Friday, October 29, 2010

INNOVATION TRENDS: New Product Introduction (NPI) Opportunity for Executive Leadership

The Boston Consulting Group’s Innovation 2010 report, a large majority of companies named innovation as a top strategic priority for 2010: 72 percent named it as a top three priority for 2010 versus 64 percent in 2009.

The trend is clear: Companies coming out of the Great Recession believe innovation in product development is the key for growth in the future.

In a recent breakfast with the COO of a Tier One Smart Mobile Platform Provider yesterday, I asked him what his number one business priority was for global scale improvements and the New Product Introduction (NPI) process and the quality around this process was his number one focus area for improvement.

As the competition continues to grow in the Mobile space, this was not a surprize to hear. For some time, our firm has been helping leading companies like SAP, MTS Allstream, Bell and many others understand the strengths and gaps in their NPI Processes and practices.

In today's market, C level executives must be digging under the covers of their NPI processes, irrespective of company size and integrating ideation to retirement practices for all their service lines. With the amount of planning and investment in taking a new product or service to market, and the knowledge/documentation that is generated from each solution launch, organizations have to tighten up their knowledge management practices, and measurement systems in this area.

It is no longer sufficient to simply have the Chief Technology Officer or Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Product Development overseeing NPI practices, this is one of the most critical fulfilment underpinnings to any organization and each C level executive needs to be deeply knowledge of this value chain.

NPI needs to increasingly become a business imperative for creating a stronger innovation highway, supported by vigilence in culture and leadership practices.

1 comment:

Stu said...

Interesting article as always.

Stewart Higgins
Intranet Expert
Intranet Software

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