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How to Audit Your Product
Innovation Program
Dr. Ken Huskins, Senior Consultant, Stage-Gate Inc.
Fact-based self-awareness, sought and given in an environment of trust, is the key first
step in the journey to improvement. Even a basic audit of your product innovation process
is an excellent way to expose areas ripe for improvement to better ensure desired project
and business outcomes. By audit, we mean a snapshot assessment of current practices and performance
with a particular focus on the critical factors most likely to drive performance.
Step 1: Design Your Audit
Dr. Cooper and Dr. Edgett’s well documented and peer reviewed research leads many
innovators to focus first on the 10 critical success factors. These factors, embedded into
(and, very importantly, when adhered to) your process profoundly drive product innovation
in-market success. Consider the following questions for your audit and collect both quantitative
and qualitative responses from your cross-functional stakeholders. Then, do an external benchmark
with at least two companies similar in size and business model and known for their innovation
prowess, whether in your industry or not.
- Are your products (and/or services) unique and superior to the competition?
- Are your products (and/or services) strongly market and/or customer focused?
- Do you take the time to do solid, upfront homework to understand market and customer
needs? Do you seek to serve markets with opportunities for growth with high profitability?
- Are product definitions clear, written, and created early?
- Are project teams truly cross-functional from concept to launch?
- Is your organizational culture and environment supportive to innovation?
- Is senior management appropriately involved and accountable?
- Do you have clearly defined Go/No Go criteria for projects? Are you making the tough
Go/No Go decisions?
- Is the quality and consistency of execution of your product innovation process evident?
- Are the right resources, at adequate levels, allocated to the highest value projects?
Caution- Take care to select quality, high-impact questions. Otherwise, you may design and
implement costly changes to your process only to discover that the effort ultimately did
not result in improved business results.
Step 2: Conduct the Audit
Through years of client engagements, we know that carefully designed surveys and interviews,
eliciting broad management and practitioner participation, are critical to achieve reliable
and quality results. In this way, you can gain valuable insight into how well your product
innovation process is defined, executed, and adhered to. Further, you can learn to what extent
critical decision-making is truly fact-based. The audit must be approached with trust-building,
and not blaming, in mind. A strong, experienced facilitator is critical to ensure this. Consider
the pros and cons of keeping participant responses anonymous. To truly affect change, we
recommend that participants take accountability both for their evaluations.
Step 3: Analyze the Results
Be sure to identify both consensus trends and points of disagreement. For example, do responses
segment or not by:
- Management or practitioner
- Functional area
- Business Unit
Use the results to look for major themes that are causing real points of pain and impeding
innovation. Then, illuminate the underlying root causes before you rush to define and implement
solutions.
Step 4: Plan Your Actions
The output of the audit should be prioritized strategic and tactical improvement actions,
due dates, and ownership, justified by a sound business case that describes the cost and
expected return on investment of the proposed set of improvements. Prioritization of what
to improve and in what order is often (but not always) guided by consensus aspects of your
process that are (1) easiest to address and (2) will deliver improvement in the short-term.
Yes, easier said than done, we realize. Your audit team will have to be focused and diligent.
Again, select the team facilitator carefully! Keep the prioritization of improvement actions
fact-based and use clear business impact metrics to both forecast and measure results. Better
alignment of innovation strategy execution and business performance outcomes should drive
your actions. Keep your eye on the prize and the road ahead!
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