Maximizing Productivity In Product Innovation
Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett

Recent evidence suggests that productivity in new product development (NPD) is declining; that is, we are seeing less output (measured in terms of impact on the business) for the same relative spending level.
This article outlines seven practices or principles which, according to studies of NPD practices and performance, will increase NPD productivity after they are embraced.

The Thought Column with Bob Cooper, Creator of the Stage-Gate^® Idea-to-Launch Process Dr. Robert G. Cooper

Productivity in new product development (NPD) is down when measured by output over input. Companies are still spending the same amount of money on R&D as a percentage of sales that they always did; but the percentage of sales from new products was down from about 32% to 28% over a 10-year period. This is about a 14% drop in NPD productivity, which is a significant cause for concern. Download this article and find out how to improve your NPD productivity.

Winning Business In Product Development: The Critical Success Factors,
By Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

A formal new product process isn’t enough – you need a high-quality process, a clear and visible strategy, enough people and money, and a respectable R&D budget. How does your program rate on these 10 metrics?

Managing Technology Development Projects - Different Than Traditional Development Projects Dr. Robert G. Cooper

The fact is that traditional systems just don’t work for Technology Development projects. Why? Traditional new product processes are designed for fairly well-defined and predictable projects. But TD projects are, by their nature, high risk projects with many unknowns and great technical uncertainties. Download this article and learn what leading companies are adopting to handle these vital TD projects.

10 Ways to Make Better Portfolio and Project Selection Decisions
Dr. Robert G. Cooper & Dr. Scott J. Edgett

Good portfolio management (PM) is a key to success in New Product Development (NPD). But good PM still frequently eludes even the biggest brightest corporations. In this article, Bob Cooper and Scott Edgett outline ten ways to make better portfolio and project selection decisions.

Keywords: NexGen Stage-Gate^®, lean, rapid, innovation productivity, scalable

Formula for Success in New Product Development
Dr. Robert G. Cooper

Many businesses use the Stage-Gate® process to conceive, develop, and launch new products. As proficient companies have implemented, modified, adapted, and improved methodology, it has morphed into a faster, leaner, and more effective tool. The next generation process, or NexGen Stage-Gate® builds in seven principles of lean, rapid, and profitable new-product development to maximize productivity in product innovation.

Keywords: NexGen Stage-Gate®, lean, rapid, innovation productivity, scalable

Winning at New Products: Pathways to Profitable Innovation
Dr. Robert G. Cooper

What are the secrets to success in new product development (NPD) that these winning businesses share? This whitepaper highlights the key factors and drivers that distinguish the best performing business in NPD from the rest. Those factors and drivers that are common across high-productivity, best performing businesses in NPD were uncovered in a recent and major APQC study into best practices. Prescriptions on how to translate these best practices into action in your business are also outlined in this paper.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, APQC, benchmarking, success drivers, best practices

Succeeding at New Product Development the P&G way: A key element is using the “Innovation Diamond”
Dr. Robert G. Cooper & Michael S. Mills

New products are engines to growth and profitability for many companies, including Procter and Gamble (P&G). In this article, the authors explore the drivers of new product performance with a particular focus on P&G’s best practices. The “Innovation Diamond” is used as an integrative and guiding framework to help management focus on what’s important to success: innovation strategy, a solid idea-to-launch process, portfolio management, and the right climate and leadership.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, The Procter and Gamble Company, Innovation Diamond™, Leadership, Portfolio Management

Your NPD Portfolio may be harmful to your business’s health
Dr. Robert G. Cooper

Recent NPD studies contain a number of surprises: Most shocking is that the impact of new product development (NPD) on the sales and profits of many corporations is down, when looked at in terms of contribution to total sales and profits. How has this happened, and why? In this article, Dr. Robert Cooper takes a hard look at the facts and examines a number of possible reasons for this trend. He also provides recommendations on how companies can rebalance their NPD portfolios to become more profitable.

Keywords: Portfolio, benchmarking, speed, incremental projects, new product projects

From Experience: The Invisible Success Factors in Product Innovation
Dr. Robert G. Cooper

Dr. Cooper lowers the microscope on the state of product innovation and examines the common reasons for poor results. The critical success factors are noticeably absent from the typical new product project. The article outlines how companies can recognize one of the seven common innovation problems that Dr. Cooper refers to as the new product development “Blockers” to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Keywords: Product innovation process, critical success factors, blockers, portfolio approaches, and capacity analysis

Successfully Implementing the Stage-Gate® NPD Process
L. Michelle Jones & Barbara Pitts

While most companies have some form of innovation process in place, some are clearly more successful than others. Declaring that your organization is going to use the Stage-Gate® Process is a step in the right direction, but that is only half the battle. This article examines the critical success factors for successfully implementing the process to achieve immediate and sustainable results.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, product innovation process, implementation, change management, and roles and responsibilities

Overcoming the Current Crunch in NPD Resources
Dr. Robert G. Cooper & Dr. Scott J. Edgett

The resource crunch is a crippling disease sweeping the new product development (NPD) landscape. The significant gap between resources required and NPD resources available has resulted in many negative consequences: projects taking too long to market, under-performing new product projects, and development portfolios that contain too many low value projects. This article explores the resource crunch problem and its causes, and also offers solutions.

