Speed - Life In The Business Fast Lane
Posted on February 6, 2008
Filed Under Gregg Gallagher, Innovation, Uncategorized |
At this week’s staff meeting, we discussed an emergent theme from our conversations with clients and other constituencies - that of improving the velocity of organizations in executing across a number of dimensions.
In the area of new product development, the ability of a firm to accelerate new product introduction ahead of competition and within window of opportunity is central to success.
The payoffs:
- Speed yields competitive advantage - via the ability to respond to customers’ needs faster than competition.
- Speed yields higher profitability - by realizing revenues from sales earlier & longer in product life cycle
- Speed means fewer surprises - by reducing likelihood that market conditions will dramatically change during development
However, speed must not be achieved at the expense of managing the project properly, so there is always a dynamic tension between rushing a product into market too soon (e.g. without the requisite critical success factors being adequately addressed such as staff training, marketing programs, etc.).
How is your firm currently working towards improving it’s product velocity?
Gregg Gallagher
Director, Marketing & Innovation Practice
Quantum Leaders, Inc
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2 Responses to “Speed - Life In The Business Fast Lane”
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Excellent post. In my firm, I found that speed could almost be considered a marketing tool. Also, friends of mine, when counseled then to attempt dramatically faster bid turnarounds, noticed a significant uptick in business. When speed was coupled with high quality output in a bid, we almost always got the job.
Manny - in some future posts I’ll be addressing some of the ways to improve speed. As you know, it’s not just “doing stuff faster”…that often leads to diminished quality and lower new product success rates.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this….