In spite of the tremendous progress that companies have made in optimizing both the ‘fuzzy front end’ and product development phase-gate processes, new product success rates have remained virtually unchanged over the last ten years. Why? One key reason is the lack of attention that has been paid to improving the planning, management and measurement of market launches, especially in the case of product/service innovation (beyond incremental product improvements).

Launching innovation into the market entails both risks and many unknowns – these market launches are in reality, ‘strategic experiments’. Yet many companies follow the same approaches they use for introducing incremental product extensions and improvements. Successful entrepreneurs take a unique approach to launching, evolving and optimizing their innovations in the market. This in-market experimentation and measurement can work for established firms as well, allowing companies to maximize their opportunities with innovation, while minimizing risks and resources.

This workshop provides a framework and approach for general managers and senior product development executives to more effectively plan, manage and measure market launches for innovation. You’ll come away with an understanding of how entrepreneurs and leading-edge companies optimize the market launch of innovation, and how you can apply these proven approaches in your own business.

Key Take-Aways:

• The fallacy of traditional approaches to the market launch of innovation

• A framework for rapid-business-prototyping and in-market experimentation

• Measurement tools for planning, learning and optimizing the market launch of innovation

• Integration of innovation launch metrics into core business measurements

• The use of non-traditional go-to-market strategies and distribution channels

• Five key pitfalls to avoid in launching innovation

Michael Docherty brings a senior practitioner’s perspective to managing innovation, with over 24 years in general management, marketing and new product development. Mike is CEO of Venture2, Inc. an innovation consulting and new ventures firm that identifies and launches innovation-driven new products and businesses. Prior to Venture2, he was a VP/GM for Sunbeam Products (now Jarden) where his leadership and innovation efforts played a key role in the successful turnaround of the company. Before Sunbeam, Mike held leadership positions in marketing and planning for General Electric, Ford Motor Company and Rohm & Haas. Mike holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and BSME degree from Drexel University.

Historically, measurement has focused on "what has happened, after it has happened." Unfortunately, while these measures are both necessary and valuable, they are reactive in nature and there is little opportunity to leverage this information for the project currently at hand or recently completed. Therefore, the quest for predictive measures, those that help to foresee potential outcomes, continues to rise as companies search to identify and implement measures that can be used to adjust current courses of action to avoid less than desired outcomes and maximize the probability of achieving a desired outcome.

This seminar focuses on metrics that are used at the planning, definition, and early development stages of R&D. Mr. Goldense will outline the following key categories of metrics and their critical importance in driving NPD performance:

• Planning Metrics: Often elusive and intangible, planning metrics are used to set strategic priorities across the organization and all projects. Planning measures help to keep everyone focused on the big picture and the things that are generally most important to continuous success for a particular corporation.

• Proactive Metrics: These measures help to frame successful projects and their related functional activities to give companies a best chance of success before actually beginning detailed architectural and design on a project or product.

• Predictive Metrics: Assuming a more literal definition, predictive measures indicate that an activity has started and that there is initial data associated with a partially completed activity. This early data can be extrapolated to the anticipated end of a project and can be used to predict final outcomes.

• Reactive Metrics: Without a doubt the most used metrics in industry are reactive metrics – those measures that account for what has already happened. This session will also examine how reactive measures over several business cycles can actually take on a more predictive power.

This seminar will lay out the management framework that categorizes Planning, Proactive, Predictive, and Reactive metrics by tying the transition points between these four categories to commonly accepted milestones of a product development process. Examples of metrics in each category will be discussed.

Braford L. Goldense is President of Goldense Group, Inc. [GGI], a nineteen-year old consulting and education firm concentrating in advanced business and technology management practices for line management functions. Mr. Goldense has consulted to over 150 of the Fortune 1000 and has worked on productivity improvement and automation projects in over 400 manufacturing locations. Abbott Laboratories, Bayer, S.C. Johnson, Ford, General Motors, John Deere, Philips, United Technologies, Carrier, Molex, Monsanto, Bose, and Shure are among GGI's clients. Prior to founding GGI in 1986, Mr. Goldense held positions at Computer Sciences Corporation's Index Group, Price Waterhouse, Lester B. Knight & Associates, and Texas Instruments.

It seems that everyone has been talking about metrics for years, yet few companies are satisfied that their metrics are the best they can be. It’s time to get back to basics. This pre-conference work session is designed for product development leaders who have more important endeavors to undertake than metrics, yet are keenly aware that implementing metrics correctly adds a necessary and useful tool to their professional toolbox. The session draws upon over fifteen years of research and experience in real-world product development metrics and incorporates an interactive component where the participants will generate a set of practical engineering metrics using a simple, proven method.

This workshop will walk your through the foundational elements of metrics (what they are and what they are not) and will outline metrics best practices as well as common mis-steps. Case studies will be reviewed in the areas of measuring both hardware and service development and then proceed to more challenging metrics including measuring co-development, innovation and customer needs. Participants will then be facilitated through the process of systematically generating, evaluating and prioritizing a basic set of engineering metrics. Within those metrics, the group will specifically address distinctions between:

• Predictive versus results metrics

• Leadership-level versus project / performing organization metrics

• Culling the “critical few” versus scorching the earth with “massively many” metrics

Workshop Take-Aways:

• An understanding of best practices in engineering metrics

• Specific examples of metrics implemented by leading companies

• Hands-on experience generating a basic engineering metrics framework

Wayne Mackey's expertise is grounded in over twenty years of hands-on leadership of large engineering, manufacturing, and procurement organizations. His management consulting is focused on product / service development, and he is especially effective in collaborative design, metrics, portfolio management and business strategy implementation. He is co-author of the new book “The Value Innovation Portfolio”.