Are Your Innovation Project Leaders Drivers or Passengers?

By Michelle Jones, EVP of Stage-Gate International

If you have ever used the phrase “we need people that can drive new products to market” to express your performance expectations, you are not alone. Many executives use this word to describe their desired state of product innovation capability.

Discover in this article three key enablers that will help drive your organization forward and develop the capabilities required to succeed in product innovation.

7 Reasons to Attend the World’s Only Stage-Gate^® Innovation Summit

“It is a great opportunity to meet and talk with others going through these same challenges – reassuring we are all moving in the right direction.”

- Chris Pigeon, Energizer

1. Network with seasoned innovation champions that share a common goal to continuously improve their new product process performance and business results.
2. Create a competitive advantage for your company with the latest benchmarks and comparative data about product success rates – study results presented by Scott J. Edgett.
3. Engage in real-time audience benchmarking and advance your personal subject-matter expertise through dynamic discussions.
4. Receive strategic and tactical advice on global innovation trends from the world’s top innovation expert and father of the Stage-Gate process, Robert G. Cooper.
5. Return to your company with a toolkit to enable immediate implementation of new ideas and improvements: NEW templates including the Stage-Gate Dashboard, a key deliverable from each case presentation, and reference materials.
6. Learn more about the product innovation software tools that have achieved Stage-Gate^® Ready Certification and receive personal demonstrations by these industry experts.
7. Discover advanced techniques and cutting-edge ideas to the most challenging aspects of product innovation – return to your organization well-equipped to move forward.

Successful innovators have a high-quality network of partners, peers, advisors, suppliers and potential customers. Do not miss this opportunity to expand your innovation network at Stage-Gate Summit through a wide variety of highly interactive sessions!

3 Reasons to Meet with Summit 2011 Sponsors

“Progressive companies recognize that automation greatly enhances the effectiveness of their new-product process.”

- Dr. Robert Cooper

1. Automation users report less time is required to complete process activities and deliverables; and administrative task load associated with process execution is dramatically reduced.
2. Automation streamlines communications and knowledge sharing among project team members and with gatekeepers or executives – track tasks, share deliverables, collaborate and communicate status reports immediately, and conduct extensive portfolio reviews in real-time.
3. Network with Stage-Gate Ready Certified automation experts and with other attendees to learn more about the impact automation can have on your innovation performance.

Stage-Gate Innovation Summit 2011 Sponsors

How to Make Immediate Improvements to Your Innovation Process

Best performing companies are constantly finding ways to improve their innovation processes, ensuring that they are maximizing performance and delivering business results. But how do these best performers identify areas that require improvement?

The answer is through benchmarking.

Benchmarking is the most effective way a company can accelerate targeted performance improvements to drive better business results. It enables companies to zero in on specific problems, isolate high-value improvement opportunities, and identify strengths that can be leveraged within the organization. Benchmarking helps accelerate understanding and agreement on real problem areas and helps educate on the latest practices being used, and shows what performance levels can be achieved.

New Product Development: Process Benchmarks and Performance Metrics provides the most current, and latest known drivers of successful product innovation, and provides a benchmark for your organization to compare its innovation performance.

This 2011 report is an objective and research-based resource your company can leverage, and measures over 200 companies across 60+ indicators measuring performance on project, business unit and organizational levels.

Identify specific problem areas and learn how industry leaders approach innovation, with rich illustrations of real companies’ processes and innovation management tools covering:

• New Product Development Process – What are the positive drivers of performance?
• Gatekeeping and Governance – What makes for effective gatekeeping?
• The Impact of People – What is the role of the Process Manager?

Discover the metrics that top organizations are continuously measuring to monitor performance, compare your company’s innovation process performance, and identify practices you can improve or implement today to achieve business results.

Don’t wait to improve your product innovation performance – obtain this report today and immediately impact top-line growth, create new customer value, and establish a competitive advantage!

$395.00 US – Available as Downloadable PDF