When looking to develop a cutting-edge product, you are bound to encounter new, unproven technologies with the potential to turn your product into a serious revenue source. Incorporating these new technologies is a risky venture, but with thorough analysis and diligence, you can mitigate these risks on your way to a successful product launch.

Identify the Technology Development Stage

Much has been written in licensing literature about technology “stage-of-development.” Most of the work has been done in an effort to provide categories for purposes of valuation discussions. This is certainly useful when negotiating the license, but as a product developer, you really need to identify the remaining technology development tasks that must be completed before the technology is ready to make the jump to productization.

The best way to understand which tasks need to be completed is to consider the technology from your engineering team’s perspective. What information would you expect to have available if you were tasked with taking the technology off the shelf and building a product around it? Examples might include parametric performance data with tolerances, environmental operating data, application notes, evaluation models, theory of operation, etc. Collaborate with your engineering team to develop a list of hurdles that must be overcome before the technology can be deployed in a product.

With wish list in hand, execute a gap analysis identifying the missing pieces of the puzzle. You can then estimate the time and costs required to make your list a reality. The gaps will also point you to potential risks that should be addressed directly with the technology development team or that may require engineering mitigation in the product design.

Review Performance Data

A key diligence activity in sourcing external technology is reviewing the performance data created by the technology development team. Most often this data takes the form of test reports supported by datasets and mathematical analysis. It is important to fully understand the underlying test methodology and data used to generate the reports. Test equipment setups, environment, unit-under-test configuration and analysis algorithms should all be documented. Obtain the raw data so you can replicate the analysis and perform your own. Ask to review the notebooks of the developers. Here you should learn about the twists, turns, successes and failures that the developers experienced as they built the technology you are considering licensing. This review will truly deepen your understanding of the technology.

Ensure Developer Availability

Technologies are developed by people, usually over a period of years. The inventors, lab technicians, grad students, prototype builders and component suppliers all develop extensive and sometimes siloed knowledge of the technology. Much of this knowledge is not formally documented and falls under the “tribal knowledge” umbrella. Identify the key individuals and organizations. Assess their willingness to support the commercialization effort and initiate formal relationships with important contributors as they will prove to be invaluable resources during your product development effort.

Develop Internal & External Capabilities

Introducing a new technology into your product line may require development of new capabilities within your company. These may include manufacturing processes, test and measurement techniques and special customer support abilities. Identify these needs during the assessment activity to ensure that your organization budgets for the time required to develop them. Don’t forget your supply chain. Your trusted suppliers may need to develop new capabilities to support integration of the technology as well.

There is probably nothing riskier in product development than incorporating an unproven new technology. Properly evaluating candidate technology prior to betting the success of your development effort will reduce risk and speed your new product to market.

Corporate research organizations, universities and government labs have recently turned more and more to the monetization of technology-based intellectual property portfolios as an important revenue source. Carefully targeting development efforts to increase asset value can significantly improve industry competitiveness, market revenues and licensing returns.

Expanding fields of use, reducing technology risk, advancing the stage of development and speeding time-to-market are all means for increasing the perceived value of your IP and associated licensing revenues. Investments in each of these areas are worth close evaluation as you consider strategies for maximizing the return on your IP portfolio.

Expand the Fields of Use

Each potential field of use for a particular piece of IP represents a licensing opportunity and potential revenue stream. Investments targeted at expanding or identifying new IP uses can dramatically leverage the returns generated from a new technology.

Internal development teams and licensing groups tend to be narrowly-focused within their firm’s line of business. When trying to expand field of use, consideration should be given to engaging outside organizations that can provide a broader view of the potential application landscape for a new technology. These organizations can expand your thinking and point you to licensing opportunities you may not have considered. Moreover, as new applications are identified the original invention may be extended with new ideas resulting in additional IP filings that increase the overall portfolio’s value.

Reduce Technology Risk

From a licensee’s perspective, IP value is substantially increased and downstream risk is reduced as the technology is proved feasible and actual performance estimates are solidified. The challenge for the licensor is to positively balance the investment in projects proving feasibility and generating performance data with the financial returns that can be expected over the duration of the license agreement.

In most cases bringing a technology invention to a point where it can be optimally licensed requires a solid “proof-of-principle” demonstration followed by a technical “characterization” effort. The proof-of-principle demonstration shows that an invention will actually work when reduced to practice. Many times this demonstration takes the form of an experimental lab setup using “crude” custom components and simple instrumentation.

