subject: Product Designing Strategies Unraveled [print this page] New products launches are important for any enterprise in a dynamic economy, be it to ensure
Revenue growth
Market share
In fact it can be directly related to the viability of an enterprise.
Some corporations are continuously re-inventing themselves, and one of the best examples of this scenario is 3M, the philosophy that drives product development in 3M is that 30% of revenue that is generated in a year should come from products introduced since the last 3 years. In fact very few of us know that Nokia the way we know it today started as a paper manufacturing company. Some business historians have said that very few corporations survive beyond a centennial and this can be directly influenced by the corporations to continuously remodel itself by having an iterative product development philosophy.
A question to ask is what could be the most suitable model to undertake product development, for long enterprises have been inward focused when it came to product development, in fact enterprises have for long been judged by the amount of money that they were spending on research and development and the number of patents that they are filing. In the present day scenario this can be a big risk. A corporation should not only look within it when it comes to undertaking a new product development effort, in fact an enterprise should have a close eye on the development that is happening in the market and should partner either by leveraging a external firm that specializes in certain aspect of product designing.
One of the strategies that corporations used to follow while undertaking product designing has been of incrementally adding features to their products or solutions, resulting in both increasing cost and complex products. This trend was challenged by Apple which moved towards a model of simplistic design. Radical product design was not the only philosophy that differentiated Apple from other firms, another aspect that made it different was that its product development was not end consumer driven.
In fact another new area of research that has been coming up has been frugal innovation. Some researchers have studied enterprises in emerging economies and have closely observed their product development strategy, which is driven by lack of resources and there utilizing locally available material for product development.
As referred to earlier corporations should not only undertake product development in-house but should also work with external stakeholders like product development firm which specialize in bringing new products to the markets. This strategy can be adopted by both startups as well as large corporations through the business drivers can be entirely different, for a large corporations imbibing the fast paced spirit of a product development mindset can be a challenging tasks, as conventionally people who like to work in new product development are not excited by the conventional hierarchy driven philosophy of a large corporation. For a startup the capability to ramp up and down according to business dynamics is an important factor and a reason they should engage with a product development company.
