New Product Development: Creating High Performing Teams
By harveyrobbins | April 16, 2008
Harvey Robbins talks about one of the critical ingredients for high performing new product development teams. He explains the characteristics of each of the personality styles and how to meet their expectations.
Catch our Free New Product Development Webcast on Thursday, April 17 at 3.30pm CST. Register now at http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/webcast/
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New Product Development: Using NPD Screening Tools
By harveyrobbins | April 16, 2008
In this video, Harvey Robbins interviews Rob Beachy on the importance of using objective screening tools to prioritize products in your new product development process. Rob gives examples of the kinds of tools he recommends to his clients. While there are a variety of screening tools Rob discusses here, it is important to note that any screening process is better than none. You all have loads of products that you’re working on simultaneously. Unfortunately, resource limitations prevent you from bringing them all to market. By using appropriate screening tools, you can prioritize your new product development efforts and eliminate products that won’t cut it in the market before you waste too much time and money; bringing to market only those products that have a higher chance of meeting your financial/market penetration goals.
Catch our Free New Product Development Webcast on Thursday, April 17 at 3.30pm CST. Register now at http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/webcast/
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New Product Development: Establishing a Sound Process
By harveyrobbins | April 16, 2008
In this video, Harvey Robbins continues to interview Rob Beachy on the requirements for creating an effective overall new product development process, the importance of a strategic process and how to define the necessary communication links. Rob discusses some of the options that great companies use to develop this strategic process for new product development, how using such a process can keep your new product development efforts on track (not diverted by the whims of influential internal others), and why communication via teamwork is so critical to product success.
Catch our Free New Product Development Webcast on Thursday, April 17 at 3.30pm CST. Register now at http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/webcast/
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New Product Development: The Voice of the Customer
By harveyrobbins | April 16, 2008
In this video, Harvey Robbins continues interviewing Rob Beachy (an expert in New Product Development) on how to discover the Voice of the Customer; one of the most important steps in the five-step process to creating an effective new product development culture.
Most of the product failures that are documented find that lack of a clear process for finding out what the customer actually wants and needs, rather than what the marketing or engineering departments think would be cool to have or what management thinks the market needs, is the main culprit preventing you from getting the right products to market. It’s the old adage of the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Unfortunately, it may not be what your customers want.
Catch our Free New Product Development Webcast on Thursday, April 17 at 3.30pm CST. Register now at http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/webcast/
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New Product Development: The Product Innovation Charter
By harveyrobbins | April 16, 2008
In this video, Harvey Robbins interviews Rob Beachy (a noted New Product Development expert) on the five characteristics that represent the best New Product Development process. In it, Rob talks about the difficulties of the “fuzzy front end” and the need to have a direction using such tools as the Process Innovation Charter (PIC) and the need to develop a strategic New Product Development policy.
Rob talks about the importance of having a single one-page document that tells everyone in your organization (from the CEO to the secretary) what the company’s market is, what products it is pursuing and why. Much of what is discussed here is covered in greater details in the New Product Development white paper which can be downloaded for free from http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/whitepaper/.
Catch our Free New Product Development Webcast on Thursday, April 17 at 3.30pm CST. Register now at http://www.newproductdevelopmentseminar.com/webcast/
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Broadcast of New Product Development Solutions for Innovation Crisis on Webcast
By harveyrobbins | April 14, 2008
Two internationally renowned business experts, Rob Beachy, an expert in New Product Development process, and Dr. Harvey Robbins, a licensed psychologist and team building expert, are collaborating to present a ground breaking New Product Development webcast at 3.30pm CST on Thursday, April 17th, 2008. The webcast will help solve the innovation crisis that is currently beleaguering major corporations.
Minneapolis, MN, April 15, 2008 — New Product Development expert, Rob Beachy and internationally renowned psychologist Dr. Harvey Robbins are joining together to present a webcast on “The Innovation Crisis: Keys to Re-engineering New Product Development.” The webcast will be at 3.30pm CST on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 and will present many ways of overcoming the innovation crisis in new product development today and get the ideas flowing again.
“To keep ideas flowing we need a process that not only collects, directs and builds upon ideas, but gets those ideas to the product managers or other responsible parties to evaluate, prioritize and implement them,” said Rob Beachy. Read the rest of this entry »
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Gate Jumping: Zero Risk Accelerated New Product Development
By robbeachy | April 1, 2008
There is a zero risk way to accelerate product development and it improves productivity saving time and resources and it’s free! Most New Product Development processes have stages or gates but the best processes have a secret to accelerating new product development by permitting any project to ENTER the process at the stage or the gate where they MEET all the requirements of that stage.
Simply, if you have a five gate/stage process and your project meets all the requirements for stage 3, you start at stage 3, not one, saving documentation time, management review, and meetings often as much as 1,000 hours in larger projects.
Not every project can do this, but some projects have been better researched and more well thought out and have all the details and basis to enter the process at the development gate/stage. Other cases that merit acceleration to a downstream gate are when you have a product or service similar to an existing one, or the project is simple, such as color or minor attribute changes or updates, so there is no need to waste time and resources starting from scratch.
