Developing New Products

Remember Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark? At one particularly perilous moment he confides to an impatient colleague, "I'm making this up as I go!"

That's pretty good advice to an entrepreneur on the trail of a new product or service in the new business environment — seize opportunity from the moment, make up the rules as you go. As if you had a choice! Practically everything that used to be considered gospel on the topic of designing new products and services is in the trash can today thanks to technology and a little distribution channel called the Internet.

Product development is a process comprised of many tasks. It used to be that you could depict the product development process in a linear fashion that looked similar to Figure 1. Each task was completed before the next was started in a logical, orderly process.

This process works fine in a marketplace that's fairly stable and predictable, but it can't survive in today's dynamic and unpredictable markets. Today, companies focus on fast-cycle product development with a more integrated approach. Integrated means that all the company's functions are represented in the planning, design, and development processes. As a result, you derive input from engineering, manufacturing, marketing, finance, and the customer from the beginning. Dynamic product development looks more like Figure 2.