The effectiveness of product development in a company is determined by the
people responsible for product development from the directors to the project
managers; by firstly their basic philosophy and understanding, secondly their
abilities and thirdly the clear recognition of their roles.
Product development combines people, their individual knowledge and skills.
How they collaborate to produce the company’s abilities in product development
is the basis for product success or failure. Product development needs
knowledge and skills in all areas of the company – R&D, marketing, production
and finance, and in particular top management. This is why product
development management is complex and often becomes swamped in the
management for today. Companies appear to have great difficulty in deciding
where to place product development management – in marketing, R&D,
production or as a separate department; over the years product development
management is apt to be reorganised several times because of problems that
have been identified. This is no bad thing since product development, because of
its nature, is always changing, going in different directions as technology and
consumers change. But the core product development knowledge needs to be
kept intact and allowed to grow through the product development projects.
It is important to recognise that there are different layers of product
development management, layers that are interacting with the management of
the functional departments and indeed are sometimes the management of the
functional departments. The key issues are in two areas:
1. Management needs in the vertical responsibility from directors to project
managers.
2. Interaction between these management people and the functional
departments.
Part III
Managing and improving product
development
The product development activity in a large company can be very complex. In
the small company, the director, chief executive, product development manager
and project leader can be one person. But in all companies it is important that the
product development strategy, product development programme, PD Process
and the overall aims of the programme and the individual projects are clearly
defined. Then everyone understands their place in the jigsaw, the outcomes
expected from their work and the decision-making process.
The other key issue in management is the interrelationship between product
development and the functional areas of R&D, marketing, production,
distribution, and finance. In looking at the typical activities occurring throughout
the product development process, it is clear that the support of these groups is
essential. Both the inputs needed for product development and the outcomes
from product development are related to the functional departments, which are
very much involved in making and marketing today’s products (Stockwell,
1985). There are inputs such as product mix strategy and sales forecasting from
marketing, product trials and quality assurance development from production,
predicted returns on investment from finance, and outputs such as market plan
from marketing, production schedule from production and net profit forecast
from finance.
In Chapter 6, the basic needs in product development management and the
people who are responsible for making product development both effective and
efficient – producing the optimum product at the right time and within budget –
are outlined. The PD Process is the focus – design the PD Process; establish the
key decision points and the decision makers; establish outcomes, budgets and
constraints; organise and manage. The chapter ends with a discussion on
managing and organising product development in the company, and collaborat-
ing with outside agencies.
Chapter 7 illustrates product development at different points in the food
system in four case studies. Management of product development is different
among primary production, processing of food ingredients, manufacturing and
food service, because of the different scientific and technological bases, the
different needs of the target markets and the time for development. It is
important to understand that there is a common product development framework
but the activities can be different.
Chapter 8 studies the searching for best practice in product development and
in particular the improvement of R&D management by benchmarking. The
changes that are occurring in food product development and what may happen in
the future are discussed.
Reference
STOCKWELL, D. (1985) Managing product development as a business activity, an
address to the ASEAN Food Conference, Manila, Philippines.
258 Food product development
Product development management in the food system is complex, long term and
capital intensive. It is total company management involving every function in
the company – so it is managing either a microcosm of the company or an
integration of the company functions. For a major innovation, the company may
set up a new venture company or division; or a new group of people may form a
new company. At this time when many new companies are being formed on the
innovations of information technology and biotechnology, it is interesting to
speculate on new venture companies in the food industry and the basis of their
new innovations. But at the present time, it is the large multinational food
companies that dominate product development at all levels in the food industry,
and it is management of product development in these companies that is the
main basis for innovation in the food industry. There are many small food
companies that are also involved in product development on a small scale.
Management of product development in the food industry varies from a group in
the small company sitting around a kitchen table to the multinational food
company with large R&D laboratories, small-scale production development
plants and product development teams in many countries. The basic principles
of product development management are the same in large and small companies,
but often more difficult to apply in the large company because of rigid
hierarchies.
The framework for management in the food industry is the PD Process, and
the recognition of management at the different stages.
6
Managing the product development
process
6.1 Principles of product development management
Several principles of product development management have been identified
(Souder, 1987; Ganguly, 1999). Relative importance does change but the basic
principles are robust and are useful as a basis for product development
management. They can be grouped under basic philosophy, understanding,
abilities and organisation of the company as shown in Fig. 6.1.
6.1.1 Basic philosophy and understanding
? Belief in product development as a major business strategy.
? Understanding emerging worldwide technologies, in-depth knowledge of
technologies.
? Understanding the transformation of technologies into want-satisfying
products, intimate understanding of changing consumer needs.
? Developing a creative climate, creating spontaneous teamwork.
? Patience, realising that innovations take time, going through cycles of success
and failure, and that management has to aid and direct them to the end of
product success.
? Recognising the need for skills in systematic decision making and risk-
taking.
These are still essential elements in product development that have continued to
demonstrate their significance over a great diversity of situations and times, not
to mention fashions! Unless management, especially top management, believes
that product development needs knowledge of technology and consumer, and of
their optimum relationship, then product development will stumble. Having
recognised these basic knowledge needs, they have also to recognise that there
needs to be a creative atmosphere and time to reach product success. Lastly they
have to believe that the success of product development depends on their
decision making, its quality and timeliness (Lord, 2000).
Fig. 6.1 Basic principles of product development management.
260 Food product development
6.1.2 Abilities
? Systematic selection of best projects, using information sharing and group
decision making, creating idea generation and evaluation with all people
involved in product development, setting decision processes based on the
product development goals.
? Careful analysis of the customer’s level of sophistication and the product
designer’s level of technical sophistication, creating collaborative roles
between product design and consumer/market research, educating product
designers on consumer needs and wants, educating marketing on technical
possibilities and problems.
? Finding and coordinating the resources and knowledge for product
development, upgrading knowledge to make use of new technology,
nurturing methods for new technologies, selection of technology with fit to
present or planned future company technology, predicting costs of adoption
of new technology in finances and company organisation.
? Elimination of disharmony between R&D and marketing groups, making
open communication an explicit responsibility of every employee, using joint
R&D/marketing task forces.
? Reducing complexity and problems, breaking large projects into manageable
stages, identifying and eliminating mild problems before they become major.
Management at all levels needs to have the abilities to recognise the path of the
project and to coordinate the knowledge, resources and people to follow the path
efficiently and effectively to product success. There is a great deal spoken about
multidisciplinary, cross-functional, inter-functional, intra-functional, integrated
product development, but basically product development needs to be recognised
as a many-faceted process which can only be achieved by collaboration between
people with different knowledge and skills. It cannot be enclosed in specialist or
functional boxes such as marketing or production (Harris and McKay, 1996).
Management needs to understand the meaning of company collaboration and to
have the ability to put into action a multifaceted product development project
based on collaboration.
6.1.3 Organisation
? Design of product development organisation, ability to set the tone, posture
and prevailing attitudes towards product development, creating an organisa-
tion to fit the needs of members and of customers, encouraging responsibility
and creating multidirectional communication.
? Cost-effective project management, selecting the method that relates to the
problem, for example incremental innovation using commercial line
management, technical innovation using technical management, major
innovation using separate project management or a new product committee.
? Flow management during the project, organising the timely transfer and flow
of product prototypes and knowledge, encouraging the skills and knowledge
Managing the product development process 261
for the evolving technology and keeping team members involved to greater
and lesser extent throughout the project.
? Product development budgeting techniques, understanding the changing
cost/time ratios between projects and within projects, the financial analysis
of the different stages of the PD Process to identify the costs and their
possible improvements, the financial controls needed for the different cost/
time ratios.
Management has to design the organisation for product development in the
company, both for the overall new product programme and for the individual
project. There needs to be coordination among projects to have the optimum
use of people and resources, as well as planning and control for the
individual project so that it flows towards the final product launch without
stumbling too often. Radical innovations are never straightforward linear
progressions through the project; there is often recycling especially during
the earlier stages, but these returns to earlier stages in the project need to be
managed.
6.2 People in product development management
It is important to recognise that there are different layers of management. The
different levels of management can be identified as directors, chief executives,
product development managers and project leaders, although the actual titles of
the managers may be different from this in the individual companies (see Fig.
6.2). The directors are at the business strategy level, the chief executive at the
product/innovation strategy level, the product development manager at the new
product programme level and the project leader at the level of the individual
Think break
In your company:
1. What is the basic philosophy of product development management?
2. Describe the understanding of technology changes and consumer needs
changes.
3. How are these changes affecting product development?
4. Has your company the abilities to develop new products related to these
changes?
5. If not, what new abilities need to be found? How could this be done?
6. What are the organisational methods used by your company?
7. Do they ensure effective and efficient product development?
8. If not, what changes need to be made in the organisational methods?
262 Food product development
project as shown in Fig. 6.2. All of these different levels have their own basic
philosophy and understanding, abilities and responsibilities, but they need to be
coordinated into the whole product development management.
The interwoven nature of responsibilities should be noted; people may have
individual responsibilities at their level of management, and also joint
responsibilities at higher levels. There is no clear demarcation of responsibility
in product development because it has to be collaborative management.
6.2.1 Directors
Directors on the Board of the company have their vision for future growth of the
enterprise, commitment to product development as a method of ensuring
company growth, understanding of the knowledge and skills needed for product
development, provision of resources for product development. They need to
have the abilities for: incorporating innovation into the business strategy,
analysis and decision making, intelligent risk-taking, selecting and directing a
chief executive with the knowledge and skills for the innovation strategy that
they have developed. They need an understanding of the company’s
technological and marketing environments, the competitors’ innovative
strategies and multi-industry evolution, the company’s structural and cultural
context, and the company’s resources and capabilities. The Board sets the
overall innovation strategy and the philosophy for product development, gives
appropriate allocation of resources and makes the major decisions in the
development. As with most business activities, product development is most
successful when it starts from the top.
