Words Heard / Our Take   Title:   Winning at New Products: Creating and Launching Superior New Products   Who:   Dr. Robert Cooper, President and co-founder of The Product Development Institute, author and acclaimed guru of new product development.   What:   Day-long Seminar Sponsored by TEXEC & OCRI   Event Held:   December 7th, 2005 at the West Carleton Meeting Centre   Words Heard:   Fear and hope was the underlying theme of Dr. Cooper's presentation: Fear because only 1 of 60 ideas makes it from the top of the idea funnel to commercial success; Hope because you don't need to be as big as Proctor and Gamble to reap the benefits of the Stage-GateŽ process. Dr. Cooper buoyed the hope in the room by speaking about a Quebec-based engineering firm which, when it was still driving hours at a time in a cramped and stuffy mini-van to attend seminars, started using the Stage-GateŽ process and now enjoys annual sales of $500M. Dr. Cooper described his widely-used Stage-GateŽ process, which consists of a series of Go/No-Go decision points. He identified five stages of increasing resource commitments and outlined what information and criteria were to be applied to the Go/No-Go decision at the completion of each stage - the gates. The 'Knowledge' section at Dr. Cooper's website, www.stage-gate.com, contains more detailed information about the Stage-GateŽ process.   Our Take:   Dr. Cooper's Stage-Gate process is a disciplined risk-management approach to new product development and investment: Identify Risk / Manage Risk. While much of Dr. Cooper's work has been done for large established organizations, the Stage-GateŽ process could be the means for even early-stage firms to minimize the time and effort they spend on fruitless product development. In a city like Ottawa where, according to Terry Mathews, most of the R&D performed is wasted, such a process could be the keystone for early-stage companies looking to get a leg up on the competition; the process might even help them get funds for product development from lead customers and/or angel investors. (Cognos President and CEO Rob Ashe frequently points out that Proctor and Gamble paid for the development of Cognos' original key product.) When used properly, the benefits of Cooper's process are truly shared by all stakeholders in an organization, particularly in an early-stage firm. Founders benefit from a reduced need to sell future profits at a large discount to obtain funds for (mostly-wasted) product development. Investors benefit from a more transparent, manageable development process and could even tie their investment to specific stages in the process. Clients ultimately benefit from having a supplier who remains in business year after year and continuously improves its valuable product offerings. New product development is critical to the success of a growing business, but it is also a potentially business-destroying process, as Terry Matthews' comment about wasted R&D suggests. Commitment to the discipline required by a process such as Dr. Cooper's (no easy task) should improve survival rates for early-stage firms. Why? Because they will introduce more new successful products, spend less time looking for outside funding (to replace the money spent on unsuccessful new products) and spend more time making sales and building the business based on customer feedback. Note - Dr. Cooper discussed how new-to-the-world products are fun and exciting, but repositioning an existing product can be very profitable, citing the repositioning of aspirin as a blood thinner to illustrate his point.   708-350 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1R 7S8, t: (613) 563 4588, f: (613) 563 4689, ourtake@acornpartners.com, www.acornpartners.com If you wish to unsubscribe, reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the subject.