Ventiladores

In this subchapter, the conceptual model STO – a hybrid NPD approach will be discussed. STO stands for (S) strategic, (T) tactical and (O) operational.

In figure 18, on page 55, the STO – NPD approach is visualised. The light grey lines indicate the levels of the business in which this model operates. The aim was to preserve the advantages and integrate the best practices properties from the three different levels of business new product development planning processes into a hybrid approach. A derivative of the initial steps towards a hybrid model of Oliveira & Rozenfeld (2010) and Cooper (2011) has been made concerning the integration of technology roadmapping and portfolio management with two main additions.

The first addition is the dotted loop between the strategic and tactical methods. This line has been added in order to implement a method for technology roadmapping at various levels within a business. Oliveira & Rozenfeld (2010) added this activity to establish the boundaries of the method’s application in terms of business unit, market segment and product line. The unit of analysis should reflect the scope the company wishes to consider in the front-end of NPD. But it might occur that a business needs to consider more than one unit: next to a total business overview, also the separate business units to be able to analyse the use of technologies or resources in more depth (Gerdsri, Assakul, & Vatananan, 2010). From a brand perspective, you might need to dig deeper into the products or product lines, market segments and/or technology in the business unit of that brand.

For instance, think of a business with a large portfolio of brands: first unit of analysis might be the company as a whole and considering brand portfolio management. But the next step should be the separate brands. In which the business needs to go through the same process of technology roadmapping, followed by project portfolio management methods. This dotted line represents the possibility to implement and make use of the several methods at different unit of analysis, for instance at corporate level, for the separate strategic business units or per brand.

Second, the reliance on a more strategic approach at the beginning of the new product development process, next to financial methods, is made to increase the probability of success of this approach. In figure 18, on page 55, visualised by an increased presence in the sets of portfolio management tools, both prioritizing and decision making tools. As mentioned in subchapter 4.2.5, best practices of portfolio management on page 41, the best performers use an average of 2.4 portfolio management tools and tend to rely much less on financial methods as the dominant portfolio tool than does the average businesses. The best let the business strategy allocate resources and decide the portfolio; business strategy methods are the number one method for the best performers (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2006).

Another best practice is having an established, explicit and formal method for portfolio management. The method should have clear and well-defined rules and procedures in order to apply the portfolio methods to all appropriate projects and treat all projects together as a portfolio (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 1999; Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2006). This leads to the next level of integration; tactical versus operational alignment.

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To treat all projects as a portfolio, approach 2, where a portfolio review dominates, described in subchapter 4.4.2 Portfolio management and state-gate systems, seems to be most suitable. This is also the most appropriate alignment when not yet a proper idea-to-launch system is available, which makes this model better generalizable in the end.

In this approach, a single decision of all projects, with the use of a portfolio method, replaces one of the gates in the gating process, visualised figure 18 on the next, by a loop in gate 2. The viewpoint of the second approach is that all the projects selected from gate 1 must compete against all projects already in execution.

Note that this alignment is only necessary for all new ideas and should be held 2-4 times a year. It is here were the Go/Kill decisions about new projects, but also about current projects in execution, are made and is a senior management meeting. This enables the business to look very closely to the use and deployment of their total package of resources, without requiring a major time commitment from senior management, who already run quickly out of time. One disadvantage is that the project team is not available to defend a project at this decision gate. We therefor suggest that in gate 2, the teams for major new ideas, can present their idea within 15 min, before the traditional gate 2 goes into operation. If there are still questions after the gate 2 meeting, one or two team members can be called in for more information and details. This has been visualised in figure 18 by a pre- gate two hour, a presentation hour.

Gate 1, is a moderate screen, and amounts to exposing the prioritized projects to a handful of key ‘must meet’ and ‘should meet’ criteria using portfolio management tools, like checklists. These criteria should deal with strategic alignment, project feasibility, differential advantage, synergy with the business core business and resources and market attractiveness for instance. This has also been visualised by a loop in figure 18 on the next page.

In lateral gates, in gate 3 in this generic STO – NPD approach, a stronger financial method can be used when expected financial returns becomes the focus, visualised also by a loop in figure 18, on the next page.

In the STO – NPD approach the scaling development of a stage-gate system is implemented. Dependent on the risk level of the project, it should go through a full five-stage process, a medium risk three-stage process or a low risk two-stage process. High risk projects are new products or product lines in the business, medium risk projects can be extensions, modifications or improvements to current products and low risk projects might be sales-force or marketing request or even minor changes in products.

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