Contemporary NPD Issues - Essay Example

CRITICAL REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY NPD ISSUES Critical Review of Contemporary NPD Issues New Product Development or NPDcan be defined as the process through which technical ideas or market needs or opportunities are turned into a new product on to the market(Jan, 2006). This review brings it perspective the modern-day issues of concern about NPD as presented by Goffin & Koners (2011) and Khan, Barczak, & Moss (2006) in their articles about this topic. The authors of the two articles have different ideas and opinions on the topic. The first embark on a fact finding mission through case studies to discover and outline the lessons individuals learn from NPD, compared to the knowledge acquired from post project reviews. The latter, on the other hand, focuses on NPD best practices and the standard by which they can be measured or judged. According to Goffin & Koners (2011), performing case studies were a better method of learning the issues regarding NPD, rather that performing reviews of already done projects. This is because of the accuracy and level of flexibility this method brings along. The authors noted that this method was able to capture more lessons that individuals have learnt from NPD while much of the learning of the Post Projects Review was not captured. This was attributed to the fact that it is hard to capture experiences once they have passed. The results and findings are highly accurate because they are based on what the responses were from the majority of the interviewees. The data analysis for the case studies was carried out in four stages, some with iteration. This may have been time consuming or expensive, but, on the other hand, it would result to high quality findings which can be compared and contrasted against each other. The first phase was to analyse the repertory grids. The lessons learnt from individuals working on NPD projects were documented and involved issues concerning: organizational complexity, time constraints, budget, learning, problem solving, project objectives, and resources. According to Jan (2006), these are important issues of consideration when an organisation wants to embark on NPD. I view these findings as reliable and accurate. They are based on facts collected first hand and analysed using reliable software. The second phase was to analyse the minutes of Post-Project Reviews. The 19 minutes of PPRs were coded with extreme care being taken. Detailed understanding was obtained from the repertory grid interviews, and hence the same coding scheme was used for the PPRs minutes. A total of 56 lessons were documented. Unfortunately, only relatively few lessons learnt were seen in each of the meeting minutes. This is a clear indication that much of learning from PPRs is not usually captured. The goal of this phase was to transfer these insights and improvements to future projects. But I find this very tricky because the lessons were documented in a somewhat obscure manner. The lessons learnt are laid out, but there is no guidance about how people will benefit from this in the future. Other lessons lacked background information as they were being documented in the PPR minutes. Others had very short summary, which did not cover much. Other minutes focused a very limited scope. Some of the minutes appeared to be directed towards senior management and neglecting much on the lessons from the project team. The metaphors identified in the minutes were used in documenting various aspects of NPD that would act as guidelines in the future e.g. the importance of efficient teamwork. The authors describe the third phase as results of PPRs. A total of 226 lessons were learnt, and there were 55 stories and metaphors. Testing is one of the important lessons learnt here. They also noted that there was common usage of stories and metaphors in many of the PPRs observed. The stories and metaphors had the effect of triggering certain discussions a making a discussion flow towards a certain direction. These stories and metaphors were also used at the end of discussions to summarise the main ideas. They were mainly humorous which appeared to be part of the team culture. However, it was seen in the analysis that the lessons learnt from the metaphors and stories were not officially documented in the minutes. This is a clear indication that many lessons are getting lost because of the difficulties involved in documenting some of the discussions. The authors provide adequate data to support this notion. In as far as the observation of PPRs provides a favourable data for looking at tacit knowledge generation, it is mandatory to have a criterion for identifying which of the many lessons learnt are closely related or connected to tacit knowledge. Since there are no guidelines given on this, has no option than to choose an arbitrary measure that will be used as the metric for the analysis. According to Goffin & Koners (2011)pp 314, problem solving is apparently the issue that is most closely related to tacit knowledge. Cross-comparison of the data is the fourth and last phase of the data analysis. It involves the comparing and contrasting all the categories of lessons learnt from each of the different types of data. The comparisons between the three data sources must be made with a lot of care, because of their varying characteristics. However, there are several of conclusions that can be drawn. For example, the interviews and PPR observations documented similar types of lessons. Yet, in contrast to the numerous lessons from the PPRs observed, only a few lessons were identified in the minutes. The small number of lessons learnt that have been documented means that a good amount of the lessons are not brought into attention for wider discussions. Lessons are related to different experiences, which probably makes it hard to document them in a meaningful way. In addition, the authors present evidence that to document experiences may be a long and tedious job and would “require a huge book”. Despite the research by the authors being exploratory and having limitations, it made a number of valuable contributions to the understanding of learning as far as NPD is concerned. It outlines what the NPD professional may learn and how they may use that knowledge to continuously improve their NPD skills. Khan, Barczak, & Moss (2006) discuss NPD from a different perspective. They affirm that organisations are endeavouring to learn the best practices in NPD based on studying the tactics that have been