Learning outcomes

• Learn about best practices in product innovation, including Lean Development, Agile Development, the 5th Generation Stage-Gate process, and the role of AI in NPD.
• Identify and solve issues in your current process, and delve into the crucial “fuzzy front end” of innovation so you can define winning products and make informed investment decisions.
• Improve your portfolio management to ensure you’re selecting projects with the greatest potential, maximizing success rates and profitability.
• Explore how AI can and is enhancing every stage of product development, from idea generation to developing a fact-based business case.
• Plan actionable steps and ensure your company is set up to win at new products.

Who is the course for?

Schedule

9.00 Intro & Welcome, Objectives for the Day
9.15 Best Practices in Product Innovation: The Big Picture
How are some firms able to drive new products to market so quickly and effectively? But for others, new product development (NPD) projects take forever and never yield the desired financial results. See what methods leading firms are using to achieve dramatic NPD results. In this session, latest development approaches appropriate for physical products are outlined… with illustrations. These include Lean Development, iterative or spiral development, and Agile Development. The session also includes the 5th Generation Stage-Gate process (Stage-Gate is now the dominant method of developing new physical products globally). Finally, the session shows the role and impact of AI in your NPD process (a Q&A break halfway thru).

11.00 Break
11.15 Team Exercise: “I’m Glad, Mad, and Sad”
Participants have an opportunity to discuss what’s right about the way they go about conceiving and developing new products; what’s wrong with it and needs fixing; and what areas have glaring errors. This is an excellent opportunity to uncover problems as a first step to finding solutions.

11.45 The Front End of Innovation – Laying the Foundation
The “Fuzzy Front End” of innovation is vital to winning at new products – “the game is won or lost in the first five plays!” And this front-end is not quite so fuzzy anymore. Leading companies and researchers have uncovered key best practices to better define the “winning new product”, chart its course forward, and also to yield the facts for better go/no go investment decisions… all leading up to the Development stage a (Q&A break halfway thru).

1:00 Lunch
2.00 Continued: Front End of Innovation – Laying the Foundation
We continue with the “best practices” in the front end, and showcase how AI can streamline and enhance this vital front end…. from idea generation and concept testing to undertaking voice-of-customer research to developing a fact-based business case.

2.30 Portfolio Management – Doing the Right Projects
One way to improve NPD productivity is by making the right investment decisions. Many companies execute projects properly, but often they are not the projects with the greatest potential. This session is about how to make the right selection decisions. Our track record is poor here – only 30% of projects that are approved for Development succeed commercially. See how to improve that rate to 60% or even 70%! The objective is to achieve a portfolio of development projects that maximizes success rates and profitability, and at the same time yields the right mix and balance of projects and to support the business’ strategy. A tough topic, but essential, given that resources are so constrained in most firms.

3.45 Break
4.00 Team Exercise: Next Steps… Moving Forward

What do we need to do in our companies to move forward and make this work – to really “win at new products”
Teams present and then follows open discussion of next steps.

5.00 End of Seminar, Beginning of Implementation.

Trainer Profile

Dr. Robert G. Cooper is the creator of the world-famous Stage-Gate® process, and was named the “World’s Top Innovation Management Scholar” by the prestigious U.S. Journal of Product Innovation Management and is a Fellow of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA).

He has combined practical consulting with ground-breaking research for many years. Besides his best-selling books “Winning at New Products” and “Portfolio Management for New Products”, he has published more than 130 articles on R&D and innovation management..