If a large company wants to bring a radically new product to market, then its director-level management must invest substantial time into the project, especially during the initial concept-generation phase.
If the senior director team does not commit at least 24 solid hours during the formative stages, then the project will almost certainly fail, claims an innovation specialist from Cambridge Consultants.
After 18 years of experience helping corporations to embrace innovation, and having worked on over 50 major research and development projects, Cambridge Consultants' Lucy Rowbotham has developed a 'Golden 24 Hours' principle to help ensure innovations make it to market. Her concept has already been recognised by many international clients, who typically look for new product lines that will generate additional turnover of tens of millions of Euros.
To succeed, the 'Golden 24 Hours' investment needs to involve directors covering the key disciplines such as marketing, manufacturing and engineering. The director with each of the major responsibilities needs to invest at least eight hours in start-up meetings, covering topics ranging from the initial blue sky thinking to project budgeting and objective-setting.
From her long experience with major projects for blue-chip organisations, Lucy has noted that if the initial time investment comes to less than a combined total of 24 hours, then an idea is unlikely to come to fruition, no matter how good it is.
When a major research and development project is cancelledit is often attributed to some spurious reason such as a change in corporate organisational structureor a change of market emphasis. Howeverthe underlying problem is almost always that key director-level staff have not signed up"says Lucy Rowbotham. "Between themthey have to commit at least 24 solid hours to the ambition-setting processes or the project will almost certainly fail."
Most research and development departments are well suited to handling the development of new generations of existing productswhich move technology along in moderate steps. But more radical ideas are often shelved becauseby their naturethey often necessitate significant change. That change might involve new production processes and capital equipment or new types of sales channelfor exampleand only the most senior level of management is able to sanction this.
As examplesCambridge Consultants has worked with Royal Philips Electronics and Scotts to develop radically new product lines. With Philipsthe result was an additional EUR55million of turnover in the first year. With Scottsa whole new product area was identified. Both cases involved serious changes to productionmarketing and distribution.
If at least 24 hours of input are requiredthen how does that time get used to best effect?Cambridge Consultants has developed a robust methodology to bring together the needs of the developers and the corporate managementone that has mechanisms and moderation to resolve internal conflict and barriers to progress.
"On more than one occasion I have had clients jealously say of a competitor's innovation: 'but we did that in our own labs X years ago'"adds Lucy. "The solution to getting more radical ideas out of the lab lies in significant effort being applied to generating a clear understanding of the implicationsacross all key corporate levels.Understand the 'Golden 24 Hours' welland a company's innovation culture can really be brought to life".
For more informationvisit www.cambridgeconsultants.com
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