June 2015

19th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit, August 25-27, 2015

/ Blogroll, Finance, Metrics, Process, Strategy

There are new techniques and metrics just introduced by McKinsey and CFO Magazine, and an industry-generated metric from Broadcom entitled “R&D Efficiency,” during the spring of 2015. They all focus on measuring overall R&D productivity, output over input. One of them has a good chance of becoming mainstream in the next five years, just as Return On Innovation (early 2000s) and the Vitality Index (1988) did. As well, there has been the equivalent of a sea change in the metrics companies use since the market crashed in 2008. It became evident in 2013 and is ongoing. Did you reorient your metrics, by about 25%, towards business and financial output in the past five years?

This Summit covers everything an executive needs to know relating to measuring R&D, Advanced Development, Product Development, Innovation, Technical and Functional Competencies, R&D Productivity, and R&D-related Intellectual Property. We will connect the numerous metrics going three levels deep into the R&D-Product Development organizations to the handful of KPIs needed by the CEO for financial reporting and investors in a single one-page portfolio.

The selections of metrics are different for every company, and highly strategy dependent. You get what you measure. Don’t worry, you’ll get to include any of the metrics you measure today in your final workshop solution. GGI is consistently told by leaders, who enter believing that they have strong metrics, that they have a great many things they are going to discuss doing and undoing when they get back to their office.

GGI has been a recognized thought leader in measurement since the early 1990s. We have introduced more than a handful of metrics that companies use today. We have played a role in making a number of great metrics, created by others, become mainstream across industries. For eighteen years we have done primary research on corporate, project, technical, functional, innovation, productivity, and IP metrics being adopted by corporations. For twenty-five years we have kept our finger on the pulse of what is being done by others, and on emergent metrics that haven’t significantly penetrated industry (yet). This enables participants to determine a competitive advantage set of KPIs and their necessary supporting measures. Our Summit is as close as you will get to internalize the metrics body of knowledge in a single event.  Every Summit is current.

Senior executives wishing to put themselves and their colleagues in a better position to direct and drive product creation and commercialization should strongly consider attending. Many participants have said, “this Summit covers everything an officer or senior manager needs to know on the subject of Metrics.”

Product Development Metrics Summit 19

Learn More or Register.

Participant Companies.

Press Release.

Post-Launch Reviews Improve New Product Performance

/ Blogroll, Finance, Metrics, Process

Does your R&D organization have closed-loop decision making?  If not, increasing the robustness of your post-launch reviews may help.

Manufacturing and operations professionals, in just about every company, have achieved closed-loop decision-making over the past three decades.  When the yield of any work center is lower than expected, engineers track down the root causes and fix them.  At the business level across the entire factory, when there is not enough finished goods inventory on hand and orders are short shipped, management tracks down the root causes and fixes them.  The opportunity to do the same is still on the table for most managers and executives who direct engineering and product development professionals and organizations.

The yield of a work center is a much different animal in product development so let’s not address engineering work centers at this time.  However, at the business level across the entire product development organization(s), there are several opportunities to improve both the development team’s and management’s ability to learn from the project/product and better decision making the next time around.

A “project” is a temporary organization vehicle used to develop new products. Companies don’t sell projects; they sell products that result from projects. Team reviews should have a heavy project emphasis. Management reviews should have a heavy product emphasis. Of course there is overlap, but it is not that difficult to draw a fairly clean line as to what in a product should be part of a team project review and what in a project should be part of a management product review.

Post-Launch Reviews Improve New Product Performance [Machine Design – June 2015] discusses the similarities and differences between team and management post-launch reviews, and offers suggestions for how each type of review might be improved.