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
