The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Ideation Gate 1

Go

Kill

Recycle

Stage 1 Gate

2

Go

Kill

Recycle

Idea generation

and screen

Preliminary

investigation

Stage 2 Gate

3

Go

Kill

Recycle

Stage 3 Gate

4

Go

Kill

Recycle

Stage 4 Gate

5

Go

Kill

Recycle

Stage 5

Detailed

investigation

Development Testing and

validation

Product

launch

Review

Marketing

Engineering

Finance

Manufacturing

316 The Marketing Book

The stages of the new product development process

New product strategy

A specific new product strategy explicitly places
NPD at the heart of an organization’s priorities,
sets out the competitive requirements of the
company’s new products and is effectively the
first ‘stage’ of the development process. It
comprises an explicit view of where a new
programme of development sits in relation to
the technologies that are employed by the
company and the markets which these technolo-
gies will serve. In addition, this view must be
communicated throughout the organization and
the extent to which this happens is very much
the responsibility of top management. In fact,
much research attention has focused on the role
of top management in the eventual success of
NPD. While Maidique and Zirger (1984) found
new product successes to be characterized by a
high level of top management support, Cooper
and Kleinschmidt (1987) found less proof of top
management influence, discovering that many
new product failures often have as much top
management support. More recently, Dough-
erty and Hardy (1996) found that although
lip-service was given to the importance of

innovation, it often takes a backseat compared to

other initiatives such as cost-cutting and down-

sizing, especially where there is less of a history

of success in developing new products. And yet,

one of the most important roles which top

management have to fill is that of incorporating

NPD as a meaningful component of an organi-

zation’s strategy and culture.

In some cases it is necessary for the firm to

change its philosophy on NPD, in turn causing

a change in the whole culture. Nike’s NPD

process has changed dramatically over the last

15 years. Previously, they believed that every

new product started in the lab and the product

was the most important thing. Now, they

believe it is the consumer who leads innovation

and the specific reason for innovation comes

from the marketplace. The reason for this

change is the fierce competition that has devel-

oped in recent years within the athletic shoe

industry, so that product innovation no longer

led to sustained competitive advantage and

manufacturers could no longer presume that if

Mike Jordan chooses a certain shoe everyone

else in America will follow. More emphasis was

then put on marketing research and targeting

smaller groups of individual customers, with

the emphasis changing from push to pull NPD.

The distinction between technology push and

market pull is covered a little later in this

Figure 12.2 The Stage–Gate™process