Tag: "strategy"

Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and R&D

Ever wonder why the R&D function has trouble “sync-ing” with the Marketing department. Marketing should drive most innovation because marketing has the pulse of the consumer and a sense of consumer trends, and R&D can introduce new technologies that can justify some new product development. Just based on differences in timing alone, Marketing historically can develop product concepts faster than R&D can formulate them for commercialization. It isn’t surprising Marketing and R&D often act as separate silos.

In the bigger picture, Marketing and R&D each have responsibilities towards other parts of the whole corporate organization. For example, Marketing, with feedback from the sales force, has to inform the manufacturing function which products to make and R&D needs to formulate the products in a manner that enables the manufacturing function to make the products efficiently. So common responsibilities to other third-parties within the organization should provide them some common ground.

Sharing essential information between R&D and Marketing and understanding respective needs goes far to “de-silo” Marketing and R&D. For example, R&D will understand pricing and profitability,value identification and maximization, and differentiation and positioning, and Marketing will understand regulatory constraints, product quality, and processing and stability issues. This common understanding of separate needs will help provide syncrony between these functions.

Effective coordination is putatively viewed as a key success factor in competitiveness. For successful companies, new product development represents incremental sales of at least 10% or more depending on the product sector.

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Jan 30, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

How come innovation make CEOs uncomfortable

Essentially, it’s fear. Fear of the uncertainty and unknown. What is the pay back, the ROI? Their bosses and shareholders need a defined path to future profits and sales.

Innovation is not an exact science, nor will it ever be. We can assemble the information about the consumer needs, develop and maintain the skill sets required to implement a development program, and manage the efforts according to Gantt charts toward product launch; however, it is the soft stuff, the art, the loss of control when instilling responsibility to others in the organization that truly enables innovation.

Jeffrey Phillips blogs on http://innovateonpurpose.com (January 4, 2011) that the Brownian motion of innovation that makes executive uncomfortable because it is easy to manage and control, requires a belief system, and risk taking that organizations are often willing to support or reward.

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Jan 09, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Global Steps in Innovation

Many folks liken the process of innovation to a baseball diamond:

First base – Vision

Second base – Strategy

Third base – Ranking priorities

Home – Alignment of resources: people, places, services.

We need the relevant people who share a common understanding of the vision and the strategy, accept the validity of that direction, and have a passionate commitment to make it work. We also need senior executive leadership support, a comprehensive, adaptable communication plan, a contract for buy-in to goals & direction, a creative focus on the few highest priority initiatives, as well as a governance process for investment (priorities), aligned pay-for-performance metrics, group leadership development, values-based goals, milestones & metrics.

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Jan 15, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Creating Creativity: Diverse associates stur the pot of new ideas

Having trouble with getting thoughts of creativity?

Identify a problem, and  and writing nothing but questions about it for 10 minutes a day for 30 days. He says that over that period the questions will change, and so will your understanding and approach to the problem. To build your observation skills, identify a busin ess, customer, supplier, or client, and spend a day or two watching how they work so you can better understand the issues they have to deal with. In a recent CNN interview, Marc Ventresca, a lecturer in strategic management at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School, agrees that innovation is not an inherent trait, but a set of skills that people can learn.

He says the goal is not simply knowing lots of people, but knowing people from varied backgrounds, who work for different companies, in different industries, have different skills, and deal with different issues, so that you are exposed to varied ideas.

When it comes to developing your ability to innovate, Ventresca recommends simply setting aside 30 minutes a week to talk with a contact you wouldn’t normally talk to — for example someone you met at conference six months ago. Ventresca says about 10 of those members yield something interesting, and two of those 10 let you do something new and valuable — by investing just 26 hours a year you’ve come up with something pretty remarkable.

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Dec 16, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

R&D Scenario Planning will Enable Adaptability

Scenario planning is not something done only in the executive suite or in the marketing department. R&D needs to conduct their own scenario planning based on executive and marketing counterparts. Consider resource constraints, adequate supply of scientists in the specialty disciplines that augment your core competencies, additional parameters that drive scenarios, global implications, and evolving regulatory environments when developing your scenarios. Using these considerations often facilitate developing your near- and long-term scenarios and make your R&D more adaptable to changes.

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Nov 18, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership as Visionary Servitude

Delicate Arch 2006

Nature's size is humbling

Much has been expressed about leadership in the written and video media. Much of what is expressed is how to establish a roadmap for your tenure, to direct those to walk that road, and to interact with peers and other stakeholders to facilitate alignment with your plans.

My experience enables a view of visionary servitude. Yes, leadership takes vision, but what about servitude? Most everyone can understand the need for servitute down the totem ploe. Yet, the individuals who are best at sustaining their leadership role believe and act in a manner to serve others around them–up, down, and across from them in theorganization. It takes inner strength and humillity to gain and maintain an attitude of servitude, especially when so many competing interests create challenges to this state of mind. Keep in mind that humility has always been distinct from a state of humiliation. Servitude works best when it pervades the organization, from top to bottom.

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Sep 27, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Metrics: Measure your productivity

Most executives believe that innovation will enable their company to stand out in the marketplace, especially in this economy. Yet, executives do not develop the strategies and execute the follow through necessary to create their innovation environment.