Fig. 6.2 Levels of PD management.
Managing the product development process 263
6.2.2 Chief executives
Chief executives have commitment to the organisational role of product
development, understanding the needs of product development, recognising the
knowledge and skills for product development, recognising the product
development process as it relates to their company. They need the abilities:
? to develop the structure in which product development operates;
? to organise a management system for product development;
? to integrate all the functional areas taking part in product development;
? to develop a clear product strategy and a product development programme;
? to set clear goals;
? to indicate the decisions to be made at different parts of the product
development processes, and make decisions with careful analysis.
They need to be able to define the long-term company development strategy and
assess the strategic importance of new company initiatives and their relation to
the present core capabilities (Cooper, 1998). They are responsible for effective
portfolio management, making strategic choices of markets, products and
technologies that the business will invest in (Cooper et al., 1999). The chief
executive develops a positive environment, actively supporting, leading and
directing product development on a continuous basis, and providing integrating
communication between different groups, usually the functional departments of
marketing, production, R&D and finance, with product development. Since
product development spans many disciplines, it should not get locked into one
image – marketing, production or R&D.
6.2.3 Product development managers
Product development managers have commitment to the company’s PD Process
and integration of the skills and knowledge for this process, understanding of the
customer and consumer needs and wants, knowledge of present and emerging
technologies, understanding of the company and the external environment. They
need the abilities to:
? identify the outcomes necessary for each stage of the PD Process for the chief
executive’s and Board’s decision making;
? identify the time and other constraints on the project;
? identify and find the resources for the product development;
? encourage the creative and technical achievements of the people involved in
product development;
? analyse and make the decisions.
They need to be able, with top management, to obtain/maintain support for new
initiatives, to define the company’s strategies for the new initiatives, and to
cooperate with the project leaders in defining projects. Product development
managers integrate the various projects into an overall product development
programme. They set with the project managers the timing of stages in the PD
264 Food product development
Process, plan and control the resources so that they are available at the correct
time and are of the right quality, analyse the results of the development and
make decisions for further stages. They need to be aware, guide and be available
when necessary, to help the creativity and the problem solving. Every company
needs a person who is responsible for new products and is recognised as this.
This person must have product development knowledge and skills as well as
management knowledge and skills. There needs to be a balance between the
innovation development and the management. Over-management can stifle
innovation, but uncontrolled product development may lead to inappropriate
products, inefficient product development and time/cost overruns – in other
words commercial failure.
6.2.4 Project leader
Project leaders understand the consumer and market as well as the PD Process
and the product; recognise and foster innovative, creative, problem-solving
skills; and understand integration of people with different skills and
philosophies. They need the abilities to:
? drive the project to a successful conclusion;
? identify the outcomes for each stage of the PD Process and important sections
in the individual stages;
? relate the outcomes to the activities in the project;
? choose the techniques for the activities that relate to the knowledge and skills
of the team, and the resources available.
They have the capacity to develop the business strategy for the new product as
well as to define the technical/marketing development, and to build the
organisational structure for the development. The project manager is leading a
team of people who are skilled in different disciplines – consumer research,
marketing, product design, processing development, production and finance.
Although the project manager may not have an in-depth knowledge in all areas,
there is a need for basic knowledge in each area and the ability to see the
interrelationships between them. The project leader is responsible for ensuring
that the project progresses smoothly, meets all interim objectives and targets on
time and within budget, and makes sure that the necessary resources are
available when and where they are required. They also are the primary channel
of communication between the project team, senior management and external
organisations (Jones, 1997).
6.2.5 Important factors in management levels
There are three important factors to recognise in these four different types of
management. Firstly there is a need for championing: strategic championing at
the directors/top management level, organisational championing at the product
development manager level, and product championing at the project leader
Managing the product development process 265
level. Secondly, decision making needs to be spread throughout the three groups
and to be clearly defined. There is a need for decision making at all levels and
not only at top management level. There is nothing more restrictive in product
development than all decisions having to be made by one person; also it tends to
slow development because there is endless reporting and decision making.
Decision making is a collaborative activity between all levels of management.
Thirdly, collaboration is an active aim of product development management.
Collaboration is much more than cross-functional integration, it is the active
working together of people from different disciplines, different functional
departments, and different levels of management in product development, all
with common aims for product development as shown in Fig. 6.3.
Cross-functional collaboration includes an equal stake and responsibility for the
outcomes, and a willingness to understand the other people’s viewpoints so that
they can be blended to give higher levels of combined knowledge in the product
development. Such collaboration involves synergy in thought and action, which
leads to outcomes from the product development exceeding the capabilities of the
individual participants in the PD Process (Jassawalla and Sashittal, 1998).
Collaboration can be hard to achieve in radical innovation where uncertainty leads
to tensions between people, with different functional groups blaming the others for
delays, poor product qualities and increased costs. It is much easier in incremental
product development where the risks of failure are much less and many activities
become routine. Stage-specific collaboration is more likely to lead to new product
success, rather than integrating all functions during all four stages of the PD
Fig. 6.3 Comparison of integration and collaboration in product development
(Source: After Jassawalla and Sashittal, 1998).
266 Food product development
Process, with the three functions – R&D, manufacturing and marketing – playing
the central role in turns (Song et al., 1998).
6.3 Designing the PD Process
The PD Process is the framework to build up both product development projects
and the product development programme. The selection of activities in the PD
Process depends on the knowledge and skills in the company, knowledge easily
available outside the company, the risks involved through lack of knowledge,
the importance of the product development for the future of the company, and
most important the level of innovation.
6.3.1 The effects of knowledge and skills on the PD Process
Knowledge and skills in the company, and also the company’s philosophy on
product development, affect the choice of activities and therefore the structure
of the PD Process. If the company is not able to do consumer research, it may
do personal research with the retailer, food service buyer, their family and
friends. If the company does not have formulation skills, it will take a formula
from the ingredient supplier. If the company does not have process
engineering skills, it will buy a turnkey processing line from an equipment
supplier. Or if there are no innovation skills in the company, then it will
acquire another company! Some company managers are conservative and
some want excitement, some are risk takers and some are fearful of risk; these
differences cause differences in the PD Process used in the company. Some
companies bring new products through to market as quickly as possible,
missing activities such as business analysis and test marketing, as they are
prepared to live with failures; other companies include all activities so as to
Think break
Are you a manager? If yes, answer the questions directly. If no, answer the questions
as related to your manager.
1. For what area of product development are you (or the manager) responsible?
2. Identify your responsibilities.
3. How do these relate to the responsibilities of the manager above you?
4. How do these responsibilities relate to your abilities? Do you need more abilities
or improved abilities? How could you attain these?
5. How do you relate to other areas of product development, other people in
product development?
6. Would these relations improve with a top management decision to have
collaboration as a basic company philosophy?
Managing the product development process 267
reduce their risk of failure in the market. So the PD Process is specific to the
company and its knowledge, skills, and philosophy.
6.3.2 Level of innovation and the PD Process
A comparison of the PD Processes for radical and incremental changes is
shown in Table 6.1. The sequence of the activities varies, for example in the
incremental change there is generally a linear sequence in the PD Process,
but in the radical innovation, there is often recycling of activities. The
incremental product changes can be developed and marketed according to a
standard PD Process with strong involvement of the functional departments
such as marketing and production. The radical innovation uses generalised
Table 6.1 Differences in the PD Process for platform and derivative products
Radical innovations Incremental changes
(new platform products) (derivative products)
Stage 1: Product strategy development
Probing problems with consumers Consumers setting attributes
Focused project objectives Clear schedules and time goals
Developed product concept General product concept
New product design specifications Standard product design specification
New market probing studies Market surveys
Stage 2: Product design and process development
Building product attribute measures Refining product attribute measures
Product/process interrelationship studies Product formulation
Pilot plant studies Process improvement
Frequent product testing Strategic product testing
Stage 3: Product commercialisation
Design of new production method Adaptation of production
Design of new quality assurance Adaptation of quality assurance
Commissioning of new plant Minor plant changes
New marketing strategy Improvement of marketing strategy
Detailed business and market analysis Setting market and financial targets
Stage 4: Launching and post-launch evaluation
Rolling launch or pre-launch test market National launch
Continuous market analysis Assessing if market targets met
Continuous financial analysis Assessing if financial targets met
Overall management
Project milestones to control High importance of speed
Long-term commitment of capital Short-term commitment of capital
Long-term commitment of human resources Short-term commitment of human
resources
Source: From Earle and Earle, Building the Future on New Products, C223 LFRA Ltd, 2000, by
permission of Leatherhead Food RA, Leatherhead, UK.
268 Food product development
activities because creativity and problems in the project are difficult to
predict.
For the radical innovation, there is a need to develop technical and market
knowledge in the first two stages of the product development process and to
include product/market testing and business analysis in the product commercia-
lisation stage. In the initial stages:
? product concepts are developed with the consumers;
? product designers make some models or simple prototypes of possible
products and ask the consumers to evaluate them;
? further product concepts are developed; and
? evaluated by marketing and processing technologists to see if any are
possible for commercialisation.
Later in the PD Process, early versions are marketed quickly on a small scale,
obtaining the user feedback and making modifications before expanding the
market. Usually for the radical innovation, the company’s resource commit-
ments are made at sequential times in the PD Process, and not at the beginning
of the project as for incremental products (Mullins and Sutherland, 1998).
