Mostly, everyone involved in new product development (NPD) generally appreciates the overall process is a risky business. Sometimes it genuinely really does surprise and impress me when things actually go to plan and a product which starts as an intangible idea, physically comes off the conveyor in the factory, packaged ready for the consumer. For those of us involved in the design and development cycle, we will appreciate that it is not a simple process and for many reasons a number of inventions just don’t make it far along the development motorway at all, having to pull over to refuel or cease their journey altogether.
So what can go wrong? Well, actually quite a lot. In many cases it is because the product is unsuitable. That it simply fails to meet consumer demands. This could be because it doesn’t work as it should or is difficult to operate or use. It may be because the original idea has changed so much as the design is refined (and refined), that the once so-called genius spark and product purpose, is dampened and dimmed due to the sheer amount of modifications undertaken. Or perhaps the consumer research was misinterpreted in some way and the product ended up looking and behaving quite differently to what was expected.
I have been involved on the design team when due to the project schedule overrunning for multiple reasons, the product was produced too late and subsequently launched at the wrong time of year. This can have a catastrophic impact on the overall feasibility of a product. Furthermore, any delay can give your competitors the chance to enter the market either with a similar or an improved product, that is deemed ‘better’ than the model or version you were planning and hoping to launch.
At the end of the day a manufacturer is aiming to generate value from producing and selling a new product. So the pricing not only has to be considered reasonable for the consumer to pay, but also enough to cover any investment made by the manufacturer in bringing the product to market in the first place. As with anything which is deemed risky, there is always a level of risk management and contingency planning to cover unforeseen hiccups, mistakes and good old human error.
Despite all the negatives mentioned here and other possible things that could go wrong, a vast number of products do get invented, invested in and produced successfully all the time. So NPD can’t be that much of a risky business, can it?
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