10th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit

This Summit will provide participants with a snapshot of the evolution, current status, and projected future of R&D and Product Development Metrics as viewed from the top of corporations.

During the first two seminars of the Summit, we will teach the Body of Knowledge of R&D and Product Development Metrics -- with a focus towards the measures that company Officers and Senior Executives need to manage the organization and its performance as a whole. For example, did you know that 3M's "Vitality Index" is now used by about 55% of all companies? For example, did you know that "Return On Innovation" is the number one metric being adopted by industry during the past five years?

During the third and final seminar of the Summit, participants will break into working groups to create a "set of metrics" suitable for managing and monitoring R&D and/or Product Development organizations as a whole -- including Projects, Functional Disciplines, Improvement Initiatives, and the overall Corporate Performance of R&D. Did you know that GGI's Linked Metrics Portfolio® framework is preferred by executives to the Balanced Scorecard for managing R&D and Product Development?

Senior executives wishing to put themselves and their fellow senior executives in a better position to direct and drive product creation and commercialization should strongly consider attending. Several of our prior participants have said, "this Summit covers everything an Officer or Senior Manager needs to know on the subject of Metrics." GGI, a 25-year old company, has been recognized as a thought leader and practitioner in this field since the early 1990s.

The ability of officers, managers, and key professionals to direct and make their organizations productive through metrics and measures is the focus of the ninth Product Development Metrics Summit to be held December 8-10, 2009 in metro Boston.

The Metrics Summit is a series of 3 seminars, focused on 3 major areas of importance to R&D executives and managers. Download a Brochure. Download a Summit At-A-Glance.


The First Two Seminars

The first seminar [Measuring Product Development II (MPDII) - December 8] is focused on the issues that top management has to deal with that are a bit squishy and hard to quantify. The topics span the subjects of setting hurdle rates, assessing risk and complexity, tradeoff analysis, measuring capacity, and assessing overall financial performance. Click to view the MPDII Abstract or to download the MPDII Table of Contents.

The second seminar [Proactive and Predictive R&D Metrics (PPRD) - December 9 AM] is focused on the three different stages of developing early, predictive metrics that will enable managers to foresee issues on the horizon or to know that success is in front of them. GGI was the first company to differentiate proactive from predictive metrics in the 1990s which then spawned further exploration of that management science. Click to view the PPRD Abstract or to download the PPRD Table of Contents.

The Third Seminar-Workshop

The third seminar, is more accurately a Workshop [Product Development Metrics Portfolios (PDMP) - December 9 PM and December 10]. From start to completion, participants work in groups to develop "a set of measures suitable for measuring the entire organization and the activities within it." The course book is largely a compendium of hundreds of measures for R&D organizations across all categories of measures. The scorecard each group will create will contain a comprehensive set of measures for the R&D organization as a whole at the top officer level. This portfolio of metrics will be suitable to pass the necessary metrics to the CEO that are needed by the corporation. This portfolio of metrics will be suitable to consistently measure projects, and the functional and technical organizations that perform the projects. Improvement measures will also be addressed. Click to view the PDMP Abstract or to download the PDMP Table of Contents. The US Patent & Trademark Office granted a trademark to GGI in January 2007 for our Linked Metrics Portfolio® framework which is used during the PDMP seminar. Our framework results in a set of metrics that span multiple organization levels and remain integrated.

Who Should Come

Our overall approach to the Summit is geared to top-level professionals that manage entire organizations, departments, budgets, and senior program management executives. Numerous companies have brought teams of officers ranging from three to ten in size in the quest to develop a set of metrics they can all agree to for R&D and product development. When one or two persons come from a company, we create multi-company groups either based on industry type or the similarity of the corporate R&D strategies -- Innovators, Platform-Derivative, Extenders, etc. Individuals have a slightly different experience than do company teams, but all leave with a set of metrics suitable for measuring the R&D organization as a whole.