The characterization effort provides estimates of expected operating ranges for specific key performance parameters. The estimates are important as they provide guidance to potential product developers who are keenly interested in understanding how the technology may allow them to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. The estimates are usually derived from one or more “prototype build-and-test” iterations. The prototypes are typically built using engineered custom components and tested using repeatable, commercial measurement instrumentation.

When generating characterization information, care should be taken to address the needs represented by the key fields of use. The potential licensees in these fields may have very different technical data requirements. Taking all these requirements into account when first scoping a prototype effort may save you the time and cost of an additional iteration.

Finally, consider using an outside resource to prototype and gather characterization data. This approach allows your internal R&D resources to focus on your firm’s primary product development efforts and creates an independent reference to support a potential licensee’s due diligence process.

Advance the Stage of Development

Closely tied to reducing technology risks is the concept of “stage of development.” IP valuation exercises will typically try to slot the technology into one of four stages:

• Basic Research/Concept (new idea/lab experiment)
• Prototype Development (one or more engineered build-test iterations)
• Pilot Production (first runs/R&D complete)
• Advanced (volume manufacturing)

The discount rates (typically 60%-15%) used in the IP valuation calculations will be reduced as the technology proceeds towards the “Advanced” stage of development. Performing sensitivity analysis using the appropriate discount rate(s) and proposed investment costs will help ensure commercially-relevant development decisions are made.

Speed Time-to-Market

As you invest in projects to reduce risk and advance the stage of development of your IP, you are reducing time-to-market as well. From a valuation perspective, positive cash flows will occur sooner, which will drive present value calculations up and make your IP more valuable. This is a powerful effect and should be included in the sensitivity analysis you perform when considering proposed investments.

References

Razgaitis R 2007. Pricing the Intellectual Property of Early Stage Technologies: A Primer of Basic Valuation Tools and Considerations. In Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices. MIHR Oxford, UK and PIPRA: Davis USA

G. Smith and R. Parr, Valuation of Intellectual Property and Intangible Assets, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2000

Real opportunity to grow revenues and margins may be lurking in your company’s commodity and mature product lines. Evolving these products with smart, tightly-targeted development investments can rejuvenate an existing product line.

Update and Apply New Technology

Chances are very good that the technology on which your product is based has advanced since it was first introduced. Simply implementing the latest technology iteration can dramatically improve product performance and may enable you to provide new or enhanced features. Try making a map of the technologies currently used in your product showing the evolution from introduction to today. What opportunities does the map present for upgrading your product’s technology? What effect would each upgrade have on product performance or the ability to enhance the feature set?

While significantly more risky, incorporating a “new” technology into your product can provide a substantial differentiation in the marketplace and force your competitors into catch-up mode. By “new,” I don’t necessarily mean the latest thing to come out of the research labs. Rather, I mean application of any technology to your product that was not previously deployed. For example, applying a proven wireless technology to a product that currently has only a wired interface would be incorporating “new” technology.

Rationalize the Feature Set

Evolving a product’s feature set is a deceptively simple task. The typical process is to analyze the competitive products, add the features that your competitors have and you don’t, and then try to go one step further by extending your product’s feature set beyond the competitive offering. While the resulting product may be “differentiated,” it may not be better. In fact, as you replicate this cycle you will create a lumbering, cluttered, over-featured (and probably expensive) product that is not suited for your customer’s real needs. Follow nature’s evolutionary lead. Enhance the key features your product already has and remove or deemphasize those that provide limited value. While simultaneously enhancing some features and cutting others is an inherently more complex and risky endeavor, dividends can include cleaner product designs, significantly better performance and crisp user interfaces that delight.

Renew the Industrial Design

Design changes to size, weight, human factors, materials, design vocabulary, displays, packaging and user interfaces all represent fertile opportunities for refreshing a product and improving your customer’s experience. Revisiting your product’s industrial design offers the development team an opportunity to present dramatic, revolutionary change to the customer. For example, a radical shift in design might be what is needed to differentiate and speak to a new generation of customers that doesn’t relate to your product’s old look and feel any longer.

In many cases, a dramatic design shift can be executed while maintaining or slightly evolving the product’s underlying technology. Be warned though, your ability to take advantage of some of the ideas your designers propose may be largely tied to the ability and willingness of technical and design team members to collaborate. When challenged by the hard implementation issues of new and unfamiliar designs, many teams choose mediocre solutions or simply fold. Strong leadership at the intersection of design and engineering is a prerequisite to bringing real innovations to your customers. Without it you risk a design that results in yawns when you launch your new product.

