Stage-Gate^®
is the term originally used by Robert G. Cooper and a trademark of the Product Development Institute, Inc. www.prod-dev.com.

New Product Process Best Practices –
Successive Go/Kill system

Fundamental to the design of the new product processes used by the top performers is the understanding that most new product ideas fail and that these failures usually fall into 3 categories:

• new technology does not meet expectations (cost, time to develop, performance)
• the product manufacturing/operations do not meet expectations (cost, time and quality)
• or the market does not meet expectations (not enough demand at the price to meet financial requirements)

ALL of these causes are knowable before the launch of the new product if the process tasks are executed at the highest quality level. Thus, our belief is that a quality new product process identifies as early as possible the cause of potential failure and either corrects the problem, kills the project or delays the project until such time that the problem is corrected.

The Stage-Gate^® Idea-to-Launch Framework, the results of several generations of research and development, is a Best Practice New Product process [Cooper, 2005]. Below are 18 activities that make up such a process:

Idea generation Initial screening Preliminary market assessment Preliminary technical assessment Preliminary operations (or manufacturing) assessment Detailed market study, market research or VOC, as input to product design Concept testing - the customer/user reaction to the proposed new product Value assessment – determining the value of the product to the business Business/financial analysis Product development – resulting in prototype or sample product In-house product testing Customer test of product under real-life conditions Test market or trial sell, testing marketing plan for full launch Trial production Pre-launch business analysis – following development but before launch Production/operations start-up Market launch or roll out Post-launch review.

In order to identify the poor products to purge and the potentially great products to further fund their development, activities (stages) and decision points (gates) are arranged so that the process minimizes risk. Shown below in Figure 1 is the first portion of the process, moving a new product idea from Generation to the decision to go into Product Development.

The starting point is Idea Generation; new product candidates then face their first hurdle, a screen that quickly identifies the potentially great products to go to the next stage and to shelve or kill the ones that don’t meet the early screen.

Gates are decision points where a new product idea is evaluated and either passed on to the next stage, shelved because it has potential but timing is off or killed. When a new product proposal is submitted for consideration it should have a plan for taking the next step, an outline for what should be done in the next stage (deliverables) and a funding request (cost, timing and staffing).

Figure 2. Diagram of the final stages
of the Stage-Gate^® process

Figure 2 displays the final stages of the Stage-Gate^® process. Each of the final stages represents the increasingly expensive stages. For example, Stage 3 is product development where prototype new products are produced to enable the final testing and validation before product launch. While these displays are general and each firm may differ in the specifics, this overview is offered as a Best Practices template.

At each gate the need for market and customer information is clear!! The screening criteria must always include information about preference for the multi-attribute new product concepts as they approach development and strategic marketing issues after development. That is the input to the marketing program: product positioning, marketing mix development and pricing.

Recent benchmarking studies show that almost every top-performing firm has implemented a stage-gate framework that drives their new product process. Ten goals are recommended for building a Best-in-Class Idea-to-Launch framework [Cooper, 2005]:

Exemplary quality of execution Sharper focus, better project prioritization A strong market orientation with Voice-of-the-Customer inputs Better upfront homework and sharp, early and stable product definition A fast-paced game plan via parallel processing True cross-functional team approach Products with competitive advantage – differentiated products, unique benefits, superior value for the customer Fast-paced with non-value-added items removed A dynamic, flexible and scalable process Performance metrics in place

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New Product Best Practices are presented in Robert G. Cooper, Product Leadership: Pathways to Profitable Innovation, 2nd edition. New York: Basic Books, 2005.