Smart, Fast Failures - Managing VOC in Your New Product Process By Robert Cooper The most strongly correlated driver of profitable new product success is a superior product. According to our research, you stand to win a resounding 98% of the time if you can get the right customer input at the right time throughout the stages of a disciplined Stage-Gate process. The challenge is that most customers are not product innovators and they simply lack the capacity to express their needs in terms product developers can act upon. This leaves the 'customer needs' investigative work up to the development team. Precisely 'when' throughout the process should we be tapping into our customers for their insights? How should we balance the need for speed, a sharp product definition and adapting to changing customer information? In this very brief note, Bob outlines 6 specific points in your Stage-Gate process where you should be tapping into your customers for feedback and insight. In short he suggests smart, fast failures via spiral development - a technique he has implemented with many top performing companies. Enjoy! Best regards, Michelle Jones, EVP, Global Growth

Only 3 Seats Left! How to Design and Implement Stage-Gate November 18-20, 2008 NEW! Register Now Stage-Gate Summit '09 February 24-25, 2009 Stage-Gate Certification Learn More Free Webinar Successful Product Innovation Today 1:00pm (EST) Order Today Lean, Rapid and Profitable NPD Book On-Site Training with Dr. Cooper on Spiral Development

What does Exceptional Product Innovation Leadership look like?

Attend the Annual Stage-Gate Innovation Summit this February and hear directly from 8 Exceptional Product Innovation Leaders who are achieving impressive performance results despite the challenges they and their organizations face. Their stories are inspiring and offer several practical ideas that could work in your company. Additionally, Dr. Robert Cooper and Dr. Scott Edgett outline what leaders of top performing organizations do differently when it comes to driving the Innovation Agenda.

Stage-Gate Summit is a powerful exchange and collaboration of cutting-edge ideas, solutions, experiences and free-flowing discussions among industry's best and brightest innovation leaders. If you are searching for new ways to improve product innovation performance, motivate development teams and sharpen your product innovation leadership skills, you will not want to miss this event. Act quickly, this event SOLD OUT two years in a row!

Product Innovation Performance: Only as Good as the Weakest Link

Product innovation is one of the riskiest, yet most important, endeavors of the modern corporation. Why? It requires the successful coordination of several functions through the complex process of taking a new business opportunity from inception through to market launch. Companies successfully manage the risk inherent in product innovation by adopting proven business processes and practices, like the Stage-Gate 'options approach' to commercializing a new product. If designed properly and adopted cross-functionally across the organization, these processes can reduce variability in product innovation, reduce risk and improve performance results.

However, product innovation performance will always only be as good as the weakest link. For example, it would not do you much good to generate numerous breakthrough ideas if you had a weak new product process. Likewise, you would not be very effective if you had a solid commercialization process but suffered from a lack of good ideas or innovative culture. Every organization has its weak links - the trick is to isolate the weakness and fix the root cause without disturbing your strengths. Consider evaluating your product innovation performance today so you can validate your strengths and your weaknesses. For as little as $495 you can evaluate and benchmark your performance on-line. SGI's Benchmarker product makes it easy and affordable to obtain a high quality, reliable evaluation of your product innovation processes.

Rapid Achievement of a Top-Performing Idea-to-Launch Process
By Dr. Ken Huskins, Principal Consultant

Is it possible to implement (or re-build) a top-performing Idea-to-Launch process rapidly and not sacrifice quality? The answer is YES. And, can a rapidly-implemented process have 'staying power', meaning that it is scalable for different project types, has a high adoption rate, and continuously drives positive outcomes? Again the answer is YES. How? Read this article for 5 practical tips.