10 Summary – Connecting the Dots
As stated several times in this book, product development is the future revenues and lifeblood of any company. This justifies the dollars expended through R&D, engineering, and testing of new products, services, and ideas. Ideas start with people and there is no shortage of creative people and companies.
To some extent, a company must nurture an environment where risk-taking and idea-generation are encouraged and rewarded. Some of the most successful companies have been risk-takers and rewarded handsomely for it: Apple, Google, Amazon, and many others. Notably, many traditional firms have also been recognized for their forward thinking and innovation:1 Ikea, Chick-fil-A, Ford, Toyota, Black & Decker, and John Deere to name a few.
These companies did not get this acknowledgement by luck – it takes a team approach, resources, focus, and a recognition of customer wants or needs. Note that developing new products is risky and requires funding. It would be interesting to know that for every successful product developed by the previously named companies, how many prior attempts have failed? We’ll never know the answer of course, but it is probably significant. One highly successful (i.e., profitable) product can make up for several failed ones.
In developing new products, companies really have three choices:
- Develop a completely new, ground-breaking product that no one has tried or thought of before.
- Take an existing product and improve or update ...
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