March 2015

NEEDHAM, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 23, 2015 — GGI will be holding our 19th Summit on Metrics for corporate, business, research, and product development executives during the last week of August at the Four Points by Sheraton – Norwood Inn & Conference Center. The location of all GGI Metrics Summits, this conference center is conveniently equidistant between Boston and Providence airports.

The 19th Summit consists of two seminars, and a workshop that is interspersed with micro seminars. In three days, we will cover the wide range of topics necessary to comprehensively measure corporate investments in research and development. The culminating workshop will result in a take home draft, using GGI’s Linked Metrics Portfolio™ method, of a portfolio of metrics that measure three levels into R&D and produce a handful of metrics for the CEO’s needs. Numerous corporations use our approach that meets the specialized needs of project-based environments while producing business-level metrics that feed into corporate scorecards and financial statements.

Tuesday focuses on the hardest to quantify corporate innovation measurement issues: Risk & Complexity, Hurdle Rates, Trade-Off Analysis, Capacity & Pipeline Management, and the few Metrics that capture the financial performance of R&D as a whole. It concludes with a review of the Top 101 metrics that corporations use to oversee their R&D investments.

Wednesday morning we generate “Proactive” forward-looking R&D metrics to guide the culture of the innovation environment. Discussion then switches to early metrics that are “Predictive” of the outcomes of R&D investments.

The Workshop begins in the afternoon and continues Thursday. Participants organize into teams based on the commonality of their corporate R&D strategy. A common strategy is more important than a common industry at the financial reporting level of corporations. Innovator, Platform, Balanced, and Follower strategy metrics differ. Teams determine their “must have” metrics. Then, a series rounding-out topics are interspersed into the workshop. These micro seminars cover metrics for Applied Research, Advanced Development, Intellectual Property, Technical & Functional & X-Functional Disciplines, Software, and Supplier Management.

The Summit wraps-up with team presentations of their draft Metrics Portfolios, and their explanations on how their metrics support their chosen R&D Strategy. A discussion on Implementing Metrics concludes the event.

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NOTE:  Inadvertently, the actual Business Wire press release title was issued with the dates August 27-29.  The correct dates are August 25-27, Tuesday to Thursday, as the title in this blog post correctly indicates.

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19th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit

Early Bird Rates conclude at the end of business Pacific Time on Friday, June 26.

Strategy is a wonderful word. It sounds great in meetings, as does its adjective form, strategic. Everyone’s mind snaps to attention the moment either word is used. Then everyone nods, saying we have got to have the right strategy. And if some plan is called strategic, then we must certainly do it.

Management and consultants throw the s-word around casually all the time. Too much of the time, these folks are actually talking about tactics; or even worse, operational levels. There are instances in which both tactics and operational items are strategic. But, usually they are not.

Certain companies and service firms do understand how to create strategies and then put them into effect. People who have worked for those companies see it immediately and their thought processes are changed for the rest of their careers.

Product road maps and product portfolio strategies, and their enforcement, are important. The only companies that systematically prosper without a good portfolio strategy either out-service their competition, sit at the top of the heap in operational excellence and cost management, or are lucky enough to be in a high-growth industry where management can do no wrong.

Does Engineering Work for Sales or Management? [Machine Design – March 2015] discusses the four primary product portfolio management strategies that companies utilize, and the degree to which management polices adherence to its’ stated strategy. Strategies used by Apple, Microsoft, and Harley-Davidson aftermarket suppliers illustrate the key points.