FAQs
What type of companies attend?
Big and small companies, service and product companies, B2B, consumer, military, high tech, medical, 
chemical, banks, service companies, dot orgs, virtually any company the develops new products or services.
Who should attend the New Product Development Seminar?
- Everyone associated with New Product Development
- Market Managers
- Product Managers
- Brand Managers
- Project Managers
- R&D Personnel
- Financial people associated with NPD
- Operations Management
- Production Engineers
- Sales and other Marketing personnel
- Intellectual Property Managers and Lawyers
- All Engineers, Business managers, and everyone associated with innovation.
What type of companies attend?
Big and small companies, service and product companies, B2B, consumer, military, high tech, medical, chemical, banks, service companies, dot orgs, virtually any company the develops new products or services.
Why is the New Product Development Seminar different from other seminars?
- All of our instructors are practioners with demonstrated NPD success in a variety of business, B2B and Consumer, with numerous patents and hundreds of successful products.
- Our people have been trained by General Electric, Honeywell, the CIA, Proctor and Gamble, to name a few.
- Our instructors teach and mentor corporate executives, MBA and doctor students at leading universities.
- We provide key workshops that focus on the “fuzzy front end” of product development where over two thirds of product failures begin.
- Our software for screening and portfolio prioritization is unique and easily customizable to every company.
- We are the only company to integrate international teaming expert Harvey Robbins into the New Product Development training because people are the most critical component of success.
- We present best practices with examples and integrate them into four key best practice workshops.
Is this for managers of practioners?
Both! Often attendees wish they had their managers there and many companies send teams and many of our attendees are more attendees from the same company.
Are our competitors there?
Yes, and why aren’t you? There are some cases where we have competitors in the same session and if that is an issue, just tell us when you register.
What type of software do you provide during training seminars?
Objective screening and Portfolio Prioritization software. Over 200 companies have used our software.
Is the software easy to use?
Yes. All our screening and portfolio management software is Microsoft Excel based and easy to customize.
What topics are covered?
The Core topics of the New Product Development Seminar are:
- The NPD Process.
- Strategy-Converting Corporate Strategy into Strategy Policy.
- VOC and the NPD Team.
- Documenting Ideas, Concepts and New Products.
- Screening, ranking and prioritizing projects for development.
- Keys to Gate Review Success.
- Accelerating New Products without risk.
- Integrating Six Sigma into NPD.
- NPD Communication.
- Teaming for NPD.
- NPD Best Practices.
We also offer Product Management and Brand Management Seminar that focus on Total Product Life Cycle Management
How much experience is required to better understand the material and benefit from this training?
We have people who are new to NPD and many who have as much as 20 years of experience who are learning new techniques, best practices or benchmarking their company’s processes.
Can your New Product Development Seminars be customized for our company?
Yes. We train many companies and also help audit their processes and often help train all their NPD teams.
Would you recommend one person from a company attending or a team attending?
TEAMS! This is a tremendous opportunity to train the team and get hands on training and experience during the workshops as a team.
What is the difference between NPD and Project management?
Often little, but most often a lot. NPD begins with strategy, then ideas developed into concepts, researched, developed into products or services(typically the project manager role), and launched into the market place. Business Plans, financials, P&L, market research are all key components in NPD and we recommend that project managers attend to better understand the big picture as well as to help direct you into becoming more effective as a member of the NPD team. The bigger the company, the more often a project manager manages the projects of a Product, Marketing or Brand Manager.
How is the New Product Development Seminar presented?
Approximately one third is interactive lecture, one third is class examples and one third is hands-on workshops.
Does this count toward any certification?
Yes. The Two-Day session is worth toward your PDMA certification.
Will I learn anything that I can directly apply to my NPD Process?
YES! From learning how to create the PIC (Product Innovation Charter) to translate corporate strategy into strategic policy to screening and team leadership, there are tools and lessons based on best practices and research into NPD that can have immediate impact on NPD success and most important, provide tools and processes for continuous innovation.