The 'Golden
24 Hours’ could help corporations
add tens of millions to turnover
If a large
company wants to bring a radically
new product to market, then its director-level
management must invest substantial
time into the project, especially
during the initial concept-generation
phase. If the senior director team
do not commit at least 24 solid hours
during the formative stages, then
the project will almost certainly
fail, notes innovation specialist
Cambridge Consultants.
After 18 years of experience helping
corporations to embrace innovation,
and work on over 50 major R&D
projects, Cambridge Consultants' innovation
expert Lucy Rowbotham has developed
a 'Golden 24 Hours' principle to help
ensure innovations make it to market.
Her concept has already been recognised
by many international clients, who
typically look for new product lines
that will generate additional turnover
of tens of millions of dollars.
To succeed, the 'Golden 24 Hours'
investment needs to involve directors
covering the key disciplines such
as marketing, manufacturing and engineering.
The director with each of the major
responsibilities needs to invest at
least 8 hours in kick-off meetings,
covering topics from the initial blue
sky thinking, to project budgeting
and objective-setting.
From her long experience with major
projects with blue-chip organisations,
Lucy has noted that if the initial
time investment comes to less than
a combined total of 24 hours, then
an idea is unlikely to come to fruition,
no matter how good it is.
"When a major R&D project
is cancelled, it's often attributed
to some spurious reason such as a
change in corporate organisational
structure, or change of market emphasis.
The underlying problem is almost always
that key director-level staff have
not signed up", says Lucy Rowbotham.
"Between them, they have to commit
at least 24 solid hours to the ambition-setting
processes or the project will almost
certainly fail."
Most R&D departments are well
suited to handling the development
of new generations of existing products,
which move technology along in moderate
steps. However, more radical ideas
are often shelved because by their
nature they often necessitate significant
change. That change might involve
new production processes and capital
equipment, or new types of sales channel,
and only the most senior echelon of
management is able to sanction this.
As examples, Cambridge Consultants
has worked with Royal Philips Electronics
and Scotts to develop radically new
product lines. With Philips, the result
was an additional 55 million Euros
of turnover in the first year. With
Scotts, a whole new product area was
identified. Both cases involve serious
changes to production, marketing and
distribution.
If at least 24 hours of input are
required, then how does that time
get used to best effect? Cambridge
Consultants has developed a robust
methodology to bring together the
needs of the developers and the corporate
management, one that has mechanisms
and moderation to resolve internal
conflict and barriers to progress.
"On more than one occasion I've
had clients jealously say of a competitor's
innovation: 'but we did that in our
own labs X years ago'", adds
Lucy. "The solution to getting
more radical ideas out of the lab
lies in significant effort being applied
to generating a clear understanding
of the implications, across all key
corporate levels. Understand the 'Golden
24 Hours' well, and a company's innovation
culture can really be brought to life".
About
Cambridge Consultants
Cambridge Consultants has, for over
40 years, enabled its clients to turn
business opportunities into commercial
successes. We help clients to grow
by developing products for new and
existing markets, managing product
innovation, supporting transactions
through due diligence and providing
market strategies for the exploitation
of new products and technologies.
Our clients range from large international
blue chips and small start-ups, to
investment institutions and government
agencies.
For more information,
visit http://www.CambridgeConsultants.com
