Difficulties in New Product Development

In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

There are a number of risks and challenges faced by organizations while they are developing new products, some of which are:
- Failure of the new product development process
- Failure of the product at the testing stage.
- Problems in market acceptance.
- Unsuccessful launch of the new product.
The firm can mitigate these risks and challenges by Investing in appropriate R & D practices, developing products according to demands and requirements of the market and investing appropriately in marketing and promotion of the product.

New product development can stress an organization. Change brings conflict!

To manage stress involve other departments in the decision. Sales will eventually have to sell it, manufacturing make it and logistics ship it. So periodic meetings can keep everyone up to date and limit surprises.

Many new products fail. To minimize this possibility companies need to make sure their new product matches well with their customers needs. If the product benefits are matched by another in the marketplace, what incentive to customers have to switch.

Some products fail because the market is too small. Again good market research can help solve this problem. Companies can perform economic analysis to see if the market will generate sufficient profits to make it worthwhile to pursue.

The Seven Sins of New Product Development company become seduced by the power of the dark