CH 6 & 7: Road maps, innovation & creating business cases

Question 1

define the concept of roadmap and describe the upstream road mapping activities

Answer 1

road mapping: is the process or forecast of where the plan of a product innovation should go to in the long term. A balance need to be found between the technology push, so what the consumer doesn’t know what it wants, so you need to give it to them AND the market pull where you want to fulfill the consumers needs.

road mapping activities: in order to create the forecast you can use

• regular meetings with suppliers, technology experts and market experts
• can talk with your employees to see what they think in terms of operational capabilities, product architecture, competition landscape, market drivers and trends

Question 2

explain the concept of core, adjacency and breakhtrough growth in terms of the types of new products

Answer 2

The risk of growth can depend on terms of the newness of a product and how familiar the market is with a product.

CORE GROWTH: growth of the market with the least risk.

• newness: addidiotanl product to the line and reposiotining of the product and derivative of the product
• familiarity: existing or similar customers
  f. ex: baking soda that is being used for other purposes such as cleaning then core use baking

ADJACENCY GROWTH: growth that is associated with product that are new to the market, but not new to the world.
f.ex: Canon that creates printers besides creating camera&s. P&G that create shampoo’s but also coffee
…

Breakhthrough growth: is growth connected with new products to the world. This has the highest risk rates
f.ex: Apple, Dyson Airwrap,..

Question 3

Describe the different methods companies can use to develop product ideas. What criteria may be part of the strategic filter in order to screen new product ideas?

Answer 3

Methods: methods that cna be used to come up with new products ideas (TOF COB)

• trade shows
• open innovation
• focus group (at trade shows)
• customer cocreation
• customer visit program
• crowdsourcing
• brainstorming sessions

Filters to decide which product ideas that come from these above mentioned methods should be used:

• cost of the production
• compatibility in terms of the strategy of the company
• compatibility in terms of product fit
• compatibility core technologies
• growth potential
• profitability
• acceptable pay back period

Question 4

Cooper has proposed a stage-gate process to visualise (NPD) new product development, explain

Answer 4

Stage-gate is where the process of new product development is being divided in to the different time sequences that go with the development of a product. But after each stage, a gate is placed as a checkpoint to see if the product should move on to the next stage, it should be refined to should be put of. So in other words if the gate needs to be opened to go to the next stage.

Question 5

Overview of some of the major failure and succes reasons of innovation

Answer 5

FAILURE REASONS OF INNOCATION

• overestimation of the market
• underestimation of the cost
• underestimation of the competition strength
• legal constraints
• innovation for the wrong reasons

SUCCES REASONS OF INNOVATION

• fit with the company culture
• corporate synergy
• marketing and sales synergy
• synergy: is where 2 companies/ products together can create a bigger value then when they should pe produced separate.
• top management support
• employee involvement

Question 6

explain the important role of the business case, what are the main components?

Answer 6

Business case is important because it shows the outcome of the decisions, it’s a skeleton plan that provides the financial, competitive and market justification for the new project.

MAIN COMPONENTS:

• Product: product plan (development, lifecycle) product design (function form, voc)
• company: fit (strategy & portfolio), financial (targets)
• market: size of the market, users (situation, profile, voc)
• industry: competition, trends, standards

*voc: voice of the customer