Design & Tech - Bait and bleed Part 1
At the very heart of any new product development (NPD) process there needs to be a strategy. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk from Tom Inns the Director of Glasgow School of Art, which centered around how companies formulate their strategies in order to succeed. We had a talk about Apple among other companies, and their new baby: the Apple Watch.
I’ve been reading reviews and looking for stats lately, so I decided to do a post trying to figure out what was the strategy behind this new wearable; Apple is after all one of the biggest tech companies in the world, so they must do something the right way, right?
Back in January, Apple reported a record profit with $18 billion earnings on $74.6 billion in revenue. Safe to say: they are milking it the right way...
Before, trying to figure out Apple’s strategy and what the fate might be for the Apple Watch let me introduce you to some concepts and thoughts to have better understanding of the matter.
So, what are the success drivers? What differentiates successful projects from failures? As Prof Tom Inns discussed, some attributes at a company level have been identified as follows: 1.) Strategic Approach 2.) Portfolio Management and Resource Allocation 3.) New Product Development Process 4.) People, culture, climate, teams & senior management team Although, I don’t have sufficient knowledge about this, some of the drivers mentioned in the lecture that I reckon are indispensable are a good understanding of customer/user and High levels of support from the top management.
Sure, there are a bunch of guidelines to follow and there is a large amount of research into the success factors, but despite this knowledge the translation into actual pragmatic steps of action have largely failed. On the other hand, during the talk two different approaches to New Product Development were distinguished, which more or less reflect how companies work: -Reactive Strategies, dealing with pressures as they occur (like Tesco offering some deals on the groceries that you buy the most) and
-Proactive Strategies, explicitly allocating resources to pre-empt future events (like Dyson working on new technologies for their vacuum cleaners) . What would you say about Apple’s strategy then? I will try to answer this question in my next post. -arosero-