Developing New Products (Strategy/Checklist)

New product development strategy

With a well-considered new product development (NPD) strategy, you can avoid wasting time, money and business resources. An NPD strategy will help you organize your product planning and research, capture your customers' views and expectations, and accurately plan and resource your NPD project. Your strategy will also help you avoid:

• overestimating and misreading your target market
• launching a poorly designed product, or a product that doesn't meet the needs of your target customers
• incorrectly pricing products
• spending resources you don't have on higher-than-anticipated development costs
• exposing your business to risks and threats from unexpected competition.

There are several important steps you will need to plan into your NPD strategy.

Define your product

An accurate description of the product you are planning will help keep you and your team focused and avoid NPD pitfalls such as developing too many products at once, or running out of resources to develop the product.

Identify market needs

Successful NPD requires a thorough knowledge of your target market and its needs and wants. A targeted, strategic and purposeful approach to NPD will ensure your products fit your market. Ask yourself:

• What is the target market for the product I am proposing?
• What does that market need?
• What is the benefit of my proposed new product?
• What are the market's frustrations of existing products of its type?
• How will the product fit into the current market?
• What sets this product apart from its competition?

Draw on your existing market research. You may need to undertake additional research to test your new product proposal with your customers. For example, you could set up focus groups or a customer survey.

Establish time frames

You need to allow adequate time to develop and implement your new products. Your objectives for developing new products will inform your time frames and your deadlines for implementation. Be thoughtful and realistic. Some objectives might overlap but others will be mutually exclusive.

• Your objective to race against your competition will require efficiency from your team.
• Your aim to achieve a specific launch date will be influenced by demand for seasonal products and calendar events.
• Your aim to be responsive to your customers' needs and demands will require time for research to ensure you develop the right products at the right time.
• Your objective to stick to business as usual and maintain other schedules will affect the resources you make available for NPD.

Identify key issues and approaches

There are many tasks involved in developing a product that is appropriate for your customers. The nature of your business and your idea will determine how many of these steps you need to take. You may be able to skip or duplicate certain stages, or start some of them simultaneously. Key tasks include:

• generating and screening ideas
• developing and screening concepts
• testing concepts
• analyzing market and business strategy
• developing and market testing products
• implementing and commercializing products

 Checklist

This checklist is to help to develop new products, from developing new ideas to setting budgets, deciding on product specification and prototyping.

• Generate ideas for new and modified products - for example, from customer feedback, employee suggestions and technological developments.
• Assess how these ideas fit with your strategy, market position and skills; confirm that you have the resources to devote to development.
• Research the market, assessing customer requirements and sales potential; identify key risks and plan your marketing strategy.
• Research the competition and potential competition; learn from competitors' successes and failures.
• Form a project team covering all the key skills (eg marketing, design, production, purchasing and finance) led by a product champion.
• Plan the critical path, identifying which activities must be undertaken in sequence and which can happen in parallel.
• Set budgets, objectives and timescales; be prepared to regularly assess progress during the project and, if necessary, modify plans.
• Assess risks to the project such as technical hurdles, availability of cash and other resources and whether you can secure intellectual property rights.
• Define the basic product specification and translate specific features into product requirements; identify your key selling points.
• Estimate the likely selling price and set target production costs; assess likely actual costs of development and production, allowing for contingencies.
• Design the product, taking into account marketing, production and purchasing requirements.
• Develop a prototype to iron out technical and production issues and to test market reaction; make any necessary changes.
• Gear up for full-scale production and launch the product.
• Continue to monitor the product's success and look for opportunities to further develop it.