How do you measure that innovation has been optimized? Especially for use as a performance assessment tool? It is not as simple as the perecentage of sales from products introduced within the last five years. Each industry has its on uptake pattern for new products and each category of product has its own lifecycle.

Decisions on product development to proceed to market is based on getting the right information to the right persons at the right time. Optimum information flow requires open communication. One or two key metrics will provide focus, and other metrics help to define other areas that need help.

Using sports as an analogy, the final score of the game is what really matters as the focal point to measure performance, whereas other metrics can be used to illuminate areas needing improvement. In other situations, the obvious problems will arise without the use of metrics.

Clearly,innovation must be driven from the top executive on down throughout the organization. Where do you start? Start in a small part of the organization, assess, fine tune, and modify to optimize for the whole organization.

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Sep 04, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Outsourcing Innovation for Greater ROI

Large companies appear to have all of the skill sets necessary to sustain innovation, yet appearance can be deceiving–one cannot valuate what they cannot measure, lost opportunities. Companies have begun to outsource innovation (a.k.a. open innovation) to maximize their opportunities, yet it is important to minimize transaction costs of administering projects, whether outsourced or not. In fact, streamlining R&D processes including outsourcing can provide returns of up to 10 to 85 cents on every dollar of R&D expenditure.

As one develops their cast of headshops and other outsource partnerships, one needs to balance their internal and external resources of skill sets, experience base, and congregate their core competencies to satisfy the need of the corporate strategic plan. Once the system is established, one needs to establish leadership practices to ensure sustainable management of these resources.

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Jun 28, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership Styles in Technical Environments

Wild MustangsMany technical environments are traditionally heirarchical in nature, so in many R&D organizations leadership styles are often the outcome of lord-serf relationships. This situation is an archetype of the academic environment from which so many technical professionals emanate. This leadership style fits well within the heirarchical corporate culture, yet how does one adapt their style to other types of cultures, namely, the market, clan, and adhocracy cultures.

Short answer: flexibility is the trait one needs best to adapt and align with other stakeholders notwithstanding the type of corporate culture, like the approach taken by Strategyn. Clan cultures are typically family owned and dominated by a single dynamic and sometimes charismatic individual who runs almost everything So in some companies, a it is best to be willing to share the limelight and credit yet simultaneously provide “push-back” toward an organizational tendency to switch research initiatives prematurely before fruition. Instead of succumbing to an opportunity du jour environment, a sturdy hand on the rudder approach wins in the long run–in the end, we all need to deliver to provide value.

Market cultures tend to be highly driven from the view of the marketing department’s needs (typically a good thing), which can quickly change from week to week or month to month, depending on the industry. For most companies with the market culture, the research agenda is set well in advance so it is helpful for sustainability to have small skunk works to augment the innovation effort. The adhocracy culture is innovation driven, so the opinion of the technical leadership looms large in the direction of such companies. Most any leadership style that is non-hierarchical can work, because the company’s progress largely depends on the pace of new deliverables.

In sum, flexibility to the particular culture and adaptability to change helps direct the leadership style that best fits with the culture and align with stakeholders.

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May 08, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership at the operational level

Leadership is the key ingredient in the success of any endeavor. Excellence or failure is a reflection of the top because the environment is a product of the people who lead and drive the effort. Attracting and retaining the best–often those better than the hiring manager–is a cardinal sign that an organization cherishes leadership, excellence, and sustainability. Getting the right people into the right places helps to build sustainable innovation environments in which all internal stakeholders and intrapreneurs can align towards strategic goals.

Intelligence, sound judgment, and the capacity to anticipate are characteristics that set front runners from the rest of the crowd who are also expected to possess integrity, a high energy drive to get things done, a balanced ego, and loyalty. Organizations fail because of the caliber of people involved, not just because of strategic and operational plans, endeavors, or management theories and fads.

Colin Powell extolled multiple lessons about leadership from his experience whereby these lessons apply universally across institutional and industry sectors. Perpetual optimism as a force multiplier is also a clear motivating factor to those across the organization. It helps define and mold strategy, it helps everyone cope with the pace of business and change, and it sets the tone and operational level for the whole organization. Taking educated risks is another multiplier that enables everyone in the organization. You don’t know what works until you give a try.  Some fast lessons:

  • Keep it simple
  • Be approachable–it allows you to find the real problems
  • Organization charts tend to freeze movement and communication across heirarchical divides–so mix it up often
  • Keep looking at the details for the facts and rebut the experts to keep them on their toes–it keeps you grounded but your head in the clouds of strategy
  • Lending your ego to a position only diminishes your pride when the position fails
  • Leading, managing, and governing properly help most folks and anger some others.

Above all, we work so that we can provide for and support our loved ones. Spend sufficient time with your loved ones to recharge your cognitive batteries and your maximize your memory. Being close to your loved ones keeps the loneliness of leadership at bay. By being in diverse situations, it cross-trains your brain to enable you to look at issues with multiple perspectives and viewpoints.

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Apr 16, 2009 | 0 comments View Post
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