GGI Tangible Innovation!^™ Volume 1, Issue 1 - October 13, 2014
GGI Tangible Innovation!^™ is published approximately every quarter.

Tangible Innovation!^™ Volume 01, Issue 01

BAIN'S & SATMETRIX's  "NET PROMOTER SCORE℠" METRIC

The growth in the number of new metrics has been especially strong the past ten years as corporations strive to better manage and measure their ability to innovate.  Some metrics die out rather quickly because they don't resonate with enough people in corporate leadership positions.  RVG, Relative Value of Growth, introduced by CFO Magazine in the early 2000s, is an example of a metric that did not get corporate traction.

There are also metrics that are immediate hits with corporations. ROI, Return On Innovation, is a metric that gained immediate traction.  Also introduced in the early 2000s, it has had a meteoric rise to now be in the Top 10 metrics used by corporations to measure overall R&D productivity.  (See GGI's "Top 10  and Top 100 Corporate R&D and Product Development Metrics" article later in this issue.)

Bain & Company, in conjunction with Satmetrix, are using a metric that they call the "Net Promoter Score℠."  The origin of this metric is in the mid 2000s, and it seems to be gaining traction. 

This metric is an outgrowth of a research project launched by Fred Reichheld and a Bain team, using data provided by Satmetrix.  In short, the research goal was to find the best question to ask that would be a reliable indicator of growth for mature competitive industries.  The best question turned out to be, "What is the likelihood that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?"

Source:  Satmetrix®
Source:  Bain & Company

PDMA's PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT STANDARD FRAMEWORK

PDMA is the world's largest non-profit organization dedicated to the professional needs of product development professionals.  Over their approximately three decades of existence, a number of useful frameworks and calibrating mechanisms have been introduced that have generally furthered best product development practices.

In the early 2000s, PDMA introduced their "NPDP - New Product Development Professional" certification which enabled the ability of professionals to calibrate their knowledge against a standardized body of knowledge for managing, developing, and launching new products.  Many professionals have taken this examination over the past decade.

Earlier this year, after several years in development, PDMA rolled out their "Innovation Management Framework [IMF]."  The IMF enables corporations to benchmark their knowledge and capabilities against a standardized body of knowledge for corporate innovation.

Best practice companies should be aware that the IMF tool exists, regardless of whether they choose to actually benchmark themselves against the standard framework.  There are six sections to the standard framework.

•  Culture
•  Leadership
•  Resources
•  Processes
•  Monitoring & Measuring
•  Improvement

Source:  PDMA Press Release In Business Wire

ENGINEERING'S IMPACT ON FORTUNE 500 LEADERSHIP

Professionals with engineering degrees manage a great number Fortune 500 corporations, however they are still predominantly male.  Electrical engineering degrees are increasingly the degree of choice.

According to research conducted by ECN Magazine on the 2013 Fortune 500 list of companies:

•  24% of Fortune 50 CEOs are engineers, down 3% from last year.
•  Of that 24%, only two are female: Mary Barra and Virginia Rometty.
•  Engineers run five of the top ten companies, down two from last year.
•  Twice as many electrical engineers run top 50 companies as did at this time, last year.

Source:  ECN Magazine, "12 of the highest paid engineers on the planet," June 25, 2014

MACHINE DESIGN - Monthly Column Published Since June 2013

In June 2013, Brad Goldense was invited to write a monthly column in Machine Design entitled "Goldense On Product Development."  The column, necessarily, is focused to target the information needs of Machine Design readers.

Below are the titles of the Machine Design columns that have been published to date.  

2014 November          Which Comes First, Invention or Innovation?
2014 October              What's The Difference Between Research and Development?
2014 September          Design Reviews Reduce Time to Market
2014 August                Making Product Development More Innovative
2014 July                    Applied Research & Advanced Development Come of Age
2014 June                    Product Architecture In The Digital Age
2014 May                    Top 5 R&D-Product Development Metrics
2014 April                   Trade Secret Practices Changing Due to First-to-File Legislation
2014 March                 R U an Open Innovator?
2014 February             Lead Users Generate Innovative Ideas and Great Returns

2013 December           More Research and Development or Just More Processes?
2013 November          Predictive Metrics for Products and Programs
2013 October              Measuring Competencies in Lean and Innovative Companies
2013 September          Innovation Is Changing Pre-Product Development R&D
2013 August                Innovation-Enabling Tools and Software for Individuals and Pipelines
2013 July                    The Makers Movement Spurs Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
2013 June                    IP and Innovation Will Drive Product Development

Complimentary downloads of each article in pdf format are available through GGI's web site.

GGI PRIMARY RESEARCH FINDINGS - Published March 3, 2014

Most readers of Tangible Innovation!™ are aware that GGI conducted our 6th "Product Development Metrics Survey" this past year.  With the completion of this 6th primary research initiative, we now have fifteen years of information and rates on change on many subjects that are critical to the successful management of R&D spending.

Recently we completed a six part series of articles that highlighted selected findings of the research.

The first article discusses the scope and nature of the research.  The remaining articles address each of the five separate topics of our research.