In the incremental product projects, a great deal of the knowledge is already
in the company, so there is less need for new research in building the direction of
the project (Earle and Earle, 2000). The product concept can be developed by a
marketer and a product designer, evaluated by consumers to check that no
mistakes have been made, and the product specifications written in the standard
form for this type of product. A national launch usually targets the total market.
Between the extremes of radical and incremental changes, major product
changes can need different types of PD Processes. If major changes in product,
market and production are being made, they can be similar to the PD Process for
radical innovations. If the major change is marketing related, for example a
positioning change, the PD Process is similar to the incremental PD Process with
an emphasis on the marketing change; if production related, such as a new process,
it is an incremental PD Process with an emphasis on technical development.
6.3.3 Other factors in designing the PD Process
Other factors to be considered in designing the PD Process framework for the
company are: place in the food system, environment, technology, marketing and
company resources. Primary production, industrial and consumer food product
development have differences in their PD Processes, which will be described in
Chapter 7. There may be strong societal and political constraints on product
development that need to be included in the PD Process; obviously food
regulations limit the processing and the raw materials, but religious require-
ments are also often important; or it can be recycling of packaging or other
environmental problems. If these are not included in an early part of the PD
Process, a great deal of time and money can be wasted. Technology in
processing, distribution and marketing has also to be considered – what is
Managing the product development process 269
standard, what is new? (Earle and Earle, 2000). With the large multinational
food companies, there is often a requirement for fast processing and large-scale
equipment. This means that the product design, and the process development,
start in the first stage of the PD Process with the consumer research, and then
develop together. In recent years there has been a great deal spoken about
concurrent engineering in other industries (Tomiyama, 1998), developing the
product and the production methods in parallel. In the food industry it is crucial
that the product design and the process development are interwoven from early
in product concept development and product design. For the smaller companies
using simpler equipment, it can be possible to do a significant amount of product
design on ‘kitchen’ size equipment before building up the process.
6.3.4 Using and changing the PD Process
The company, often through experience, has found the important activities for their
industry and business – although sometimes this is not so much by careful analysis
after product development projects are completed, but by copying the actions of
competitors or the industry in general or the latest fashion. Selecting both the
activities and also intensity of work in each activity needs to be based not on ‘we
have always done it that way’ or ‘the industry does it that way’ but on what is needed
to achieve the target aims and outcomes. Selection of the activities involves:
? reason for the activity;
? resources needed;
? outcomes expected;
? timing of activities;
? controls for measurement of progress (Gruenwald, 1988).
The PD Process is not a static framework but needs to be evaluated regularly so that
it can be updated for the new knowledge and skills in the company, the new
directions chosen for the company and the changing environment. The use of some
novel activities in the PD Process leads to the competitive edge of the company.
But the PD Process always has a basic framework, which has been built up by
experience and is only slowly changed. Top management can instigate new
strategies and therefore new PD Processes for product development but this needs
exceptional entrepreneurial skills, sustained commitment to new products for
company growth and an acceptance of risk taking (Gruenwald, 1988). Without
making drastic changes, top management can send the right signals to the
organisation for evaluation and necessary change to the PD Process, for
communication between different people to recognise changes, and for a dynamic
organisation that can cope with change in the PD Process (O’Connor, 1996).
The management of the PD Process varies from company to company. Some
companies put the framework on the internal communication network and
expect product development staff to consult it; other companies set out a rigid
PD Process with the activities and often the techniques identified as to what is to
be done in all projects.
270 Food product development
6.4 Establishing key decision points and the decision makers
Many people make decisions in product development at all levels – from the top
management and the Board of Directors, who decide on the overall project and
its resources, to the process worker, who decides on the detail of production for
the new product, and the salesperson, who decides the factors that they think will
encourage the customer to buy the product. All the decisions follow on from
decisions made by other people, and are linked with other decisions. This
interrelationship between decisions is not always recognised in the company and
therefore important decision making is not identified. The top management
receives a report that is based on the knowledge and decisions of middle
management or perhaps of a product approval committee, and then makes its
decision on this report combined with other knowledge it may have. The
decision made by top management determines the project for the project leader,
whose decisions determine how the project is to be organised. Decisions and the
knowledge used to make them are the foundation stones for product
development; poor decisions based on inaccurate knowledge lead to product
failures, and good decision making based on sound knowledge leads to product
success.
6.4.1 Top management’s decisions
Top management and often the directors on the company Board handle the
critical decisions between the stages. Basically there are two decisions:
? Do we go on or stop the product development?
? What resources does the company put into further development?
Think break
Does your company have a PD Process framework?
1. Discuss how the PD Process framework:
(a) recognises the company’s philosophy, knowledge and skills,
(b) adapts to innovation level, type of technology, marketing, environment, food
regulations,
(c) identifies the activities for each of the four stages of the PD Process,
(d) puts these activities into parallel or sequential positions,
(e) shows the necessary collaboration between people and departments.
2. What changes could be made to your company’s PD Process framework that
would make product development more effective and efficient in your company?
(If your company does not have a PD Process framework, design one using the
above criteria.)
Managing the product development process 271
During Stage 1: Developing the product strategy, there are another three critical
acceptance decisions – does the company accept the product strategy, the
innovation strategy and the product development programme?
In the first stages of product development, Urban et al. (1987) identified the
important top management decisions as: commit company to new products,
approve PD Process and budgets, product portfolio and market strategy. Before
product design, there was a review of market entry strategy and then after
product design, review and commit to test, followed by go/no-go decision and
review launch plan. They noted that after launch the important decisions were
approve one- and five-year plans and finally approve strategy to ‘milk’ or
‘rejuvenate’. The general critical decision points for top management are shown
in Fig. 6.4, and some additional decisions for radical innovations are shown
within Stages 2, 3 and 4. Because of uncertainties in radical and some major
product changes, there can be changes in the product concept during design,
changes in processing which need design and building of new equipment,
changes in the storage conditions which alter the distribution method, and
changes in the target market which need product or marketing alterations. These
Fig. 6.4 Critical decision points for directors and top management.
272 Food product development
uncertainties need to be recognised at the beginning and the additional critical
decision points they introduce included in the PD Process. In incremental new
products, it is unlikely for top management to be involved in decision making
within stages unless there are unusual problems that could for example cause
disharmony with company ethics or cause time and costs overruns.
Senior management needs to review the right information at the right time to
make the right decision. It also needs to make its decisions quickly, so that the
project is not delayed while people wait for decisions. If the project is allowed to
proceed to prototype product or to product commercialisation before the top
management decision, it may be too late to stop the project even though it will
need more development and therefore more resources. But management must
not get directly involved in ‘fighting fires’ on products that are late or have
problems. By this time most of the major decisions have been made by other
people, and the real impact of top mangement involvement is minimal. The
decision makers at this stage are the technical and marketing people who have
the knowledge to solve the problems. If major problems occur, the project leader
is responsible for reviewing the project and for devising a solution that can then
be reviewed by top management, who make the decision to proceed or kill the
project. Several important aspects for top management reviews are (McGrath et
al., 1992):
? to provide a clear and consistent process for making major decisions on new
products and improvements;
? to empower project teams to execute a project plan;
? to provide the link for applying product strategy to product development;
? to provide measurable checkpoints to monitor progress;
? to establish milestones that emphasise a sense of urgency.
For all these critical decisions by the directors and senior management there is a
need for knowledge, much of which is in the outcomes of the various stages
within the PD Process. If the critical decisions and the knowledge needed to
make these decisions are clearly identified by top management, during design of
the PD Process framework at the beginning of the individual projects, the
product development team knows what information it has to produce and in
what form. There also needs to be a warning system in place for resource or time
overruns or difficult problems impeding progress in the project.
6.4.2 Product development manager’s decisions
The product development manager, the person responsible for the product
development programme, also has decisions to make. He or she is responsible
for the administrative framework of the product development programme,
deciding on the activities, the schedules and the budgets, and most important the
integration of different product development projects that are running in parallel.
He or she decides on the workload forecasts, the standard of product
development performance of the team and individuals, the efficiency expected
Managing the product development process 273
of the PD Process (Gruenwald, 1988). In particular, a product development
manager has to decide how and when to involve the company’s functional
groups in the PD Process, and very importantly how the consumer needs are
related to the product. The product development manager leads the coordination
between the consumers and the development team, and helps the project leaders
to integrate technical and business perspectives. He or she is responsible for the
development of new skills and knowledge, as well as bringing in outside
consultants and other sources of knowledge (Burgelman and Maidique, 1988).
Some important decisions of the product development manager in Stage 1:
Product strategy development are:
? aim, outcomes and constraints for the individual projects;
? depth of activity in developing the product concept and the product design
specifications;
? accuracy needed in the market predictions;
? amount of product design and other technical development;
? time schedule for the activities;
? resources available for each of the activities;
? involvement of the functional departments in developing and evaluating the
product concept and the product design specifications, and in predicting the
market and technical success;
? communication methods with the team members and among them;
? recognition of lack of skills and knowledge for the later stages and planning
of involvement of outside knowledge sources and of education of team
members.
The product development manager has to decide how to produce the outcomes
for Stage 1, but has also to look ahead to later stages so that the necessary basis
for them is laid during this stage. The later stages have similar types of decisions
and these become more complex as the costs of the development and the
opportunity for a large failure increase. It is very important that the product
development manager ensures that decisions by the top management and by the
project leaders are made at the right time. Otherwise the project can lose its
urgency and the time to market extends. It is important when technical and
marketing decisions are proving difficult that resources are organised by the
product development manager to solve the problems without delay.
