Be Successful Here

Part of the responsibility of a product development team is to reduce both the technical and commercial risk for the company that a project will fail after it is commercialized. Usually, a company will complete a significant amount of research to minimize the technical risk by developing a product that meets the customer’s requirements and can be made economically at production scale.

To address the commercial risk that the team will choose the wrong applications to pursue, project teams use an application map that shows the various likely applications for the new product and the team’s approach to moving through the various applications. The path will be determined based on product performance, customer requirement similarities, and potential profitability.

While the plan will change over time, the application map is a great visual tool for helping the team stay focused on success. Without such a map, it is easy for groups to focus only on a large application that could take 5-10 years to come to commercial fruition. In an economic downturn, management may choose to cut the project.

Other groups might focus only on a small initial market to test the commercial waters and then spend too much time trying to make the product successful in that small initial application, rather than moving on to the next application.

Developing the application map requires joint communication and understanding of target market requirements and technical capabilities between the commercial and technical members of a product development team. To make the most effective use of the products as they are developed, it is important to focus research on developing products that meet the requirements of the initial target markets and then sample to those market segments where the newly developed products can be used.

Not only will this provide a greater return faster on the research that has been done, but it will be easier for the sales organization to convince customers to try the product. Data that other customers have been using the product will have greater impact on customers when they know that the application requirements where the product is currently being sold are similar to their own product requirements.

Analysis of projects that were unsuccessfully commercialized often shows that potential show-stoppers were known early in the development process but not addressed. Every research project has some areas that will prove to be more difficult to develop. When they are large enough of a hurdle, they can be considered potential show-stoppers. If a way to accomplish those tasks isn’t found, the project will not be successfully commercialized.

Part of the responsibility of the project development team is to determine what those show-stoppers might be. Once they are discovered, team members then figure out a plan of action that will resolve the issues. There is a human tendency to just ignore the issues and hope they eventually resolve themselves. This rarely happens so it rarely serves to hide or ignore potential show-stoppers.

A better approach is to articulate the issues as clearly as possible and then put together a plan early in the development work to address the potential show-stoppers. This will give researchers the maximum amount of time to think about and develop solutions. Waiting until the end just minimizes the time available to come up with a viable solution. This also tends to mean that any solution that is discovered will either be more expensive, less optimal, or take greater personnel time to develop. By waiting until the end to address show-stoppers, the team is trading off thinking time for physical action.

It also tends to create additional stress just at the time that the team will already be under high stress. Initially, a project is usually low on the radar screen of management time and attention. As additional resources are added to a project, the project gets more management time and attention. This tends to magnify any hiccups on a project.

Stating the issues early and putting together a plan to address them gives management time to adjust to the potential issues and be reassured as progress is made on addressing them, rather than fearing a huge unknown that “suddenly” crops up. This prevents management from wondering what else they haven’t been told about and whether it can be solved in time.