1. Corporate Practices and KPIs In Organic, Open, and IP Innovation - Research Results

2. The Great Recession Changed R&D Operating Environments

3. The Sophistication of Organic R&D Innovation Management Continues

4. The Embodiment of Open R&D Innovation Management Begins

5. The Enculturation of Intellectual Property In R&D Practices Is Coming

6. The Top 10 and Top 100 Corporate R&D and Product Development Metrics

As a courtesy to the research participants, we purposely delayed publishing of any findings to the public to give some proprietary lead time to those that graciously participated.

GGI PRIMARY RESEARCH FINDINGS - A Note To Research Participants and Sponsors

As promised to all participants, facilitators, and sponsors, GGI provided you with a full set of the results in recognition of the time and expertise you shared with us.  In March 2014, each of you should have received a 138-page pdf document entitled "Summary."  In the event that you did not receive your complimentary copy, please send an email to research@goldensegroupinc.com and we will get your copy to you.

If you did not participate in our research and are interested in the findings, they are available through The Wisdom iStore in the Primary Research section. 

GGI 18th METRICS SUMMIT:  December 9-11, 2014 - Early Bird Ends Friday October 17

The 18th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit will provide participants with the best metrics for their individual companies across industries to drive R&D and Product Development productivity, output, effectiveness, and efficiency.  You will wrap your arms around the metrics that investment firms and Wall Street analysts are increasingly interested in regarding new product sales, value of the pipeline, time-phased portfolio value, company innovativeness, and innovation conversion rates to real products that launch.  Make no mistake, this Summit is geared for top folks chartered with leading and getting results from innovation in all its manifestations.  If you look at the written testimonials from our Summit participants, and the positions that they hold, it is clear that GGI's Summit delivers the value and content that executives charged with running complex R&D operations need to be successful.

Our twenty-eight years as a corporation serving North America and Europe, along with our statistically valid primary research conducted over the past fifteen years, brings depth and executive perspective this 18th Summit.  We know the Top 100 Metrics that are the most used by corporations, and how they have changed over time.  On March 13, 2014 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. Two-hundred companies from the USA, Canada, and Mexico participated in numbers that represent the relative R&D spending of the North American countries. There is no more current information anywhere on the industrialized continents in 2014. Participants in our 17th Summit earlier this year attested to this.  Again, GGI Summits are delivered from the prospective of C-Level executives who have overall responsibility for getting results and interfacing with external analysts.
           
During the first two seminars of the Summit, we will discuss the usable and practical part of the Body of Knowledge of R&D and Product Development Metrics that CXOs can put to work for their companies.  The first seminar, the first day, focuses on the hardest to measure operational areas including: capacity management, how to make trade-off decisions, hurdle rates, portfolio risk and complexity, overall returns from R&D investments, and the number of metrics a company should have to manage R&D from a CXO and then CEO level.  The second seminar, the next morning, focuses on planning, proactive, and predictive metrics that enable one to see ahead of actual results to enable a performance environment and culture that will produce superior results.

The third seminar of the Summit is best described as a Workshop, but it will include new material on rapidly evolving measurement areas in R&D.  Participants will break into working groups to apply their experience and new learnings of the past two days to create "a set of metrics" suitable for measuring all aspects of R&D -- including Projects, Technical & Functional Disciplines, Improvement Initiatives, and most importantly the overall CXO-Level metrics for R&D that are used by the President, CEO, and investor community.   There will be several focused discussions during the Workshop on specialty metrics for Advanced Development, Functional/Technical Competencies, Intellectual Property & Licensing, and several other measurement topics that are rapidly entering the mainstream.

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. The great majority of our prior participants will say, “this Summit covers everything an Officer or Senior Manager needs to know on the subject of Metrics and how to deploy them.”

If you register by October 17th, Individuals can save $200 and teams of three or more can save an additional $170 off already discounted Team rates.  Space is limited, please register today.

THE WISDOM iSTORE FEATURED ITEM @ 40% OFF - Design Review Checklists

Discounted Item: Periodically, GGI's iStore features one item that we discount 40%. We are now offering our full suite of Design Review Checklists, DR10PAKc.

Design Review Spreadsheets (Electronic Copy - Corporate License),  Goldense Group, Inc., Needham, MA, USA, $570.00 [List Price $950.00]

The 10-PAK includes all ten checklists, suitable for a wide range of product development environments and their components and sub-assemblies.  The spreadsheets are appropriate for organizations with single technical domains (like mechanical), to those with mixed domains (such as mechanical, electrical, electronics, embedded software, operating systems and/or applications software).

These checklists come with a comprehensive set of reviewable line items that often need to be reviewed.  These checklists however can be easily tailored by changing or deleting items we suggest, and any number of new items may be added simply and easily.  Some companies make these check lists into their own corporate standard and they become part of ISO requirements.  Other companies allow each project to tailor the checklists specifically to the needs of the project, which may or may not fall under ISO.

Additional information on Design Reviews may be found at GGI's Design Review Information Center.

GGI's Featured Item is always offered at 40% discount. To order this material, please find GGI's "Featured Item" on the GGI Home Page.

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Tangible Innovation!™,  published by Goldense Group, Inc. [GGI] in Needham, Massachusetts,  is an eZine for professionals engaged in Research, Advanced Development, Product Development, and the Corporate Business Functions responsible for the output, productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, revenues, profits, and brand value of investments made in R&D and Product Development.  Thank you for taking the time to read this issue!