6.4.3 Project leader’s decisions
The project leader has also decisions to make so as to achieve the outcomes set
by top management within the time and budget structure of the product
development manager. Firstly the project leader has to decide with more senior
management on the aim, outcomes and constraints of the project. The project
leader selects techniques for the activities identified by the product development
manager, which are within the capabilities of the team members or outside
agencies, and which will produce the product with the qualities needed by the
274 Food product development
consumer. The project leader decides how to do this within the resources and the
time allowed so that the project remains on schedule. The project leader decides
the balance between the effectiveness and the efficiency of the product
development, that is balancing the quality of the product development and the
time and resources used (see Fig. 6.10 on page 295). This is very difficult
decision making, especially for the young project leader. There needs to be help
from more senior management. Nothing is worse than senior management
telling the project leader to produce the ideal product but not allocating the
resources to attain it, or to give them a project known to be a problem without
the knowledge to start solving it. The project leader’s most important
organisational decision is the product development project plan with the
activities, resources, time, and the communication and control during the
project. The project plan with its predicted timing and use of resources is the
basis for decisions that determine the efficiency of the product development; the
project leader using it to make the decisions on overruns of time and resources.
Few product development projects, except for simple incremental product
changes, can be predicted accurately – either the direction of the design and
development or the outcomes in the results. So the project leader is continuously
making decisions during the project on the relationships between:
? product and the consumer needs;
? product and the company;
? process, distribution and marketing;
? production and marketing functions.
These decisions are made not only with the core product development team but
also with the wider team in the functional departments and in outside
organisations. These decisions are extremely important to the quality of the
research and need to be recognised reasonably early before the project becomes
confused and disorganised.
Think break
1. For product development in your company, outline the PD Process for each of
the following:
(a) product improvements,
(b) new product introductions,
(c) process improvements,
(d) new process introductions.
If your company does not have PD Processes, design them for the company. Identify
the individuals or groups who are responsible for the product strategy and the product
development programme, and for go/no-go decision making at the end of Stages 1,
2, 3 and 4 in the PD Process.
Managing the product development process 275
6.5 Establishing outcomes, budgets and constraints
Decision making is the key framework for product development, but knowledge
fills out the framework to give the live project. Knowledge is brought into the
framework, and also created within the framework so that the decisions can be
made. But knowledge has a cost; increasing the knowledge adds to the cost of a
project. In product development, the intelligent and systematic balancing of
knowledge and costs is fundamental to successful product development. Others
might say it is the balancing of the costs of product failure against project costs.
In product development, there is a need to define outcomes (the collected and
created knowledge) and the budget (the costs) at the beginning of the project,
and also to reconsider these at the completion of the four stages and at any other
critical point in the PD Process. Conditions change throughout the individual
projects and there is a need for top management to reconsider the outcomes and
the budgets at the same time as permission for the project to proceed to the next
stage is given.
6.5.1 Defining outcomes
At the end of each stage of the PD Process, the top management requires for its
two outcomes:
? product form to that stage of development;
? report on which to base its decisions.
The product form will develop in the project from a product concept, to product
design specifications to prototype products, to commercial product, to final
launched product. The report can vary from many pages with detailed knowledge
to a one page executive summary, dependent on what top management feels it
needs to know. The areas listed in the reports in Table 6.2 are important areas of
knowledge in product development for decision making but the top management
may not wish to see any details, especially in incremental product development
where there is not a great risk of making wrong predictions. Some of these critical
decisions may be made by the middle management before the final executive
2. Select a recent project, which was a radical product innovation, and identify the
critical decisions, where they occurred in the project and who were the decision
makers. Identify decisions and decision makers in:
(a) the go/no-go decisions,
(b) decisions that led to final product qualities, product image, product features
and uses,
(c) decisions that led to production method, distribution method, marketing
strategy, costs and pricing,
(d) decisions on the project efficiency, in achieving timing and costs.
276 Food product development
Table 6.2 Outcomes (knowledge needs) for decision making
Outcomes Decisions
(knowledge needs)
Stage 1: Product strategy development
Product/innovation strategies Strategies acceptance
Product development programme Programme acceptance
Project aim, objectives and constraints Project acceptance
Resources for initial investigation
Product design specifications Product idea acceptance
(or product concept) Resources for product design, process
Product report: development
? technical feasibility Timing of programme
? marketing suitability Harmony with business
? consumer acceptance
? project costs, risks
Stage 2: Product design and process development
Final prototype product Acceptance as new company product
Feasibility report Resources for commercialisation
? target consumers Total company involvement
? product qualities Harmony with business
? processing method
? marketing strategy
? predicted sales
? predicted costs
? project costs, risks
Stage 3: Product commercialisation
Commercial product Acceptance as new product into product mix
Commercial report Launch agreement
? production plan Capital investment
? distribution plan Acceptance into company organisation
? marketing plan
? financial plan
? risk analysis
? capital investment
? human resources
? effect on company
? effect on society
Stage 4: Product launch and evaluation
Marketed product Long-term acceptance into product mix
Final evaluation report Feedback to future business strategy
? product quality and position Future product development
? production and distribution efficiency Resources for future product development
? costs against targets
? sales against targets
? indicative return on investment
? effect on company
? market acceptance
? society acceptance
Source: From Earle and Earle, 1999, by permission of Chadwick House Group Ltd.
Managing the product development process 277
summary is prepared for the chief executive and the directors. A summary of the
knowledge and a decision direction is made by the middle management for top
management. In simple incremental product development, the Board may have
set an overall budget for the product development programme; the decisions on
the product concept acceptance and the resources for the individual projects are
made by the middle management.
There is no question that the decisions about the product/innovation strategies
and the product development programme are set by top management, but it is
also important that middle managers, and even the project leaders in large
projects, are involved in deciding on the knowledge needed in the outcomes.
Only they have the detailed understanding and skills to know what knowledge is
really needed, and what knowledge can be created with the capabilities of the
company and available outside sources. The final decision is by top management
but the knowledge basis for it is from the collaboration of all the people in the
product development group (Jassawalla and Sashittal, 1998). Strategic planning
for new products and new product selection are the most critical issues in
product development management (Scott, 2000). It is important to align the
business strategies with the technology strategies. This can be difficult where the
technology strategy may be very long term, say 10 years, and the business
strategy is shorter, usually 5 years. So the strategic knowledge outcomes are not
set in concrete but are studied yearly, and are designed so that they anticipate,
but are also reactive to, change.
The linking at all levels of management of anticipation and reaction are
important in the early stages of the PD Process: project plan, product concept,
product and process specifications, product design choices and process design
choices. There needs to be recognition (Verganti, 1999) of both:
? anticipation capabilities – the capabilities to anticipate information into the
early phase of product development;
? reaction capabilities – the capabilities to introduce changes late in the PD
Process at low cost and time, to cope with unexpected constraints and
opportunities.
The early decisions, and their related desired outcomes identified in the early
stages of the PD Process, play a central role in the further development of the
product development project. This is why there has been much emphasis in recent
years on spending more resources on the ‘fuzzy’ front end, so that the future
development of the project can lead more surely to product success. But, especially
in the innovative and long-term projects, it is not possible to anticipate everything
that is going to happen. In aiming for integrated product development performance
(that is shortest time to market and optimum product quality) with new product
lines and new product platforms, Verganti (1999) found that companies used
different mixes of anticipation and reaction between the extremes:
? Detailed approach. Companies devote great efforts in the early stages to
reduce uncertainty about downstream constraints and opportunities, and tend
278 Food product development
to keep reaction to a minimum. They try as far as they can to anticipate what
is going to happen.
? Postponing approach. In this fully reactive approach, companies simply start
the implementation of product development without anticipating knowledge
about downstream opportunities and constraints.
Other companies aim at reducing the probability of running into serious
unexpected events, through selective anticipation of critical areas and reactive
capabilities that can handle inevitable late corrections at low cost and time. The
ratio of anticipation to reaction depends very much on the company philosophy
on risk-taking but also on the level of innovation of the project.
There is a need to combine anticipation of decisions/outcomes with planning
of the ways to react to new knowledge developed in the PD Process, so
necessary changes can be introduced late in the PD Process without too much
cost in resources and time. Because making changes in the later stages is more
costly in time and resources, there needs to be a balance in anticipation and
reaction in the early decision-making as shown in Fig. 6.5.
Flexibility in product development (the cost and time for late corrective
actions in a project) may be seen as consisting of two major components:
structural flexibility and planned flexibility. Structural flexibility is the reaction
capability that unfolds through long-term practice, project after project; planned
flexibility is the project-specific flexibility, built through decisions taken in the
early phase of the particular project. Anticipation capability is the capability to
identify, clearly and early, specific critical parts of the project and plan the trigger
reaction measures to manage these critical parts of the project. Decision making
Fig. 6.5 Anticipation and reaction capabilities in product development
(Source: After Verganti, 1999).
Managing the product development process 279
at the early stages of the PD Process is a balance of anticipating predicted
outcomes and setting up possible reactions to uncertain outcomes later in the
project. This balancing of the anticipation and reaction capabilities is related to
the level of innovation of the project, and to the company’s capabilities and
resources.
Outcomes can be set in general strategic terms by the top management, but
they have to be developed into much more specific outcomes by the product
development manager and the project leader. Designers are given product design
specifications and these are the blueprints for their development of a prototype
product. Process development engineers are given product qualities from the
designer’s outcomes and design a process to produce these product qualities.
Production engineers are given the production specifications from the process
engineers’ outcomes and have to design a production system. The different
outcomes may be developing in sequence or in parallel. For example the
marketing strategy development and the process/production development both
start from the product prototype and its qualities, and end at the same time, as
the production plan and the marketing plan. This integration of times for
outcomes is very important so that there are no waiting periods in the project.
