R&D - The Scientific Realm meets Project Management
It has always fascinated me that most Research and Development labs have thousands of ideas and concepts that are developed, evaluated, striken off, re evaluated and finally a few make it through the new product development cycle. The sheer number that trickles down the funnel to make it to a new product is mind boggling. However, in a number of industries (excluding highly structured R&D organizations like Pharmaceuticals), the underlying science of developing these concepts has not been tied to streamlining and managing it like a project. While we all understand that R&D is also an art, the view from the shareholder value also puts a focus on more streamlined and higher visibility into this process so that it is more integrated into the overall Marketing framework of the company and brings about more predictability into the new product pipeline.
We are seeing more R&D organizations embracing these aspects by:
- Using integrated project management tools that not only provide visibility to the concept development but involves the Marketing organization as a key stakeholder in the process to provide feedback.
- Standardizing the Gating process across Global and Regional level New Product Development process.
- Minimizing manual work and updates
- Providing Tools / Mechanism for most accurate and streamlined communications between the teams that is involved in NPD Process globally, to increase the productivity and reduce rework.
- Providing better reporting tools to track KPI's across the NPD Organization.
Are you seeing this happening more in your organization ? After the initial wave of streamlining the new product development is this the next wave of collaboration for New Product Development