Consider engaging an outside design firm to expand and enhance your internal thinking. An external perspective can bring relevant experience, insight across product categories and industries, and an independent view to your reinvigoration project.

Go Green

It is quite likely that many of your company’s mature products were conceived and designed prior to the green movement taking hold in the design community. As you make changes to your product, consider ways that you can implement your changes in a green fashion. Redesigning your product for easier recycling, reduced energy consumption and minimum waste generation can positively differentiate your offering in a competitive market and drive new revenues.

Address Adjacencies

Explore the adjacencies to your product. By this I mean things like prior and next steps in your customers’ work flow, interfaces to other products and services, input and output paths, data transfers and linkages. Which of these adjacencies can you complement, enhance, integrate or systematize that might improve your customer’s experience and drive adoption of your product?

Improve Economics

Can you implement changes to your product that will clearly reduce your customer’s costs or increase their revenues? Simple economics is back in vogue these days and products that present real economic advantages to customers are very likely to gain share in today’s “no nonsense” climate. After you implement changes will you be able to present a clear, quantitative economic argument for your customers to evaluate? Will the advantages be compelling enough to drive change in buying behavior?

Pick the Right Team

Evolving an existing product is in many ways a more difficult proposition than clean-sheet design. Existing customers must not be alienated, performance precedents are already set, resistance to change can be significant and unintended consequences are always a risk. Choose your team carefully. Look for experienced individuals and leaders who understand the issues and are willing to innovate and collaborate to make the old new again. The payoff can be substantial.

In this case study we discuss the human factors issues presented in the design of the NetGuard™ Patient Monitor. NetGuard is a low-cost wireless device intendted to bring cardiac arrhythmia monitoring to the numerous hospital patients who are unmonitored today. The NetGuard system consists of a patient-worn transmitter, disposable electrode patch, wireless access point, server and nurse’s station monitor. In this study we focus on the first three components.

The Needs of the Many

One of the challenges of medical device human factors is the diversity of individuals that interact with a device. We found that Caregivers (doctors/nurses/technicians), Patients and IT Administrators all had unique interests in how NetGuard human factors were addressed. These interests included:

Care Giver

Simplicity of Interface/Ease of Understanding
Designing a user interface for the patient worn transmitter that was clear; simple; and fit the power, size and cost profile of the device was a significant challenge for the design team. Extensive use of simulation was employed to rapidly iterate the design and gather feedback from caregivers and team members. This feedback along with the product requirements and associated risk analysis was used to bound the problem and converge on a design solution. In the end, the team selected a user interface consisting of two buttons, an audio transducer and two multicolor LEDs.

Ability to Locate a Down Patient
When a life-threatening arrhythmia is detected, the console at the nurse’s station indicates patient name and room number. Caregivers expressed concern that the patient might not be in their room. It is not unusual for hospital patients to be off-unit in various procedure areas, ambulating around the hospital or just down the hall visiting another patient. To address this scenario, both visual and audio local alarm indicators were added to the device. These alarms were optimized to provide maximum light and sound output within the limits of the device’s coin cell battery power supply.

Application on Patient
NetGuard is an ECG monitoring device requiring electrodes be applied to the chest of the patient. Proper placement is critical to obtaining the best electrical signal quality possible. Caregivers were particularly interested in correctly placing the device the first time as removal and reapplication of the adhesive backed electrode patch was viewed as being uncomfortable for the patient. The caregivers also wanted to minimize the amount of skin preparation and the pressure that was required to obtain good contact with the patient’s skin since application of pressure was viewed as uncomfortable as well.

The placement issue was addressed by designing a label that showed graphically the exact location of the electrodes on the body. The label is present on each device and while an additional cost, it serves as a constant reminder of the proper placement.

Finally, two of the three required electrodes were combined onto one carrier reducing by a third the possibility of mispositioning the electrodes. In order to support this design improvement, significant physiological study was required to ensure the integrity of the resulting ECG signal.

Patient preparation was reduced by adjusting the size of the electrode gel reservoirs and working with the manufacturing partner to closely control both the volume and the form of the gel pads. This work allowed good skin contact to be made with a minimum of patient preparation and lowered pressure required to apply the electrodes.

Finally, the caregiver was provided feedback, via a green LED turning from amber to green, indicating that a proper application had been completed and the leads were functional.