A problem is sometimes caused by ranking tangible outcomes higher than
intangible outcomes, for example the process design before the consumer
attitudes. Product development often goes astray because a great deal of time
and money is spent on developing a technical product and process, only to
discover that the product is not what the consumers or customers wanted. The
technical product is a tangible outcome, the consumers’ concept of their ideal
product is intangible, but it is actually the true outcome.
Think break
In Table 6.2 are some of the outcomes required by top management to make
decisions at critical points. The product development manager is required to produce
these outcomes for top management, in turn the product development manager has
to identify for the project leader, the specific outcomes from the activities in each
stage.
1. For Stages 2 and 3 in the PD Process, identify the specific outcomes needed by
the product development manager from the project leader to build up the
outcomes needed by the top management.
2. Draw an outcome ‘tree’ to show the relationships between the two levels of
outcomes – for top management and for the product development manager.
3. In some past product development projects in your company identify the critical
outcomes for top management decision making. What outcomes were
unimportant to the decision making of top management? Discuss how this
could affect the identification of critical outcomes in future projects.
280 Food product development
6.5.2 Setting the budget
Setting the budget for the product development programme and the individual
projects is related to the outcomes desired and the resources of the company. The
central figure in setting the budgets is the product development manager who
discusses the project needs with the project leader and then negotiates for the
budget with the top management. This is essentially a human relationship although
it is clothed in quantitative terms such as predicted financial outcomes, costs and
probability of success. In the radical innovation, these predictions can be inaccurate
and the budget for the project is secured on, as Tighe said in 1998, the ‘selling’ of
the project to the higher management based on a combination of estimates and
confidence. For incremental product development, the predictions are more
accurate and the decisions are more pragmatic. Essentially the product
development budgets are competing with the budgets for the ‘today’ functions;
either in the main company budget, or if product development is in a functional
department/division, within its working budget. The project leader and even the
product development manager can be looking for a sponsor, who could be someone
on the company Board, in top management, in a functional department, or in a new
venture corporation. For incremental product development, increasing a product
line or re-positioning a product, the marketing manager is probably the most
interested person in the outcome of the project. For process development, it will be
the production and engineering managers. If the project is a radical innovation,
going across the functional areas in the company, then it is at top management or
Board level. In a budget presentation, the project is clearly defined as to:
? aim and outcomes and their relationship to the strategic direction of the
company or the department;
? effects on profits, revenues; costs and the qualitative targets for the project.
In the presentation it is important to relate the outcomes of the project to the
business and also to show how the resources sought in the presentation are to be
used. The project budget needs to relate to the company strategies, plans and
budgets, because the resource allocation is not only dependent on the project
needs but also on its relationship to the overall company resources and the
competing departmental and project needs.
Important resources needed by the project manager are:
? financial;
? expertise (people with the required knowledge and skills);
? equipment;
? raw materials;
? information.
For a company in a given environment, some or all of these resources may be in
short supply, expensive or shared; there are limited resources for the project. In
companies with a number of projects and project managers, competition for
limited resources may add to resources allocation problems. The consequence of
these situations, in terms of reaching the project outcomes on time, has to be
Managing the product development process 281
assessed and problem areas identified as early as possible. Bottlenecks are
predicted and resolved before they become serious. Failure to identify such
bottlenecks can result in missed deadlines, which are frequently associated with
large cost penalties or lost market advantages.
Budgeting should not be complex. A straightforward approach is to take each
activity and look at its resource requirement on a monthly basis and so build up a
schedule of costs, personnel, equipment and raw materials. It is important for the
project leader to analyse each activity to see if other techniques could be used
that would be less costly, more within the present capability of the team, and yet
still yield the desired quality and efficiency levels in the project. If the monthly
expenditure is presented graphically as cumulative expenditure, critical areas for
cash flow during the project can be identified. The capital expenditure is treated
separately. One aspect to consider is the future use of the capital equipment; if
the equipment is to be used only for one project, writing off this capital is an
important point in determining the validity of the project.
One of the factors in helping the project team to product success is to give it a
secure basis for development; this is largely based on the availability of finance. So
all levels of management need to spend some time in the early stages predicting the
costs for the project and the relationship of these costs to the company’s availability
of finance. They need to be involved in the decision to finance the project. The
product development manager has to combine the resources detailed in the plans of
the individual projects. The projects are integrated so that there is optimal use of
resources, the specific resources are within the budgets of the different functional
departments – R&D, marketing, production, and the finance required is within the
overall budget predictions of the finance department. This can present a problem in
some companies where departmental budgets are not specifically related to product
development and only R&D is identified as product development. As is well known
the main expenses are in product commercialisation and launching, and these costs
need to be identified at the beginning of the project so that they are within the
financial resources of the company or available from venture capital. The top
management and the Board of Directors have to view the budget proposals for the
product development programme and judge them within the strategies and
resources of the company. It is not sufficient just to agree to the funds for one year,
but the funds for future years need to have support. There also need to be
contingency funds either to allow for rapid product development sparked by a
change in the environment or to solve unforeseen problems that may have arisen.
Think break
In two recent product development projects in your company (one incremental and
one radical innovation):
1. Identify the times in the PD Process when the need for resources was identified
and when the resources were allocated.
282 Food product development
6.5.3 Setting the constraints
Product development does not occur in a vacuum! There is an environmental
situation that sets the parameters and constraints for the project. All the layers of
the environment – society, industry, market and company – limit or constrain the
area of the project as can be seen in Fig. 6.6.
Parameters that need to be considered at the beginning and throughout the
project are the needs and wants of the consumers, the processing and marketing
technology available, the knowledge capability, the time and the resources.
Some important company parameters are the business strategy, the innovation
level, expertise, management style, location of plants and markets, distribution
system, product development organisation and management. Some of the
environmental parameters are local government, national government, industry
2. What resource needs were identified – finance, people, equipment, raw
materials, information? How were the resources found? Were there any other
resources needed?
3. Who were the people who developed the budget proposal in these projects and
who made the decision to guarantee the budget?
4. Were there any delays in the projects because of poor prediction of financial
needs? Were there cost overruns?
5. Compare the resource management and financial control in both projects, and
identify the difference between an incremental project and a radical innovation.
Fig. 6.6 Parameters that develop constraints in Stage 1 of the PD Process.
Managing the product development process 283
agreements, farmers’ agreements, economic and technological status, business
cycle as well as any social restrictions and attitudes.
Constraints caused by the different parameters are identified. Constraints can
be set on the product, processing, marketing, finance, time and resources. These
constraints are often quantitative, for example on the product there can be
chemical composition, microbiological level, nutritional value, and a specific
requirement such as the use/non-use of an ingredient. Some of the constraints
important in product development projects are shown in Table 3.1 on page 100.
Three important areas to develop constraints are the competitors, government
regulations, user needs with their related societal attitudes (Holt, 1983). The
company selects the important competitors, and the areas for competition, for
example product technology, marketing, costs and prices, and the position of the
new product as related to the competing products. Functional requirements or
some other product quality may then be set according to the qualities of the
competing products. These will then be part of the product design specifications
and limit the area for design. Another important area to develop constraints on
the design of the product is government regulations, both internal to the country
and at entry to the country. These must be identified early in the project. There is
little point in designing a canned fruit in syrup only to discover that there are
high import duties related to the level of sugar in the product; or there is a quota
on certain meat or dairy products into a country and these are already filled; or
that only certain ingredients are allowed in bread; or there is a basic vitamin
content if the label says vitamin-enriched. The government regulations need to
be surveyed and the important parameters and constraints identified to avoid
developing products that will violate the law. The very important area for setting
constraints is the study of the user – what their needs, wants and fears are, and
how these relate to the product design specifications; their attitudes to pollution,
farming practices, environmental sustainability. Various factors may be
constrained, for instance for a nutritional drink:
? product – nutritional, minimum percentage of protein, maximum percentage
of fat;
? processing – minor adaptation of present production;
? marketing – existing distribution channels;
? financial – maximum level of investment in the project;
? company – two project members, one technical, one marketing; functional
departments as support groups;
? food regulations – no preservatives, nutritional labelling required.
The parameters that can constrain product development are many and it is not
possible to study them all when identifying constraints on the product
development project. It is important to identify the critical constraints and not
to have these constraints any tighter than is necessary to meet the parameters.
One always needs to ask is this constraint valid? Is it necessary? If the
constraints are very tight, then the opportunity for creativity is reduced. The
constraints are important in the product screening and project evaluation, and are
284 Food product development
used in building up the product concept and product design specifications. It is
important that they are clear and as quantitative as possible.
Some parameters for the Mexican and US markets for tortillas are identified
in Box 6.1.
Box 6.1 Mexican tortilla firms stage US bake-off
Few things are more Mexican than the tortilla. But when it comes to making
money off the ancient disks, most of the action today is north of the border.
That’s why two of Mexico’s biggest food companies, Grupo Industrial
Maseca SA (Gruma) and Grupo Industrial Bimbo SA have chosen the US as
the main battleground for their fight to control the $5 billion world tortilla
market. So they’re pitching their mass-produced, packaged tortillas to a
foreign audience and honing their marketing skills for the day when Mexico’s
tortilla market joins the modern world.
Mexico
Mexicans eat 360 billion tortillas per year, 10 times the number of tortillas
per capita as Americans. The market is overwhelmingly dominated by
tortillerias, small businesses. More than 96% of all tortillas are sold in little
shops licensed by the government. These outlets, many grinding tortillas on
hand-powered conveyor belts, are virtual monopolies in their neighbour-
hoods, with a captive market that so far has resisted modern sales efforts. In
part the reason is cultural: Mexicans like their staple fresh, hot off the press.
