In product development programs worldwide, R&D cutbacks have led to aging product lines, putting market positions at risk. Although many companies badly need to refuel their innovation engines, they simply can’t afford to increase their development spending. The only solution is more productive innovation: getting more revenue from new products at the current investment level or, in some cases, at even lower investment levels. The simultaneous aims are newness, lower costs, higher quality, and more throughput.
There are proven ways of performing product, service, or solution development that result in both more and better innovation output (innovativeness or value-adding applied creativity) with greater innovation productivity. We view those ways of performing development as innovation productivity levers. A lever is a mechanism that multiplies its user’s strength so that more mass can be moved with less effort. An innovation productivity lever is any strategy, process, technique, or activity that creates more innovation with the same or lesser amount of development effort.
After more than 15 years of helping companies benchmark and improve their innovation and development processes, PRTM has identified 10 innovation productivity levers. This white paper describes and presents examples of each lever, explaining how each can increase and enhance innovative output for the same input cost (or can even reduce the input cost).
