11th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit

Companies That Have Participated In Prior GGI Summits

This Summit will provide participants with a snapshot of the evolution, current status, and projected future of R&D and Product Development Metrics as viewed from the top of corporations.

During the first two seminars of the Summit, we will teach the Body of Knowledge of R&D and Product Development Metrics -- with a focus towards the measures that company Officers and Senior Executives need to manage the organization and its performance as a whole. For example, did you know that 3M's "Vitality Index" is now used by about 55% of all companies? For example, did you know that "Return On Innovation" is the number one metric being asked for by CEOs during the past five years?  For example, did you know companies have more than doubled the number of measures they are using to drive Advanced Development and Intellectual Property in the past five years?

During the third and final seminar of the Summit, participants will break into working groups to create a "set of metrics" suitable for driving performance in R&D and/or Product Development organizations as a whole -- including Projects, Functional-Technical Disciplines, Improvement Initiatives, and the overall Corporate Performance of R&D.  GGI's Linked Metrics Portfolio® framework is preferred by executives to the Balanced Scorecard for managing R&D and Product Development.

Senior executives wishing to put themselves and their fellow senior executives in a better position to direct and drive product creation and commercialization should strongly consider attending. Several of our prior participants have said, "this Summit covers everything an Officer or Senior Manager needs to know on the subject of Metrics." GGI, a 25-year old company, has been recognized as a thought leader and practitioner in this field since the early 1990s.

The ability of officers, managers, and key professionals to direct and make their organizations productive through metrics and measures is the focus of the 11th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit to be held May 4-6, 2010 in metro Boston.

The Metrics Summit is a series of 3 seminars, focused on 3 major areas of importance to R&D executives and managers. Download a Brochure. Download a Summit At-A-Glance.


The First Two Seminars

The first seminar [Measuring Product Development II (MPDII) - May 4] is focused on the issues that top management has to deal with that are a bit squishy and hard to quantify. The topics span the subjects of setting hurdle rates, assessing risk and complexity, tradeoff analysis, measuring capacity, and assessing overall financial performance. Click to view the MPDII Abstract or to download the MPDII Table of Contents.

The second seminar [Proactive and Predictive R&D Metrics (PPRD) - May 5 AM] is focused on the three different stages of developing early, predictive metrics that will enable managers to foresee issues on the horizon or to know that success is in front of them. GGI was the first company to differentiate proactive from predictive metrics in the 1990s which then spawned further exploration of that management science. Click to view the PPRD Abstract or to download the PPRD Table of Contents.

The Third Seminar-Workshop

The third seminar, is more accurately a Workshop [Product Development Metrics Portfolios (PDMP) - May 5 PM and May 6]. From start to completion, participants work in groups to develop "a set of measures suitable for measuring the entire organization and the activities within it." The course book is largely a compendium of hundreds of measures for R&D organizations across all categories of measures. The scorecard each group will create will contain a comprehensive set of measures for the R&D organization as a whole at the top officer level. This portfolio of metrics will be suitable to pass the necessary metrics to the CEO that are needed by the corporation. This portfolio of metrics will be suitable to consistently measure projects, and the functional and technical organizations that perform the projects. Improvement measures will also be addressed. Click to view the PDMP Abstract or to download the PDMP Table of Contents. The US Patent & Trademark Office granted a trademark to GGI in January 2007 for our Linked Metrics Portfolio® framework which is used during the PDMP seminar. Our framework results in a set of metrics that span multiple organization levels and remain integrated.

Who Should Come

Our overall approach to the Summit is geared to top-level professionals that are responsible for generating revenue and profit from new and existing products. Our participants typically manage entire organizations, departments, budgets, and/or programs. Numerous companies have brought the relevant members of their cross-functional executive teams and department organizations in the quest to develop a set of metrics they can all agree to for R&D and product development. Company teams are "given their own table" during the workshop so they can focus to define the set of metrics they will implement upon return to their company. When one or two persons come from a company, which are about half the total participants in any given Summit, they join multi-company groups based on either their industry type or the similarity of their corporate R&D strategies -- Innovators, Platform-Derivative, Extenders, etc. All participants exit with a set of metrics that are suitable for measuring a multi-level R&D and/or Product Development organization as a whole.