Patient

Comfort
Device size, weight, geometry and skin irritation were the primary design parameters driving patient comfort. Since product requirements stated that the device was to be worn by the patient for up to three days, every effort was made to reduce the size and weight. Lightweight materials, high density PCB assemblies, and battery technology and capacity were design choices driven by size and weight concerns.

Product geometry was very fluid during the design process. Key considerations included the need to optimize the acquired electrical signal via device placement on the body and the need to make the device comfortable as the patient moved around in their bed and hospital environment. Determining body placement was an iterative process. Once the location was chosen the overall external geometry was modeled and iterated to maximize comfort. Simple physical modeling was used extensively in this effort and proved invaluable in converging on the best device geometry.

Minimizing skin irritation was addressed in the design by reducing the actual skin surface area that contacted device adhesive, optimizing adhesive strength vs. three-day wear life and choosing biocompatible materials for all patient contact surfaces.

Intrusiveness
Underlying the requirement to ensure patient comfort was a desire on the part of the design team to make the device as unobtrusive to the patient as possible. Sick hospital patients are already barraged with invasive and non-invasive stimulus and the design team wanted to minimize Netguard’s intrusiveness as much as possible. Ideally the device would be applied and just “disappear” from the patient’s perspective. To this end, once the device was placed on the patient and properly set up, all local beepers and flashing lights are turned off.

IT Administration

Minimizing intrusiveness was also a consideration in the design of the wireless access point. The access points are typically located on the ceilings in patient rooms. For quick IT troubleshooting they incorporate a number of indicator LEDs which show the status of the wireless link. The designers recessed these lights so that the patient would not be bothered during the night by yet another set of flashing lights. The troubleshooting functionality was not impacted since the indicators were easily viewable from directly below the access point.

Role of Human Factors in Safety

The Netguard design team took a proactive approach to understanding how healthcare workers would use and misuse the product. This approach considered how the design could be optimized to avoid first-order use error as well as how the design could protect the patient if an actual use error occurred.

The system’s Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) was the formal tool for this activity, identifying potential use errors, their potential effects on the patient and the mitigations implemented by the design team. Members from all the design disciplines participated in this activity. This was key for ensuring that the best risk mitigations were developed and implemented in the final NetGuard design.

For those interested in the complementary roles of risk analysis and human factors in medical device design, the following references are excellent places to start:

1. 1. AAMI/ANSI HE74:2001 Human Factors Design Process for Medical Devices

1. 2. ISO 14971-1:2007 Medical Devices – Application of Risk Management to Medical Devices

1. 3. IEC 60601-1-8, Ed. 1, Medical Electrical Equipment – Part 1-8: General Requirements for Safety – Collateral Standard: Alarm Systems – Requirements, Tests and Guidelines – General Requirements and Guidelines for Alarm Systems in Medical Equipment.

The application of wireless technology to medical devices continues to grow as clinical applications are identified, hardware costs fall and connection reliability is improved. Today there are numerous applications of wireless technology in the medical device product space. These applications implement varied wireless configurations and operate in diverse and complex health care environments.

Wireless Adoption Drivers

The adoption of wireless in medical devices has proceeded slowly for many years. Given the life-critical nature of much of the data being transmitted, the device industry’s “go slow” approach to adoption has been prudent. The use of a wireless feature in a particular medical device is driven by the healthcare provider’s perception of the value it brings to diagnosing, treating and providing ongoing care
to patients. Adoption has been driven primarily by the following:

• The clinical value of ambulating patients early post-procedure, and the associated need to maintain monitoring while the patient is moving throughout the care continuum.

• The need to gather physiological data during rare events that generally occur during a patient’s normal daily activities.

• The need to track hospital equipment, patients and wandering elders.

• The need for efficient and time-critical access to patient data by an increasingly mobile and thinly-spread cadre of heathcare workers.

• The need to program, control and gather data from implanted devices without invasive procedures or the use of wires passing through the skin.

• The move to reduce health care cost and improve quality of life by caring for elders and those with chronic illness in their homes.

• Ease of equipment installation and use at the point of care.

Applications

These are some successful medical device applications of wireless technology, including the typical wireless technology employed and clinical data transmitted over the link.

RF Environment

As you can see the clinical applications and operating environments are diverse. Environments include hospitals, outpatient clinics, doctors’ offices, emergency vehicles and the home. Engineers contemplating developing a medical device with wireless capabilities must fully understand the implications of these environments on the RF performance of the device they are designing. In many cases proper implementation requires site surveys and extensive network testing to ensure integrity of the wireless network.

