Resolutions ... for 2007

I don’t usually make New Year resolutions: eat better, drink less, exercise more. They’re all easy to make but for me, at least, they’ve slipped away by around January 6 or 7. This year, however, I’m going to try to keep as close as I can to a few professional resolves. Admittedly as a consultant rather than a manufacturer, it’s more of a case of encouraging others to the straight and narrow! These are some of my favorites:
Global fashion retailers like Zara criticize themselves for taking 8 weeks to get from catwalk to multi-national distribution, so there is no real excuse for many of the projects in our industry dragging on for years!
My resolutions here are:
● Do fewer things but do them faster. Two projects at 50mph are much better than 100 projects at 1 mph each!
● Make decisions. Making better decisions is good, making quicker decisions is great but just making a decision is real progress in some projects.
● When you get to “design fix”, keep it fixed. Fiddling with the specification and delaying launch rarely works. It’s usually better to be nearly right but in the game rather than perfect but 5th entrant!
It’s really easy to fall in love with the latest idea. After all it’s not called NEW Product Development for nothing. But don’t let that put you off ideas that have been around the business before.
I’m going to:
● Encourage my clients to set up a proper “Treasure Chest” of all the old ideas, written up in the same format and made available throughout the business.
● Even better, they should ensure that the Chest is kept topped up with new ideas.The consumer pull mantra and the need to find real insights are of course correct but it’s sometimes all too easy to miss technology push.If you have a powerful consumer insight team, check to see that you have just as much awareness of technology push:
● Do the marketers know their industry’s next technical step change and the unique product benefits it may bring?
● Do they know how to express them best for consumers?
● Do they know what the change could do for their competitors?

So to everyone in [new product development], good luck in 2007. Let’s do it quicker, let’s do it better, let’s do it! (Unless of course you’re competing with a client of mine!)