Module 1 - Best Practice Innovation Processes

The Summit will begin with a chronology of the evolution of the management science of product development since industries first experienced time pressure and global price pressure beginning in the late 1970s.

We will identify seven step-function leaps in the construct of product development processes that have evolved into best practices since Dr. Cooper’s original stage-gate theory work in the mid 1980s. Participants will be able to compare their own NPD process frameworks and be able to determine the generation of the process currently used by their company.

Primary research, conducted by GGI in 2004, sheds light on the inherent innovativeness of today’s product development processes and the popular tools that most companies use regularly in their processes. For example, which technique do you think is more innovative, FMEA or a Technical Feasibility analysis. About twenty tools are profiled. Six “power tools” are identified.

Primary research, conducted by GGI in 2008, gives an indication of the direction that product development processes will take in the next five-ten years.