Medical Device Wireless Bands

Devices generally operate in the spectrum defined below:

Which band is chosen depends on application, competitive product positioning, RF environment, power requirements, data criticality, throughput requirements and compatibility with legacy systems. Most important of these considerations is the criticality of the data to the care of the patient. The engineer must understand the affect on patient care of delayed transmissions, lost data, roaming time, range and transmission errors. Once both criticality and the operating RF environment are understood, the best band can be chosen and an appropriate design path can be pursued.

Wireless Future

Stratos continues to be approached by innovative medical device companies that seek ways to improve patient care and delivery efficiency through the application of wireless technologies in their products. We expect this trend to continue as wireless technologies improve in their reliability and implementation costs fall. The key to success will remain a conservative and well-informed design process aimed at ensuring patient safety.

Now is the time to be positioning your product development portfolio and organization to take advantage of the eventual economic recovery. Strategically cultivating the right projects, technologies and knowledge acquisition will ensure that your investments yield a bumper crop of profitable products when the economy turns. Take time now to make sure you are sowing the right seeds.

Review your Development Portfolio Map

Take time to analyze your product development map vis-à-vis what you think the economic realities of recovery will be. Will your portfolio meet the new needs of your customer? How will your products make your customer successful in the recovering economy? What are the structural changes that both you and your customers will have to contend with? This is a strategic exercise. The goal is to ensure that your long-lead development projects are properly targeted, prioritized and will reflect the realities of the new economic environment.

Focus Resources

Once management has reviewed the portfolio and understands with which new products the organization wants to enter the recovery, make sure that those projects are fully resourced. People, budgets and development tool requirements should be reviewed and committed so that the organization’s development teams are set up to be successful. Prune away lower-priority projects now to make the necessary resources available for your top projects.

Sharply reduced revenues and R&D budgets can make it difficult to gain corporate commitment to full product development programs. In this environment consider small, targeted projects aimed at building the key knowledge, technologies and actual hardware or software modules needed for future products. Developing modules during slow times and putting them on the shelf can be an excellent strategy for positioning product development to take advantage of the recovery and rebounding R&D budgets. Their completion now can significantly reduce your future development risk and increase launch predictability.

Take Care of Your Performers

You want your top performing employees with you when the economy turns. Identify these people now and make sure that they feel secure in their jobs, have interesting and funded work and understand that they are highly valued by the organization. Ensure that their compensation is competitive and invest in their personal growth. Without these people, your organization’s ability to take advantage of the recovery will be severely constrained.

The old idiom “look before you leap” describes a cautious approach that can serve your firm well as you contemplate embarking on a new product program. Whether doing an internal innovation project, in-licensing or venture investment, executing a Phase Zero diligence is the best way to generate confidence that a real business opportunity exists and that viable products can be developed to address it.

Goal

The goal of Phase Zero is to provide the necessary information to either support or disprove a business case hypothesis. Specifically, that an attractive opportunity exists for a particular technology-based product or family of products. It is important that the Phase Zero effort focuses on presenting actionable information to the decision maker so that a clean go/no-go decision can be taken. The information typically required can be categorized in one of the four following areas:

• Technology Assessment
• Product Opportunity Exploration & Technical Validation
• Market Validation & Revenue Stream Development
• Product Strategy and Launch Timeline

Technology Assessment

This work aims to answer the questions, “What is the maturity level of the technology?”, “What are the risks going forward?”, “Can we protect the intellectual property we develop?” and “Are we ready for prime time”? A thorough understanding of where the technology stands vis-à-vis its readiness for application in a product is the primary goal of the effort. Using the assessment process to project when the technology will be ready to reliably meet everyday performance needs will tell you much about the scale of the development effort, program timeline, required investment and chances for success.

Product Opportunity Exploration & Technical Validation

An exploration of the opportunity map and associated product concepts forms the basis for understanding what the potential applications and markets for the technology are. Contextual inquiry, use-scenario generation and technical feasibility analysis are useful in further defining the concepts and describing the engineering road map for eventual development. Since we need to build a realistic business case, our emphasis should be on presenting product concepts that establish confidence technically and fully meet perceived customer needs.

Market Validation & Revenue Stream Development

A Phase Zero effort is not a formal market research effort. Instead, interviews with key customers or well-respected thought leaders drive a baseline validation of the most attractive product concepts. Would these people champion the product in their institution or company? Would they support the product concept in a meeting of their peers? Would they buy the product? Is the value understood? Alongside this validation activity, a first-order effort aimed at understanding market segments, revenue streams, pricing and product cost drivers is undertaken. The goal is to generate just enough information to establish the magnitude and character of the business opportunity.

