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· Your company must develop a business strategy that identifies its future direction, and how it will invest its finite resources in new products
· The business strategy and intimate knowledge of your customer’s future requirements must drive the product innovation strategy
· Aspects of the business strategy that may drive product innovation include:
o Being the market / technical leader in your chosen field
o Growing market share by introducing more desirable products
o Updating your product portfolio to lead / match your competition
o Reducing your production costs and increasing product reliability
o Development of products for overseas markets
o Exploitation of your core competencies in complementary products
· Your company should have
o A business development process for determining which products / services should be commercially exploited
o A technology route map to identify future technologies that could be incorporated into new and existing products
o All new products clearly identified in the company business plan
o A formal process for collecting information on products, customers, competitors, new technologies and key people in your industry
o Links with universities to direct research in emerging technologies to your advantage
o A commitment to investing a higher %age of sales revenues on product innovation
· Product innovation should be undertaken by multi-disciplinary teams managed by a project manager who ensures products meet all customer expectations
· In the case of large projects, the manager should be dedicated to the project
· Budgets and time scales must be realistic but challenging
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