“The development of new products is one of the most important activities and the most difficult to do successfully,” Holt told FoodManufacture.co.uk. “It may sound obvious but getting your business into shape to tackle the key area of innovation is a priority for success.
“Ask yourself, are you delivering against all your customer expectations and how are you rated on your innovation capability by the competition?”
Six core metrics
Holt proposes that such audits should measure an organisation’s performance against six core metrics:
- innovation strategy
- creativity and portfolio management
- NPD implementation
- success rate
- people, structure and performance
- capability of innovation teams
“An innovation audit using these key metrics enables businesses to critically review their innovation competencies,” Holt told FoodManufacture.co.uk.
Avoid wasting time and money
It would also help firms avoid wasting time and money by having to pull out of launches at the last minute, she said. “The importance of a clearly understood and unified vision of the ‘innovation strategy’ will prevent the fuzziness which often leads to projects getting too far in the process before being killed.
“While there may be a product process in place, question the specificity and whether the process is being adhered to, and are there clearly defined gate criteria around the go/no go decisions?”
An independent audit would give businesses a strong case for change and enable them to tackle blockages arising from processes, people or internal culture, she added.
However, she cautioned that designing effective project management systems was often harder work than people thought, requiring executive backing and leadership and sometimes taking several years to fully implement. As a result she urged firms to persist with the checklist to get results.