tested and proven to have worked before. This is known as benchmarking in other words and is achieved through three phases. The first phase, performance benchmarking, compare the performance of the organisation with that of other. The second, process proficiency, is involved with assigning ownership to inventories and documents of the organisation to cultivate process improvement to become proficient. The third, best practice mastery, involves the respective firm incorporating what it sees as best practice. Organisations evaluate themselves on various dimensions and find out whether they can characterise themselves as best practice in those dimensions. I find this being a more comprehensive solution to provide learning in NPD issues for its ability to look at an organisation from different angles. Strategy is the first dimension. It involves defining and also drawing a plan for a focus for the NPD efforts of a small business unit (SBU), or a division, or a product line, or an individual project. It is, therefore, viewed to be a strategic and long term endeavour for the organisation. There are four levels of sophistication for strategy. This enables organisations to place themselves into any one of them depending with how sophisticated their strategy is. It also helps organisations with insights of what they ought to do to climb to the next level. The second dimension is portfolio management. This involves the screening out of the product concepts to identify the preferable product concepts with which to proceed (PDMA, 2004). According to research by Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt (2002) about 21.2% of firms report that they have a well-executed portfolio management mechanism enforced and that a greater number of firms rate their portfolio management as being very weak in terms of the measure to which it is implemented. NPD organizations considered to be more complex has put in place systematic and schematic portfolio management model, which consequently leads to better allocation of the organisation resources. They also have a balance in their projects and ambitions as (Cooper, Edgett, &, 2002) put it. The balance is in terms of breakthrough and incremental types of projects. On the contrary, less sophisticated firms have unbalanced portfolios that often tend to favour incremental projects and suffer from inefficient system for allocating resources. The third dimension is process. Process refers to the NPD stages, corresponding activities and events, and entry criteria for moving products to launch. Cooper, Edgett, & (2002)found out “highly NPD advanced’" companies use a consistent, formal process with distinctly defined phases and gates that can be seen, documented, and used. Their findings showed that almost 47% of the responding companies confirmed having clearly defined measure to assess projects at each gate (Cooper, Edgett, &, 2002). The findings also indicate that more than 4 out of 10 companies assigned a process manager to possess the process and ensure its use. The fourth dimension is market research. Market research involves applying activities for perception, studying, and understanding clients, competitors, and macro-environmental factors in the marketplace. Swap, 2001 found out that well established organization use many market research techniques to ensure the clients can be involved all around the development process. These processes, according to (Cooper, Edgett, &, 2002) include testing of the concept, internal and external products, and the market to identify the definition of product and also the response of the customer. Leading firms provide enough resources to finance the market research activities and to collect a lot of market information for learning the current and overall needs of the customers, problems, and benefits; reaction of customers to the proposed commodity and price sensitivity; size of the market and potential; expected sales profits or losses; and also the situation competition. The fifth dimension is people. The authors describe people as human resources and also the initiatives related to teamwork. Cooper, Edgett, & (2002) confirmed from their research that leading firms rely majorly on cross-functional teams in all the NPD activities and are more likely to employ a centralised NPD function at the managerial or departmental level where NPD professionals work full time on the process activities. Lastly, the sixth dimension is metrics and performance evaluation. These are issues regarding how NPD performance is evaluated, recognized, monitored, reported, and rewarded. The research of Cooper, Edgett, & (2002) showed that established firms have defined their go–kill gates and also has a particular gate criteria, with emphasis on strategic, managerial criteria like: fitting with the core capabilities, the needs of the market, and financial objectives. These firms are also probably estimate the way the projects are meeting specific NPD goals like market share, satisfaction of customer, time to market, volume of sales, and the attitude of the customers toward the brand. In conclusion, it is worth noting that the two articles emphasis on the need for organisations to learn on the contemporary issues involving NPD. In my opinion, the approach by Khan, Barczak, & Moss (2006) is more comprehensive, easier to follow, and less complicated to conduct in determining the considerations for NPD in organisations. References Cooper, Robert, G, Edgett, Scott, J, & Kleinschmidt, Elko, J 2002., Improving New Product Development Performance and Practices.Benchmarking Study: Houston, TX: American Gilder, G 1993.“The New Rules of Wireless”. Forbes. Goffin, K, & Koners, U, 2011,Tacit Knowledge, Lessons Learnt,and New Product Development. Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 28 pp 300-318. Jan, D 2006, Product Ideas: New Product Innovation. Accessed on 23 April 2012.http://www.d4s-sbs.org/M6.pdf Kahn, K, Barczak, B, G, & Moss, R 2006, Establishing an NPD Best Practices Framework.Journal of Innovation Management vol. 23 pp.106-116. Product Development Management Association (PDMA) 2005, What Is the NPDP Certification Exam?Accessed on: 23 April 2012 http://www.pdma.org/certification/what_is_certification_exam.php. Rangan, K. & Bartus, K,1994,New Product Commercialization: Common Mistakes, Harvard Business School Case Note. Swap, W., D. Leonard, M. Shields, and L. Abrans. 2001. Using mentoringand storytelling to transfer knowledge in the workplace.Journal of Management Information Systemsvol. 18 pp. 95–114 Read More