But more importantly, Mexico subsidises small tortillerias with cheap prices
on corn flour, making it possible to sell corn tortillas for less than the
production cost. ‘People stand in line for two to three hours for tortillas. It’s
worth it because they are so cheap.’
Thus, despite modern baking technology, companies such as Gruma and
Bimbo simply are unable to make tortillas cheaply enough to compete with
the small businesses, however inefficient they may be. Once tortilla subsidies
are phased out, millions of Mexicans will buy their tortillas just like
Americans do, in plastic bags in supermarkets. If Mexican companies could
raise their packaged-tortilla sales to 20% of the Mexican market from 5%,
they would match the tortilla output in the USA.
USA
There is a Mexican immigrant market but tortillas are also making in-roads
among Anglo families. The US market is growing 10% per year in dollar
terms, compared with just 2% for Mexico.
Gruma purchased Guerrero Foods, an East Los Angeles tortilleria founded
by Mexican-Americans, in 1988. It works with Mission Foods, another
Managing the product development process 285
Box 6.1 (continued)
Gruma operation. Guerrero’s nemesis is La Tapatia, another family start-up,
snatched by Bimbo last year.
Mission is the more upscale product, packaged with Mexican recipes in
English on the back, for sale to Anglo supermarkets and institutional
customers like PepsiCo Inc.’s Taco Bell unit. The play to national sympathies
is obvious. Immigrant tortillas are packaged in bulky two-dozen, three-dozen
and five-dozen, even 100-count bags, usually with a logo heavy on corncobs.
Anglo tortillas are sold in slimmer packs with flashier logos; there are kid-
size tortillas with green carton dinosaurs on the package, fat-free tortillas for
the health conscious, and ‘home-style’ with lots of lard.
Bimbo has battle-hardened sales forces in the USA and the best
distribution system in Mexico. Gruma’s edge is its tortilla technology, with
high speed mass production. In Los Angeles, it has the biggest tortilla factory
in the world, runs three separate lines, one for institutional clients like Taco
Bell, one for retailers and one for snack foods like tortilla chips. Gruma’s
R&D produce most of the industrial tortilla machinery used today. It also
keeps down its raw material costs, because it mills its own flour in the USA
and Mexico. Gruma is the biggest US player, with a 15% market share.
Analysts say that the future belongs to the tortilla-maker that can transfer US
marketing practices to the home market.
Source: From Millman, 1996, reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal, 1996. Dow
Jones & Company Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
Think break
In Box 6.1, there is a comparison between two markets and two companies in the
tortilla industry.
1. Compare the parameters in the USA and the Mexican market affecting the
development of ‘commodity’ tortillas, specialised consumer tortillas and
institutional tortillas.
2. Identify the constraints that limit product development in the three product areas.
3. If the two companies were to consider entering the Mexican market when the
corn flour subsidy was reduced by 50%, what constraints would each company
have in developing tortillas?
4. What would be the major innovations for each company in product
development?
5. What would be the major differences in the product development of the two
companies?
286 Food product development
6.6 Organising the PD Process
The PD Process, the decision-making, the outcomes, the budget and the project
constraints are set and now someone has to start creating the product! There are
two dimensions in carrying out the product development activities:
? PD Process capability;
? functional/technical knowledge and skills (expertise).
Companies have various degrees of functional excellence and technical know-
how; but independent of these is the skill in organising, carrying out,
maintaining and improving the complex business process of product develop-
ment. McGrath et al. suggested in 1992 that companies could be graded on their
product development capability according to these two dimensions. Companies
tend to focus in one direction – technological superiority or business process
capability, but the world-class companies are trying to increase their capabilities
in both dimensions.
6.6.1 Identifying activities, knowledge and skills
The choice of activities is not only determined by the knowledge needed in the
outcomes but also the resources and time available. The description of the
activity defines the outcome expected, the timeframe to be met and the resources
that can be used (Earle and Earle, 1999). The inputs and outputs of the activity
are shown in Fig. 6.7, the people input and the physical input, which result in the
necessary outcomes and decisions. Each activity has certain techniques chosen
for it to achieve the desired outcomes.
Activities are often identified as product, consumer, technical (or proces-
sing), marketing and finance, but this does not give the integration that is
necessary for product development. For example in Stage 2: Product design and
process development:
? First main activity: initial prototype development.
Specific sub-activities: modelling, product formulation, ball park processing
experiments, protective packaging design, consumer panels.
Fig. 6.7 The activity and its inputs and outputs.
Managing the product development process 287
? Second main activity: developing the final prototype.
Specific sub-activities: technical development, marketing strategy develop-
ment, in-home consumer testing, production testing, market predicting,
costing, finance analysis.
Figure 6.8 shows the main activities for developing the product prototypes and for
developing the final prototype product. The sub-activities can usefully be grouped
into development and testing as can be seen in Fig. 6.9. Design of the product and
development of the process are interwoven with each other and with the technical,
consumer and financial testing and analysis. The sub-activities can vary from
project to project but the ones in Fig. 6.9 are common. Included in Fig. 6.9 are the
possible techniques that can be used in these activities. It is important that the
necessary activities in a project are identified and then techniques chosen to give
the necessary knowledge. These must be within the capability of the company.
There is often a tendency to keep on using the same techniques as it is simpler and
easier for the project team, but they may not be the optimum for the project – they
may be producing unnecessary knowledge or, what is worse, too little knowledge.
The activities may be the same but there should be careful choice of techniques.
Fig. 6.8 Main activities in Stage 2: Product design and process development.
Think break
1. In the initial activities of Fig. 6.9 –‘getting the feel’, screening, ball park studies –
the product design and the process development are conducted at the same
time, and the techniques in the development are experimental designs. Study
two recent product development projects in your company, and identify the
activities and techniques used in developing the acceptable product prototypes
and compare with the outline steps.
2. For future projects, would you change the activities in developing the acceptable
product prototypes? What new techniques could be introduced in future
projects?
288 Food product development
Fig. 6.9 Development and testing in product design and process development
(Source: After Earle and Earle, 1999).
Managing the product development process 289
Knowledge and skills can be identified for activities and outcomes. There is
a wide variety of skills from specialist skills such as in organising and
moderating consumer focus groups and linear programming in product
formulation through to generalist skills such as product design and project
control. The important point is to identify the knowledge and skills needed for
the activities and then identify the source of these skills. There is a basic level of
knowledge inside the company, information can be brought from outside the
company and used to create new knowledge, the company can create new
knowledge through the activity, and also seek new knowledge through strategic
research. The basic technical and marketing knowledge within the company may
be tacit staff knowledge or explicit knowledge within the company records. This
can be split into general knowledge and domain-specific knowledge, i.e.
knowledge from general experience and education, and specific knowledge
gained through working and education in the area(s) (Boston et al., 1998).
There can be information sources outside the company such as literature,
databases, patent information, catalogues, trade journals and of course the
Internet. There is obviously a great deal of information available from these
different sources, but knowledge is needed in the company to find it, refine it
and present it in a usable form. Information has to be transformed into the
knowledge needed for the activity; this is the most difficult part, which is often
not recognised. Money and time are spent on setting up or contacting databases.
But it is left to the stressed person organising the activity to change this into
knowledge – is it a wonder that they often fall back on their own or other team
members’ tacit knowledge and do not use the information bases? The setting up
of information bases means medium of presentation, format of presentation,
location of delivery, management of delivery; timeliness, accuracy, relevance
and cost must be considered – as related to the users of the information in
product development (Boston et al., 1998). Information technology can provide
a means of collating and distilling meaningful and usable information across
disciplines, which is useful as a basis for innovation, but also as a source of on-
going relevant information (Ganguly, 1999).
Knowledge and skills can be brought into the company by employing new
graduates or experienced people from other companies or from academic
organisations. The present staff can be retrained to have the necessary skills.
This all takes a great deal of forward planning based on the future product
3. In the two company projects you are studying, how were the design and
development integrated with the product testing? When was formal testing
started?
4. In testing the product prototypes, what techniques were used? How accurate
were the techniques in assessing the product qualities? Are there any new
techniques that might improve the accuracy of selecting the acceptable product
prototypes?
290 Food product development
development programme. It is not something that can be done when the project
has come to a halt because of lack of specific knowledge or the ability to create
new knowledge for the company.
Cooper (1999) identified seven ‘blockers’ to product development:
1. Ignorance.
2. Lack of skills.
3. Faulty or misapplied new product process.
4. Too confident.
5. Lack of discipline, no leadership.
6. Big rush.
7. Too many projects and not enough resources.
Three of these are lack of knowledge and skills, two are lack of time and resources,
and one is lack of project discipline. The lack of knowledge and skills can be in the
basic knowledge needed for the project and also in the method of organising the
project. The activities needed for the outcomes and decisions cannot be identified,
nor suitable techniques to be used in these activities. There is no excuse for this in
incremental product development where activities are well recognised, but the
important factor in this case is to keep up-to-date with the choice of techniques for
the activities. Sometimes people may adopt a new software package for
experimental designs but not know the underlying material changes that are
occurring in the processing. For example they may be using an experimental
design package that plans the experimentation and analyses the results but they
may not understand the reactions that are causing the changes in colour, texture
and flavour. Certainly in the radical innovation, the pathway may not be clear and
there may be a need for significant experimentation before the product design
specifications and the pathway for the rest of the project can be set. The radical
innovation is entering unknown territory, but skilled knowledge in organising
product development projects can keep the project from becoming lost.
Think break
1. Identify the tacit consumer knowledge that is in your company and the people
who hold this knowledge. What are the codified sources of consumer knowledge
and information available within the company and from sources outside? How
does your company create consumer knowledge during the product
development project?
