The increase in new product failure rates
Organizations are actively seeking new ways to fuse innovation into their current product development strategies. The cost of not innovating is extremely high and organizations unable to do so, risk lagging behind their competition.
Despite this desire to innovate, organizations still report high rates of product failure. A recent article in the Financial Post entitled “Why Some Companies Can Innovate and Some Can’t” highlights several reasons why some companies fail to innovate.
Top 3 reasons for new product failure and how to avoid them
For the purpose of this post, I will reference three of these reasons from this article that in my opinion, have the biggest impact on the poor success rate of new products:
1. “Not listening.” Organizations are not fully leveraging the right tools to hear out their customers. With the range of available social applications out there today, there is no excuse for not having a system in place to capture and manage customer insights.
2. “Not collaborating.” It seems organizations are still failing to include collaboration as part of their overall product development strategy. The ability for all stakeholders such as business partners, employees and customers to work together greatly increases productivity and helps to keep everyone on the same page. I found it alarming that, according to this article, “for struggling companies, fewer than half their product ideas came from these sources.”
3. “Poor execution.” Struggling companies have trouble planning the resources needed to match market opportunities, difficulty managing multiple teams and regions, and a hard time managing the risks associated with new and existing products.”
These quotes remind us that: a) customers fuel the product innovation process, and b) organization’s that do not realize that customer opinions, ideas and insights matter, will not survive.
Here’s how OneDesk can help you avoid new product failures:
1. Effective listening, engagement and idea management capabilities. Learn more about our idea management tools
2. Powerful software to connect all stakeholders to the product development process. Explore our social collaboration tools.
3. Requirements analysis metrics for forecasting and planning. See these dynamic tools
4. An extensive suite of blended product development tools to greatly reduce the risk of new product failures.