Portfolio Management and Making the Right NPD and R&D Investments
Where Are All the Breakthrough New Products? Using Portfolio Management to Boost Innovation
This recent article in a special issue of Research-Technology Management outlines the best methods for making portfolio management decisions and R&D investment decisions in the case of riskier and bolder projects. The fact is that most project selection methods tend to favor small, incremental development projects, hence an overabundance of “renovation projects” in most firms’ development portfolios. See how to stop this trend to trivial new products, and rethink your investment decisions and methods. A good basis for anyone trying to redress the imbalance of projects – too many small, low value initiates in your development pipeline.
Effective Gates – Using Gates With Teeth
Product innovation productivity suffers from too many projects, with too few high-value ones, in most firms’ development pipelines. “Gates with teeth” help to prune the development portfolio of weak projects, and deal with a gridlocked pipeline. And a robust innovation strategy, coupled with strategic buckets, refocuses resources on high-value development initiatives.
Ten Ways to Make Better Portfolio and Project Selection Decisions
Cooper and co-author Edgett outline the ten best ways to make Go/Kill and project prioritization decisions in new-product development, and also ways to obtain the right mix and balance of projects in your development pipeline. A good “how to” article on a difficult topic.
Your NPD Portfolio May Be Dangerous to Your Business’s Health
Cooper reveals data that points to dangerous trends in companies’ development portfolios – too many projects, an over-abundance of low-value projects, and too few significant development initiatives. He shows the reasons for this troubling trend, and then poses solutions, both strategic and tactical, to reverse the trend in your company.
We’ve Come a Long Way Baby and A Collection of Cooper’s Articles
This two-part article series begins with the introductory article “We’ve Come a Long Way Baby”, and is followed by “Collecting Cooper’s Articles”, which contains the other 17 articles Cooper has published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
When research into product innovation management began in earnest in the late 1970s, nobody knew much of anything about how to succeed in product innovation. Thus, the theme of much of the research in the years that followed was to probe the “drivers of success”. Some research looked at why new products win or fail; other studies lowered the microscope on businesses and their innovation performance, and sought reasons for their results, both positive or negative; and some focused on particular strategies and methodologies and their impact on performance. Read the complete file on this research and conclusions about what makes a winner in new-product development.
Determining the Value of Ambiguous Agile Projects With Multiple Iterations Using Expected Commercial Value
Agile Development provides benefits to manufacturers, but also creates new challenges. One is how to place an economic value on Agile projects, which are ambiguous, uncertain, and fluid. The Expected Commercial Value (ECV) is outlined as a tool to gauge the economic value of highly ambiguous Agile projects with multiple iterations. The mathematical derivation of the ECV equations is described in detail.
New-Product Portfolio Management with Agile: Challenges and Solutions for Manufacturers Using Agile Development Methods
When Agile Development and the traditional way of measuring, evaluating, and managing projects clash, companies must reassess how their new-product portfolios are managed, how go/kill and prioritization decisions are made, and how project performance is measured. This article explores the new solutions and emerging challenges at the boundary between Agile project management and portfolio management, and suggests tools and approaches to deal with these new challenges.
Unlocking “Pipeline Gridlock:” Effective Portfolio Management is the Key
Too many projects in the development pipeline is a common but serious complaint in new-product development departments. Pipeline gridlock leads to under-resourced development projects, which end up taking too long to get to market, and then often under-perform. Solutions are offered—Gates with Teeth, Red Flags, and the Productivity Index—to achieve a more balanced development pipeline with fewer projects but better projects.