Inverted “U” Relationship Between Product Success and Development Speed
  • Step 1a of Improving Your Speed-to-Market Is:
    • Determine if Speed-to-Market matters for your business?
  • Decide why Speed-to-Market matters for your products and market segments.
    • You need to be clear about why Speed-to-Market matters!
    • If you believe that your competitors have better Speed-to-Market performance, have you measured your performance and compared your results with those of your competitors?
  • How important is Speed-to-Market for your overall business strategy?
    • At a high level of generality development speed is associated with new product success. 
      • Many, but not all, firms benefit from implementing time-to-market practices to increase Speed-to-Market. 
      • This picture becomes more complicated when considering individual organizations and products as there are organizations and products for which increasing Speed-to-Market is likely to increase product success, there are others for which it may not.
    • The benefits of larger market share and premium pricing tend to decrease for entities that are (1) First to market, (2) early to market/fast-follower and (3) followers.
    • Watch Out: First mover advantage is not a-priori the best approach. 
  • How important is Speed-to-Market for product success in your market segment?
    • For example, date of an annual trade fair or a particular season such as Spring?
    • The success of a new product is determined by two sets of company competencies:
      • One related to how familiar and competent new product development teams are with developing new products (technology creation dynamism, i.e. breakthrough, next-generation, incremental), and
      • One related to how familiar and competent new business development teams customers with introducing a new product into a market (market structuring logic, i.e. who needs to accept the new product) 
      • These two sets of company competency needs vary across industry segments as shown by the “Speed-to-Market Benefits by Industry Segmented by R&D Games Matrix” developed by IRI member companies.  When the effects of an organization driving for faster time-to-market speeds is overlaid on this matrix, the rough benefits of doing so can be seen for various industries.
  • Do you want to increase product success?
    • The relationship between Speed-to-Market and product success is complicated. 
    • Watch Out: There are businesses and products for which increasing Speed-to-Market may not increase product success.
Speed-to-Market Benefits by Industry Segmented by R&D Games Matrix