Is Stage-Gate a Barrier to Innovation?
Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under Gregg Gallagher, Innovation, Strategy |
In a recent, thought-provoking posting on his excellent Innovation Playground blog, Idris Mootee posits that the traditional product development stage-gate framework is a barrier to innovation.
The following is my comment posted to his blog:
Idris:
When I first read the title of this post, the “old school product manager” in me reacted viscerally. Then when I read through the post itself, I came to the realization that our thinking was, in fact, in alignment.
Stage-gate by itself does not promote the ideation/invention aspects of innovation. Where it can play a role is in the implementation aspects of innovation. (In my framework, innovation stems from creativity/ideation that is instantiated via invention and that creates customer value.)
Mere invention which does not create real customer value via implementation is not innovation.
As you noted, stage-gate typically does not do well in contexts that are forward-looking (market-driving) as compared to extrapolating from past experience (market-driven).
However, I do believe that stage-gate can and should incorporate the service design component by defining the appropriate design frameworks and methodologies into the appropriate stages.However, where stage-gate does not fare well by itself is in the connection to the overall strategy of the organization. It is here where a robust and flexible opportunity portfolio management framework needs to be in place. Not only to prioritize across all the various opportunities, but to also bring them into alignment with the overall strategy of the organization.
What I believe is needed is a separate framework for the early stages of the product/experience innovation process that dramatically shrinks the decision loop time in the early stages of innovation versus that afforded by traditional stage-gate.
So who is responsible for innovating the innovation process? This speaks to the question of what is the product/service management model of an organization. Some models have PM being an inwardly-focused role, aligned with development and heavily focused on writing specs and a project management role. Outward-facing models (”market-driven”) have the product marketing function totally focused on determining customer needs and the marketing of the product once it is released.
In my opinion, the strongest model has the product management function driving innovation by playing a central role in the overall orchestration of the innovation effort, both inward and outward facing. In this model, product management would be responsible for the ongoing innovation of the innovation process.
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