The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

35.3. Similarities and Differences in Practices of Award Winners

35.3.1. Summary of Common Practices/Beliefs among Award Winners

In a retrospective look at these past OCI award winners, it first appears that each of the companies is distinctly different from each other. Yet after some reflection, there are a number of important characteristics and similarities across the set. All of the winners had in place processes, systems, and resources that reflected the following notable best practices:

• A well-defined product development process unique to their market and technology environment (see Chapters 4 and 5)

• A strong commitment to cross-functional teams as the fundamental organizational construct for executing new product development (see Chapters 9 and 10)

• Strong voice of the customer input (see Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18)

• A robust process at the front-end to drive innovation in their product portfolio (see Chapters 3, 19, and 20)

• A strong linkage of new product development to the company's corporate strategy, therefore, ensuring top management commitment (see Chapter 2)

While a clear set of common practices can be defined across the population of past award winners, it also appears the implementation detail of these common practices varied across the group, driven by their market, technology, and organizational environments. In many cases, the chosen solutions are quite distinctive and provided the greatest learning for the new product development community.

35.3.2. Well-Defined ...