2. Is the ‘bank’ of consumer knowledge within the company adequate for the
company’s incremental projects? If not, how could it be improved?
3. Identify people in your company who have knowledge in more than two areas of
product development. What are their areas of knowledge and how do they
integrate these? What are their positions in the company? When and how do
they take part in the PD Process in your company?
Managing the product development process 291
6.6.2 Responsibilities, resources and timing for activities
The kernel of the product development project is making things happen. It is
important not only to plan activities but also to see that they occur effectively
and efficiently, and are producing the correct new product at the right time and
cost of resources. Product development is not a pyramid management activity,
the person at the top of the pyramid taking all the responsibility, but for
everyone in the project accepting responsibility. But to achieve the outcomes,
they need to be given the resources and the time to complete their activities to
the level required by the project. Everyone will have some critical activities,
which they need to identify and nurture.
Responsibility is an important part of the management of product
development. There needs to be clear definition of where responsibilities lie,
from the critical decision making of top management to the outcome of the
individual sub-activity of the individual project team member. Every part of the
product development project can be crucial to the total effectiveness of the
product, for example:
? poor optimisation of the flavour may cause an unattractive product to the
consumer;
? selection of a variable raw material can cause production problems;
? low resources given by top management may cause lack of knowledge for
controlling distribution;
? pressure on timing by marketing can lead to product failure in the
marketplace.
So responsibility needs to be identified early in the PD Process as shown in Fig.
6.2 and expanded in Table 6.3, and adhered to throughout the project.
These are management responsibilities but the responsibilities of the
individuals in product development also need to be identified. The designer
has responsibility not only for creating a product, but also to ensure cooperation
with other company staff and also consumers in designing the product. The
designer’s responsibility does not stop with the product prototype but includes
its integration into both marketing and production. The designer has
responsibility for communication with the other product development team
members to ensure the design fits with the other developments, particularly
process development. The supervisor on the production line for the new product
not only has the responsibility to produce the product to the specifications but
also to see that yields and costs are met. They are responsible for ensuring that
4. Identify people either in your company or acting as consultants to the company,
who have specialised knowledge in one discipline, activity or technique. When is
their knowledge used in the PD Process? How is their knowledge integrated into
the PD Process? Is there a need for more specialists – in what areas?
292 Food product development
staff understand the process, process control and product qualities; as well as
cooperation between production and quality assurance.
Resources needed for the project are identified, followed by the resources
already present in the company and the resources that will have to be brought
into the company. The core resources are the complementary assets and
organisational capabilities of the company. The complementary assets owned by
a company can include
? physical assets such as marketing channels and manufacturing capability;
? knowledge assets such as R&D, patenting and the linking of the buyers and
the suppliers;
? psychological assets such as brand image, company image;
? power assets such as high market share and industry dominance (Taylor and
Lowe, 1997).
The assets can be physical or functional such as R&D, company/retailer
networks, and both technical and commercial knowledge. A company can have
assets such as modern manufacturing technology, an understanding of the
Table 6.3 Responsibilities in product development
Top management
? Clear product strategy and product development strategies
? Prioritise projects objectively
? Acceptance of the product development programme
? Clear definition of decisions and outcomes at the critical points of the project
? Determine and make available the necessary resources
? Determine and ensure the personnel needed in product development
? Make timely, decisive and knowledgeable go/no-go decisions
Product development management
? Product development processes for different innovations
? Coordination of product development programme
? Allocation and timing of resources
? Identification of different activities and their outcomes
? Set standards for quality of activities
? Control times and outcomes for activities
? Education and training of project teams
? Measures and controls effectiveness and efficiency of the product development
? Revamps the PD Process regularly
Project leader
? Identification of techniques for different activities
? Setting the standards for the different techniques
? Encouraging the creativity in design
? Problem solving
? Communication in the team
? Organising time and resources for the team
? Controlling the team’s activities to give the desired outcomes
Source: From Earle and Earle, 1999, by permission of Chadwick House Group Ltd.
Managing the product development process 293
market, a breadth of market coverage and skill in research and design. It is
important that these assets are related not only to the product development
programme but also at the level of the activity in the project. There is often non-
recognition of these assets by the person at the activity level. Some functional
assets such as marketing and R&D are crucially important to product
development, and their interaction is vitally important. The assets do not have
a value when standing alone; it is the range of assets used together that is
important (Taylor and Lowe, 1997). Another important asset is the organisa-
tional capability of the company, not just as related to the product development
project but the total company organisation – this is particularly important in the
initial stages in developing product strategy and product development
programmes, and also in product commercialisation and product launching.
It is important not only to identify the assets available as resources in product
development, but also the assets that the company lacks:
? Lack of up-to-date technology may limit product development to incremental
change.
? Lack of market strength makes it difficult to launch an innovative product.
? Lack of raw material sources can limit the product formulation.
Timing is of course crucial in product development. For over 40 years,
planning aids such as critical path networks, Gantt charts, PERT diagrams, job
progress bar charts have been used in planning and controlling projects and there
is computer software which can be used (Gevirtz, 1994). But the important parts
in planning timings are:
? setting the sequence of the activities;
? identifying the critical activities as regards timing.
It is important to identify the activities that can theoretically run side by side, that
is in parallel, and the activities that must sequentially follow each other.
Sometimes lack of resources may change the parallel activities because there are
not the people to carry them out together. So the people resource, and also often
the equipment, may change the theoretical sequencing in actual practice. But it is
always useful to start with the theoretical, because that will be the fastest track for
the project. It is important to realise that by changing the theoretical sequencing of
activities, efficiency of the product development will be reduced. Because of its
effect on timing, it may be decided to drop an activity and take the risk of lack of
knowledge leading to product failure. So there is much balancing of effectiveness
and efficiency in planning the timing of activities as shown in Fig. 6.10 (Duffy,
1998). The consumer and the markets pull the balance towards effectiveness,
seeking the optimum product that satisfies their needs and wants; the company
wants an efficient project that is completed in time and within costs. Product
development (project leader and manager) is trying to balance the two wants!
The most important part in timing the activities is to identify the sequence of
activities that are critical. If the time taken for these activities overruns, then the
timing for the whole project overruns unless there is reduction of activities in
294 Food product development
later stages. It is very important that care is taken with identifying and controlling
the critical activities, early in the project, as losing time in Stage 1 can be very
costly in the later stages and also may reduce the chance of success in later stages.
The main activities are split into the sub-activities (tasks) and the completion
of each task is called an event (Meltzer, 1996). The length of each of these tasks
is arguable, but they are usually measured in weeks. It is important that times for
tasks are not too long as they become more difficult to control for timing, but
again creativity in design does take time and is difficult to break down into short
tasks.
It is important to monitor and maintain the time and resource schedule. Any
changes are recorded and their effects on the launching date and also earlier
stage completion dates predicted. There can be unanticipated problems such as
difficulties in obtaining raw materials or equipment, technical difficulties in the
design, patenting problems, competitor actions and even non-availability of top
management for decisions. Their effects on the schedule need to be recognised
immediately and the flow-on effects predicted. There may be a need to increase
the people resources or to put pressure onto some suppliers to get the project
back on a satisfactory schedule. Some pre-planning for possible problems needs
to be allowed in the timing schedule.
Fig. 6.10 Balancing effectiveness and efficiency (Source: After Duffy, 1998).
Think break
1. Contrast the responsibilities in your company, for product development, of
functional managers including marketing and R&D, and of product development
managers. How are these responsibilities integrated? And by whom?
2. In a product development project team in your company, compare the
responsibilities of the project leaders and the team members. Do these
responsibilities vary among project teams? What causes variations in
Managing the product development process 295
6.6.3 Personnel – internal and outsourcing
People are the most important factor in product development. There are the core
team members and there is the greater team, including support groups. A great
variety of knowledge and skills is required and this needs to be integrated into a
complex network supporting the product development. There is no question
today that the linear progression from science to innovation has changed into an
interdisciplinary relationship (Ganguly, 1999) as shown in Fig. 6.11.
There are four important factors in the network:
1. Integration of the sciences.
2. Integration of the technologies in the total technology.
3. Interaction of the science and technology continuously.
4. Interaction of the science and technology in innovation.
responsibilities among teams – differences in type of project, team leader, the
composition of the team?
3. What is your company’s balance between efficiency and effectiveness in product
development projects? Does the balance vary between projects? If so, what is
causing the variations?
4. What are the stumbling blocks in your company for increasing the efficiency of
product development – lack of people, resources, and knowledge; over-
ambitious projects; too many projects; faulty or misapplied PD Process; lack of
discipline, no leadership?
Fig. 6.11 Relationships among science, technology and innovation.
296 Food product development
The physical and mathematical sciences are part of all technology, in
combination with chemistry and biology in process technology and with social
sciences in total technology. The science can be developed separately but often
is developed as part of the technology. Technology often cannot wait for the
results of the basic science research but has to do the research to solve a basic
technology problem. This is true in all areas, for example consumer research
cannot wait for research in the social sciences but has to do the research now to
solve the consumer problem. So basic research can be in technology as well as in
science. Interaction also occurs in the other direction, basic science can come
from a theoretical problem but often it comes from a problem identified in the
science environment, which includes technology. The latter is often called
strategic science, as it has a direction.
Therefore in the innovation process there is a continuous interaction between
the development of the product and the science and technology. This
interdisciplinary network, which vibrates backwards and forwards during the
development, presents a very complex personnel management problem – in
selection of people both outside and inside the company with the necessary
knowledge, skills and creativity, and then coordinating them into a vibrant,
interacting, communicating network. The company needs to have the ability to
sustain a leading-edge competence over long periods (Ganguly, 1999), by
selecting and educating staff, by careful selection of the outside personnel and
building a relationship with them. Sometimes to solve a problem that has arisen,
there may be a need to bring in an outside agency or consultant; but to be of
value for the people in the network, the agency needs to have knowledge and
understanding of the company. All this seems to fly in the face of the company’s
perceived need for secrecy in innovation, and has led to an increase in
intellectual property agreements.