Keywords: Portfolio management, resource allocation, resource deficiencies, pipeline gridlock and new product strategy

NPD Practices: The dark side of time and time metrics in product innovation
Dr. Robert G. Cooper & Dr. Scott J. Edgett

Dr. Cooper and Dr. Edgett examine how time and time metrics are having a negative impact on product innovation today. The effects of two manifestations of this problem are examined in detail: too great an emphasis on measures of short term profitability and too sharp a reduction in time-to-market. The paper examines what can be done to counteract these negative pressures and how to enhance the product innovation process.

Keywords: Profitability, metrics, resource planning, speed-to-market, and go/kill decisions

Optimizing the Stage-Gate Process – Part 2
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, Dr. Scott J. Edgett & Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

Dr. Cooper, Dr. Edgett and Dr. Kleinschmidt focus on the methods and techniques that help companies achieve better project selection and prioritization. The paper examines how to build more effective go/kill decisions points – tough gates – and to move towards successful portfolio management.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, portfolio management, prioritization, gate meetings, and go/kill decisions

Optimizing the Stage-Gate® Process – Part 1
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, Dr. Scott J. Edgett & Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

Dr. Cooper, Dr. Edgett and Dr. Kleinschmidt report on their observations and experiences working with a multitude of companies, and on the practices the companies have incorporated into their product innovation processes. The following practices are explored in the paper: the addition of a discovery stage at the front end of the innovation process, harnessing fundamental research more effectively, and building in more effective go/kill decision points to move towards portfolio management.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, discovery, voice of customer research (VoC), fundamental research, and technology developments

Portfolio Management for New Product Development: Results of an Industry Practices Study
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, Dr. Scott J. Edgett & Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

This paper reports the results of a survey questionnaire sent to IRI member companies participating in an ongoing best practices study (results as of October 2001). Dr. Cooper, Dr. Edgett and Dr. Kleinschmidt examine the consequences of poor portfolio management practices. They outline the results of the study including the role of portfolio management at the participating companies and why industry considers it to be so important. The article then examines popular tools, methods and models employed by these companies to make go/kill decisions and to help prioritize projects.

Keywords: Industrial Research Institute (IRI), portfolio management, tools, models, and methods.

Portfolio Management: Fundamental to New Product Success
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, Dr. Scott J. Edgett & Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

This article reports result from an on-going, large sample research study into portfolio management best practices. The goals of the research are to study industry current and best practices in portfolio management, and to gain insights to guide in the design and implementation of superior portfolio management methods. The article outlines new managerial problems faced in portfolio management. It details how various portfolio tools and model are employed by managers to make Go/Kill decisions and to help prioritize projects.

Keywords: Portfolio management, methods, new products strategy, project ranking and prioritization.

Portfolio Management for New Products: Picking the Winners
Dr. Robert G. Cooper & Dr. Scott J. Edgett

New product portfolio management is about how you invest your business’s product development resources – project prioritization and resource allocation across development projects. This paper addresses the four goals of portfolio management and the importance of having an established, high quality Stage-Gate® system in place.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, new product process, portfolio management, project prioritization, and resource allocation.

Doing it Right – Winning with New Products
Dr. Robert G. Cooper

This paper examines the two ways to win at product innovation: doing projects right and doing the right projects. Dr. Cooper explores the critical success factors that make the difference between winning and losing at innovation. He outlines key components of the authentic Stage-Gate® system and the four goals of successful portfolio management.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, new product process, critical success factors, portfolio management, and scoring criteria.

New Problems, New Solutions: Making Portfolio Management More Effective
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, Dr. Scott J. Edgett & Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

This article incorporates the results of management interviews conducted with IRI member companies in an ongoing best practice study (results as of March/April 2000). It isolates the four common difficulties experienced by the participants along with the proposed solutions. Dr. Cooper, Dr. Edgett and Dr. Kleinschmidt discuss the benefits of each of the two approaches to integrating a portfolio management process with a product innovation process, and outline common portfolio management methods and tools used by the companies in the study to help them to do the right projects.

Keywords: Stage-Gate®, Industrial Research Institute (IRI), portfolio management, resource capacity analysis, and methods.

The Quest for Best Practices in Product Innovation
Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett

Product innovation – the development of new and improved products – is crucial to the prosperity of the modern corporation. New product launches within the last three years account for about 30% of corporate sales, and there is a strong connection between successful product development and business valuation.

An Investigation into the New Product Process: Steps, Deficiencies, and Impact on Performance
By Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Elko J. Kleinschmidt

In a comprehensive study of 252 new products histories at 123 firms, Robert Cooper and Elko Kleinschmidt looked critically at the new products management process. Each company was shown a set of 12 activities which formed a general "skeleton: of a new product process.

How New Product Strategies Impact on Performance
By Dr. Robert G. Cooper

What is involved in a successful new product program? Is it high spending on risky R&D? Is it close contact with customers? Is it the overall competitive strength of the firm? Well, it might be any of these things, and more according to Robert G. Cooper, depending on your definition of success. In an exhaustive examination of the new product strategies and performances of 122 industrial products firms, Cooper found that the strategy that a firm elects for its new product program is closely linked to the performance results that firm achieves. But what’s performance?