Product Strategy & Launch Timeline

A first-pass product and launch strategy aimed at creating a preliminary product road map, features and needs matrix and associated competitive analysis rounds out the information needed to support a valid business case for a new product.

Finally, it is worth repeating that the knowledge generated in a Phase Zero effort should be detailed enough that it is actionable by internal senior management considering a new line of business or by the venture firm contemplating a seed or A-Round investment in a new venture. Focusing on providing just enough data to properly inform a go/no-go decision will help bound the effort and ensures the efficient use of limited resources.

Dealing with development risk has never been more important to the success of your business. Customers are adapting to a fiercely competitive economic climate and their needs are rapidly evolving. To meet these needs predictable launches of innovative new products will be required. Managing technology risk in your product development programs will help reduce the painful schedule slips that result in missed market windows and lost market share.

Technology Risk Assessment

The first step in managing development risk is a thorough analysis and assessment of the risks in each of the projects that comprise your product development portfolio. The assessment must first identify exactly what the risks are and where the risks reside in the overall program development path. Examples of these risks may include algorithm development, new material requirements, manufacturing process development, sensing systems, thermal requirements and assay stability.

Once identified, technology risks should be analyzed to determine the current maturity of the technology, its robustness level, current mitigation activities and known back-up approaches. Understanding these parameters will provide the firm with a realistic window on launch predictability for each of its product development programs.

Fast Risk Reduction

Improving launch predictability can be accomplished by undertaking tightly-targeted risk reduction sub-projects in parallel with the overall development program or as gating tasks within the program itself. Rapid development of models, bread boards, prototypes, simulations and performance test regimens along with expert applied research can substantially change the risk profile for a particular development program. These focused risk-reduction activities can be clearly defined and lend themselves well to outsourcing.

Resource Priorities

Evaluating resource allocation based on development risk is an important facet in an overall approach to applying resources where they will best drive business growth. With an understanding of your company’s development portfolio risk profile in hand, management can ensure that that the right development projects are getting the right resources to drive their success, and ensure predicable launches and meet the evolving needs of the customer.

In these difficult economic times ensuring that your product development investment provides real value to the business has never been more important. Your new products are key to keeping existing customers and positioning to gain market share as your competitors struggle. The timely introduction of products that fully meet your customer’s new needs has never been more strategically vital to the success of your business. In this note Stratos offers some ideas to help you meet this challenge.

Validate Voice of the Customer Requirements

Take the time to ensure your customer and product requirements are still aligned. How has the economic turmoil affected your target customer? It may be that the design requirements which were good six months ago have changed dramatically. You need to understand these changes if your firm is going to provide a product that meets your customer’s needs in today’s environment. Moreover, there may be an unidentified opportunity to make a targeted change that will ultimately provide your business with competitive advantage. Go to the field and listen intently to your customers.

Verify Program Resources

Directly ask your project mangers, discipline leads and key team members if they have the resources they need to get the development project done. Realize that your development team’s psyche has changed. Concerns about the economy and job security may be keeping your team from telling you that more or different resources are needed to make the project successful. Management needs to be proactive to ensure that it has fully provided for the projects that will drive new revenues and profits.

Magnify Project Performance

Invest your personal time in closely monitoring the cost and schedule performance of your product development projects. A “hands-off” approach will not result in success in this economy. Now is the time to increase the cadence of your monitoring activity. You must be fully and actively engaged. Management needs to understand when tasks are slipping, special resources need to be applied and key decisions are required to keep the development effort on track.

Rapid Risk Reduction

Fully understand the risks in your development programs. In this economic environment, surprises that delay product introductions and break budgets can dramatically affect business results and the customer’s perception of your company’s ability to perform. Today’s business climate demands development predictability. Use fault trees, FMEA, external expertise and targeted risk reduction techniques like bread-boarding, rapid prototyping, performance testing and simulation to understand and mitigate risk early in your development projects.

Protect the Promising

Throw a resource lifeline to those key long-term projects that merit protection. With declining budgets and the need to focus remaining capital near term, there would seem to be no place in a development portfolio for the promising but early-stage project. Think about how you can creatively keep the very best of these projects alive. Leveraging your internal human resources through partnering, outsourcing and small, thoughtful, investments of cash can stage these projects for full development efforts in the future.