How New Product Development (NPD) should be

It is common that most organizations use new product development (NPD) to increase growth and profitability. However, according to Robert Cooper, of McMaster University and New Product Development Institute in Ontarion, Canada, only 1 in 7 products are realized. The reason mainly due to poor practices. Companies such as P&G, J&J, HP and Sony practice a disciplined, systematic approach to consistenly achieve success in NPD. There are 4 forces that contribute to the success:

1. A product innovation and technology strategy for the business
2. Resource commitment and focusing on the right projects, or solid portfolio management
3. An effective, flexible and streamlined idea-to-launch process
4. The right climate and culture for innovation, true cross-functional teams, and commitment of senior management to NPD

In order to achieve the best out of NPD, companies need to pay focus on their customers, identify needs and problems based on customer.

The best practices for successful NPD: align projects and resources with business strategy, focus on customer needs when identifying potential projects/products, and assign project managers to lead the projects.

Source: Information Technology Project Management by Kathy Schwalbe

The Story of WPF and Innovation

Recently on 9th April, I had given a talk in MIND Community Day 2011, titled The Story of WPF and Innovation. The purpose of the presentation is to highlight the following areas:

1. Showcase of WPF applications built in real world
2. Explaining the term of Innovation and the importance of Value Innovation
3. Instead of using the decision matrix, we assess attractiveness of WPF (will/to be used in a project/organization) with Porter’s Five Forces

In summary, I hope that my presentation (and research) could greatly help the people in understanding the value of new technology. Embarking on a new technology is always a dream for developers or technical team; however the management’s concern is always on the return on investment (ROI). With any technology that we (as technical team) would like to propose, it’s essential to prove that new technology is able to create VALUE, for eg: shorter time to market, better productivity to users. In this case, I made an bold statement that WPF driving INNOVATION by creating/adding VALUE.

Download the powerpoint deck at here.

The First Post

This is my first post and my first attempt in using WordPress. This blog is my space to discuss about my areas of interest: IT, Innovation and IP. I strongly believe there is a strong linkage between these 3 areas. Through my years of experience in IT field, mainly focusing in software development, I realize that innovation plays a crucial role to enhance and improve the offerings of software solutions as well as software development lifecycle. IP (Intellectual Property) on the other hand serves as an important element to protect intellectual assets within technology-based companies, subsequently provides competitive edge to the companies.