is where the action is. That is why everyone wants to attach him or herself to the latest new venture, and that creates two potential problems.
First, new products can draw an inordinate amount of attention and resources away from your core business. In the mid- Eighties, Apple spent a lot of time and money trying to compete head to head with IBM and Compact for the business market. By doing so, they came dangerously close to losing the two markets that had fueled their success, graphic design and education. The second problem with big NYPD teams is that they put too many cooks in the kitchen. There is an art to new product development and design that imitates will kill.
Committees water ideas down and lose sight of the consumer Lust – Not knowing when to stop. The best solutions are simple, elegant and often obvious. Once your customer has lived with it for a while, they wonder how they ever lived without it. Yet simple and obvious doesn’t make us, as inventors of new products, feel special or gratified. And it may not insulate us from our competitors. So we have a tendency to push beyond the simple to the more complex, complicated and convoluted. And we convince ourselves that since no one else could have put so many functions and features into a product it must be superior.
Until it hits the shelves and doesn’t sell because it’s over- engineered and costs way more than anyone is willing to pay. Avoid this trap by attaching the consumer insight or spark to the product as it goes through the [pick]development process. Then continually check back with consumers to make sure you haven’t strayed from the original intent. A successful product development strategy is dependent upon timing, planning, and realistic expectations. To achieve measurable product development results, you will need successfully address the pressure to bring innovative new products to market faster and more cost effectively.
