May 2014

18th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit – December 9-11, 2014

/ Blogroll, Finance, Metrics, Process, Strategy

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. The first one-day seminar is dedicated to focus on the metrics for decisions and issues that Officers and Senior Executives face in directing and measuring overall performance and entire organizations. The three most adopted industry metrics of the past decade will be discussed, along with a number of other all-in-one metrics: 3M’s “Vitality Index,” the emergent “Return On Innovation” metric, and the rejuvenated “Return On Capital.” Capacity, pipeline and portfolio management, hurdle rates, risk, and trade-off analysis discussions round out the first day. The second seminar, a half-day concluding with an early afternoon luncheon, is dedicated to “proactive” and “predictive” metrics. Proactive metrics lower the risk of R&D investments before they are approved. Predictive metrics improve the ability to foresee the execution and financial outcomes of approved investments.

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, Technical & Functional Disciplines, Improvement Initiatives, and the overall Corporate Performance of R&D. Applied Research and Advanced Development organizations are easily accommodated as well in a single integrated framework, for companies with multiple development organizations. The Linked Metrics Portfolio® approach, preferred to the Balanced Scorecard for managing R&D and Product Development, will frame the exercise.

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 28-year old company, has been recognized as a thought leader and practitioner in this field since the early 1990s.

Finally, and this is not true of all GGI Metrics Summits, GGI published our 6th North American study of R&D and Product Development practices in the areas of R&D Operating Environments, Organic Innovation, Open Innovation, Intellectual Property, and the Top Corporate R&D Metrics In Use on March 3, 2014. Two-hundred companies from the USA, Canada, and Mexico participated in numbers that represent the relative R&D spending of the North American countries. It will be difficult to find information that is more current to augment the practical nature and usable outcomes of this 18th Metrics Summit.

Please visit our Summit web site for additional content and registration information.

Top 5 R&D-Product Development Metrics

/ Blogroll, Finance, Metrics

Organic R&D-Product Development, Open Innovation, Intellectual Property & CXO Corporate Metrics Practices, July 23, 2013, announced GGI’s 6th major industry research study since 1998. The 6th study had begun in September of 2012 and was subsequently concluded in September 2013, lasting approximately 13 months. Two-hundred North American companies participated in equal ratios to the relative R&D Spending of the USA, Canada, and Mexico. A sizable research effort, analysis and report writing took several months. On March 13, 2014, GGI issued a Business Wire Press Release to announce the 2014 Product Development Metrics Research.

Each GGI research effort has five focus areas. We try to get at what we see or know to be emerging trends to determine if they will become generally adopted, or if they will fizzle out. Advisors always wish to bring novelty and sizzle to their clients. GGI’s research gives us additional confidences, yea or nea.

The first four research areas explored changes to the environment and processes of organic R&D, open innovation, and intellectual property. Several of our thirty-one questions enabled five and ten year snapshots versus our prior research; and enabled comparisons of pre and post great recession practices. These four areas are not on the subject of Top 5 Industry R&D-Product Development Metrics. In short, innovation infrastructure is actively being built while the mix of corporate product portfolios clearly have less risk. Seemingly, corporate control from inception to launch has is probably best yet. There is little R&D sandbox left that is not overseen with some sort of milestones. New-To Innovation? IP is growing in personnel, but most infrastructure appears to be delivered by outside services. As well, integration with the general employee population seems slow compared to the continued growth in IP market dynamics.

The fifth and final research area has remained consistent for fifteen years now. GGI always studies industry usage of “Corporate R&D-Product Development Metrics.” What dashboard metrics are the top executives using these days, and what is changing over the past 5-10-15 years? This study researched 101 individual metrics. All 101 metrics are exclusively “overall performance metrics for R&D-Product Development as a whole,” the ones CEOs might wish to look at along with their VP R&D-Product Development. We had to limit the number to 101. Industry usage of known metrics, and now many permutations thereof, is exploding. Enabled by the computer age, many more metrics are possible and the cost per metric is lowering.

Leeland Teschler, Machine Design’s long-time Editor, excerpted a piece he entitled the State of R&D shortly after GGI’s research was published. It includes the Top 5 metrics.

Top 5 R&D-Product Development Metrics [Machine Design – May 8, 2014] breathes a bit more life into the nature of the Top 5 metrics, one of which didn’t exist thirty years ago.