A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

The most difficult part of improving the innovation process is convincing the senior management of the need.

They will readily agree that having a new product pipeline is critical to success. They will also agree that a Stage-Gate process is most beneficial. In fact, I suspect most if not all senior managers would quickly agree that supporting NPD efforts is vital and worthy of their attention.

Sadly, experience has taught me that regardless of how much senior managers want to improve the NPD process, they fail to execute at the right level. By this I mean that they fail to make it their own priority. It is certainly true is this context that if you want a job done right you should do it yourself.

Innovation cannot be delegated to an individual or department. Neither can it be copied from other successful companies. Developing an NPD process is a process itself, and that process must begin at the top. The first step in developing an NPD process is to find a champion within the organization who is willing to do whatever it takes. It is too easy for senior managers to pay a consultant to teach NPD best practices, but it is impossible to establish lasting corporate change without an internal champion. This is precisely where the process begins to fail. Low-level managers, project managers, and designers typically first understand the need and have the desire to reinvent the NPD process (and join the PDMA), but they lack the visibility and voice to make their concerns known to the senior managers (who have never heard of PDMA) capable of making decisions. How hard would it be in your organization for a machine designer to have a little 1-on-1 with the CEO and tell him about the need to change NPD practices? How likely would the CEO be to make tough realignment and resource decisions based on this “low-level” advice?

Think about the next management level down from the CEO. Are they willing to sacrifice many of their own resources, much of their power, even their own jobs for the sake of improved product development? Of course not. Successful NPD processes may require significant corporate restructuring and pain for many managers. Who will force them to endure it?

So as it is, the lower-level employees see the obvious need for reinvented NPD processes, and they endure the agony of using ineffective processes. Meanwhile the CEO sees the decline of market share and fewer new products being released, and goes to the middle managers for a solution. Finally the middle managers seek to improve their own processes to the exclusion of others. The result is the failure to make sweeping, lasting, effective change. The senior-most managers must be willing to dive deep into their organization for ideas and input, and be ready for the response regardless of the source.