James Lenz

The Management of Innovation Handbook James Lenz

New product development (NPD) is a basis for business growth. It is also a key part of strategic planning and adds to the overall excitement in a company. However, of all the management aspects of business (i.e., human resources, marketing, manufacturing, accounting, service, customers, etc.), the complete process of NPD is the least defined and the most difficult to manage. With the emergence of e-business, the NPD process has created even a greater challenge to be generalized and practiced because the time scale for evaluating ideas and introducing new products changes from years to days. Highly innovative product developments are thought to require two major activities-invention and commercialization. In the past most organizations used a two-phase approach to development where the inventing was completed and then, with the planning of a business case, the commercialization phase began. The inventing phase was not rigorously managed but the commercialization phase was managed with a detailed durable process, i.e. a stage-gate process. Today organizations are accelerating innovation by combining the inventing and commercializing efforts into one project requiring agility and rapid business planning and re-planning. This handbook details insight gained across hundreds of new product developments. It offers advice, templates, and guidance for anyone involved in new product development from incremental improvements of established products to new-to-the-world start-ups.