It is zero risk, but there are three key issues with Gate Jumping, the first, and most obvious is making sure that every requirement is met.
The second is an issue with all projects in product development and that is finding the resources to do the project. Read the rest of this entry »
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New Product Development Report Offers Powerful Keys to Overcome Innovation Crisis
By harveyrobbins | February 27, 2008
New Product Development expert, Rob Beachy and renowned team dynamics expert, Harvey Robbins, have written an exciting new White Paper, “The Innovation Crisis: Keys to Re-engineering New Product Development.” NPD practitioners will discover the 5 key new product development processes that the most innovative and successful companies like Apple, Microsoft and GE use to stay ahead of the competition.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 27, 2008 - Rob Beachy and Harvey Robbins are excited to announce that they have collaborated on a new White Paper on New Product Development called “The Innovation Crisis: Keys to Re-engineering New Product Development,” which is available online as a complimentary download at http://www.newproductdevelopment
seminar.com/whitepaper/. The fact that only about 10% of innovations get to the marketplace and that 60% of product failures are due to failure to meet the customer requirements, really underlines the need for expert guidance in the New Product Developement. The lack of such guidance has been the driving force behind this collaboration to produce this new White Paper.
“The secret to successful New Product Development is really not a big mystery, nor is it easy. If you look at companies that continually produce a stream of successful, innovative new products, you’ll notice that they share these five basic characteristics,” said Rob Beachy. These characteristics and good executive leadership are key to continual New Product Developement success.
“Direction should be given by the firm but gentle hand of management throughout the entire New Product Development process,” said Rob Beachy. “And yet more time is lost in management inattention or indecision than in any other area of New Product Development.” Just how to benefit from that direction and to limit the time lost are two important aspects that the White Paper explains.
Harvey Robbins goes on to explain that “critical to New Product Development success is your ability to create high performing teams. The very fate of your New Product Development efforts depends on the ability of team members to get on the same wavelength as others. You can’t even begin to align your New Product Development team’s vision vertically and horizontally within your organization until you address the thorny issue of toxic relationships,” he said. “How you get people on a team to work effectively together across these differences is known as versatility, which is the number one skill of effective leaders.”
“Unfortunately, not every organization makes the connection between excellent teamwork and excellent innovation,” said Robbins. Read the rest of this entry »
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Idea Management – How to Inspire, Gather, Develop and Manage Innovation
By robbeachy | February 27, 2008
Ideas are essential. That being said, you just can’t generate ideas in a vacuum; throwing ideas up against the wall that are not aligned with the organization’s vision, mission, and values. Generating a constant flow of ideas cannot succeed in a random way. They need to be created within an on-going consistent process.
Without a constant stream of ideas for new products, productivity, quality, and process improvement most organizations decline rapidly. But few organizations have well documented and refined processes in place for managing ideas.
What is Idea Management?
Project management and product management are familiar terms, but few organizations practice Idea Management, which is a systematic process for…
- Having a place for ideas to go and be documented
- Giving direction to the types of ideas needed
- Collecting ideas
- Communicating ideas to the right people
- Building upon ideas
- Building ideas into concepts
- Classifying concepts
- Prioritizing concepts
- Storing ideas and concepts
- Tracking ideas from start through implementation
- Reporting on ideas and giving feedback to the submitter
Before you can have good ideas we need three essentials:
1). A format or best a form and process for gathering, reviewing and giving feedback to new ideas.
2). We need a system, where we can post the ideas for others to view, review and “build” on these ideas.
3). We need to provide direction about what we need ideas for, a literal laundry list of the knowns in our business from cost improvement to new to the business products.
To keep ideas flowing we need a process that not only collects, directs and builds upon ideas, but gets those ideas to the product managers or other responsible parties to evaluate, prioritize and implement them. Read the rest of this entry »
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Teamwork and Collaboration: Overcoming the Barriers to New Product Development Success
By harveyrobbins | February 27, 2008
Not everyone believes in innovation, creativity and new product development. Of course, those are individuals who work for organizations who are destined to fail. If you work for a boss who doesn’t believe that new product development should be high on your priority list, then move to a different department or go work for someone else. With all the competition in the marketplace, your very survival as a company depends on the life blood brought about by your new product development efforts.
Critical to new product development success is you ability to create high performing teams. Unfortunately, not every organization makes the connection between excellent teamwork and excellent innovation. They go hand in hand. New product development depends upon the ability of the organization to muster resources and efforts across departments and functions…in a collaborative spirit.
Once again, however, human behavior tends to create hurdles which must be overcome to create the collaboration needed for new product development success. These hurdles are created by the natural human struggle between people’s desires to collaborate on one hand and the human tendency to beat your opponent bloody in competitive games on the other.
To start creating the collaboration you need, you first need to define who the “enemy” really is. It’s not the person in the department down the hall or across town who works for your very same company. It’s the real competitor who is trying to take the meat off your table. Read the rest of this entry »
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