The networks can be inside the company and also connecting the company
personnel to academics, technical consultants, research associations, consumer
and market research companies, and innovation management consultants. There
has been an increasing interaction of academic and government research with
industrial research in companies, often encouraged by government organisations
and grants. In all Western countries, the increasing need for these networks has
been recognised because technology has been progressing so fast that it is
difficult for companies to stay ahead. This also happened in the middle to the
end of the nineteenth century in Scotland, during the Industrial Revolution,
when the communication between academics and industrial technologists was
not only close but their work was interrelated. In a time of fast innovation,
academic research can get behind industrial research, and industry can be left
with basic research problems, which cannot be solved in the time available. As
the major problems cannot be solved, product development can make only small
incremental changes; this can result in stagnation of the company and perhaps
death. This stresses the importance of the interaction between the company
research and external research to maintain the rate of innovation. Box 6.2
illustrates some academic and government research with possible applications.
Managing the product development process 297
Box 6.2 Application briefs from the Journal of Food
Science
Better rice formulated with vitamin A
A process for enhancing the content of rice with retinyl palmitate, a
particularly effective vitamin A precursor, was studied by researchers at the
Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Georgia.
The process was donated in 1997 to the Program for Appropriate Technology
in Health by the Coxes of Washington State, who owned the patent. Broken
rice is milled into rice flour, combined with a binder and retinyl palmitate and
other fortificants, and reformed into rice grains with the same texture as
whole rice grains. These are blended with conventional long grained rice at a
ratio of 99 : 1. The present study showed that the retinyl palmitate was quite
stable under various cooking procedures. When stored at 23oC for 6 months,
85% of the retinyl palmitate was retained, but at 35oC there were extensive
losses, 50% after 24 weeks. Under tropical conditions, this means either the
use of controlled temperature storage or rapid turnover or increased levels of
fortification to compensate for the loss.
Reconfiguring the fatty acid profiles of dairy foods
In 1970’s it was found that by feeding cows a source of high oleic fatty acids,
milk with higher levels of oleic acid can be produced. High oleic sunflower oil
and canola grain are now available as cattle feed additives and make possible
the commercial production of milk with higher levels of oleic acid.
Researchers from the Universities of Florida and Virginia Tech have studied
cheese making with this milk. By consuming calcium salts of high oleic
sunflower oil containing 86% oleic acid, test animals produced milk in which
the high oleic fatty acids in the milkfat increased from 26% to over 40%. Latin
American white cheese (queso blanco) was made from the milk, and tested for
firmness and for sensory differences from conventional cheese made by the
same method. No differences were found in firmness, sensory testing showed
no significant differences between the cheeses. Latin American white cheeses
made with high oleic milk were similar to traditional cheeses.
Source: Reprinted from Journal of Food Science 65(5): iv, v. C223 Institute of Food Technologists,
Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2000.
Think break
1. Identify outside agencies and people that your company has involved in product
development over long periods of time, and the people in the company who
work or liaise with these people. Show how they cooperate in the projects.
298 Food product development
6.7 Managing the PD Process
In managing the PD Process for a project, firstly the internal project
management is identified and then the external agencies integrated into the
internal team. The management for the project as it proceeds through the four
stages, audits the outcomes and efficiency, and controls the project so that it is
kept on track. The procedure is to lay down correctly the track for the project,
and then ensure that the project is not slowed down by track unevenness or
indeed goes off the rails and crashes.
6.7.1 Internal project management
Product development is people-driven, and therefore the most important aspect
of managing for product development is to activate the product development
team and to keep it going forward. This is the underlying energy that drives
product development. By better managing and motivating people, the product
development performance can improve markedly.
The product development team is a critical building block for the
effectiveness and the efficiency of the project (Kuczmarski, 1996; Smith and
Fowley, 2000). There needs to be the right mix of team members to give the
knowledge for the activities and also the organisational capability for integrating
the activities to create the knowledge for the required outcomes. These are
2. How could your company employ or educate its own personnel to take the place
of the outside agencies? Would this improve the effectiveness and efficiency of
product development in the company? How would you show top management
the cost effectiveness of doing this?
3. The philosophy and practice of scientific research in universities during the last
100 years have been individualistic with freedom to choose, but the philosophy
of science and technology in industry is the creation of clusters of inter- and
intra-disciplinary teams with a strategic direction (Ganguly, 1999). In the
development of networks between academic institutions and commercial
companies, how can these two philosophies be merged to give satisfaction to all
the participants and ensure the forward-flow of research and development?
4. In small companies, there are only a few people in product development and
they have only certain areas of knowledge. Examples are:
(a) Small company based on the technical invention of a co-extruder for dough
and thick paste, the marketing skills are few. How could this company develop
an outside network to overcome this lack of marketing skills?
(b) Small company formed because a need was recognised in the market for a
high-protein drink for endurance athletes; it has little technical product and
processing knowledge. How could this company develop an outside network to
overcome this lack of technical skills?
Managing the product development process 299
multifunctional teams and they need full-time leaders. They are often called
cross-functional teams, comprising members from various functions and with
complementary skills (Cooper, 1999). A truer description is a multifaceted team,
having a variety of skills needed in a specific project, but not necessarily related
to the functional departments. In the team, there is a need for a variety of
expertise and experience, as well as different perspectives on product
development. Utilising interdisciplinary project teams whose participants are
involved at the onset of a project can greatly reduce development time and
improve the probability of success (Gevirtz, 1994).
The actual mix depends on the company and the project. There may be a core
team as shown in Fig. 6.12, and then a surrounding team or supporting groups.
The core team conducts the activities but they are interacting continuously with
the other members. People may move from the surrounding team as the project
develops; for example in product design the person with marketing skills may be
only an adviser, but in Stage 3: Product commercialisation will become a core
team member. It is important that the knowledge and skills needed later in the
project are identified, and people with these skills are included in the total team
from the beginning.
As shown in Fig. 6.12, each member of the multifaceted team should share a
common commitment to the project, with shared perspectives and shared values;
being part of the team should be a responsibility that members are given by
management. The team members need a mix of creativity and analytical
problem-solving skills based on knowledge and experience. They are often
individualistic because they have strong ideas on product development, but they
need people skills to work in a team. This is not always easy to blend together
but it can often be achieved with experience and good leadership.
The project leaders need skills in team-building and conflict resolution. They
also need to be creative and good at problem solving; they need to be skilled
product developers as well as organisers. In some incremental product
development, organisation may be important; but as projects go towards radical
Fig. 6.12 The core product development team.
300 Food product development
innovation, it is the innovative thinker who can bring the team to effective
product development. It is the role of the project leader:
? to ensure that the project progresses smoothly, meeting all interim objectives
and targets on time and within budget;
? to make sure that the necessary resources are available when and where they
are required;
? to act as the primary channel of communication between the project teams,
senior management and any external organisations involved (Jones, 1997).
There are several issues to consider in the coordination and management of new
product development teams (Holahan and Markham, 1996; Scott, 2000):
? Team structure, team size, membership composition of teams.
? Team leader selection, team management, team control and evaluation.
? Team operations, inter- and intra-team coordination, communication systems,
team member access to project databases.
? Team reward structures, team motivation.
? Team training in teamwork and conflict resolution.
The project leader’s actions in team management are shown in Table 6.4. The
leadership style of the project leader is important as it determines how project
members perceive the working climate, learning possibilities and organisational
Table 6.4 Project leader’s team management
Setting up the project
? Identify the activities in the project with the team and set up a coordinated project
plan.
? Aid the team members in ensuring the appropriateness, accuracy and efficiency of
the techniques they choose for the activities.
? Set up a time and resources schedule for the plan.
Managing the team
? Combine the knowledge and skills of the individuals into a combined group
knowledge and skills.
? Lead the creativity and problem solving in the group.
? Ensure communication within the group.
? Organise resources for the project.
? Plan and keep the project on the time schedule by cooperating with the team.
? Continuously monitor the quality of the outcomes to ensure the project’s
effectiveness.
? Keep within budget.
Team outside communicator
? Communicate well with the functional departments.
? Relate the group’s aims and the outcomes from the group’s activities with senior
management.
? Track overall time and achievement lines.
? Be a strong group sponsor.
Managing the product development process 301
effectiveness of the PD Process. Employee-centred, relation-oriented leadership
appears to lead to a positive work climate and a better learning atmosphere in the
project, compared with production-centred and change-centred leadership.
Supporting innovative learning requires a willingness of the leader to share
responsibility and joint experimentation as well as focusing on team objectives.
To assemble people in a work group and define work tasks is not sufficient to get
synergetic effects – the team must find the climate supportive, trusting and
challenging (Norrgren and Schaller, 1999).
The core team has a combined aim and also a plan for the project. Teamwork
is essential – members need to have shared values and shared knowledge.
Continuous, open, communication leads to an effective and efficient team.
Regular meetings are needed to update each other on the individual activities,
analyse and compare the results, develop new ideas and keep the project on
track. Ideas and results need to be shared and people must feel free to criticise
constructively. This core team needs to stay close to the functional departments
and to consumers, customers, raw material and equipment suppliers. It needs
strong connections with organisations in the distribution chain, and other outside
agencies such as consultants and research establishments. Product development
is not a closed internal system and team members have to learn how to
communicate with the outside and at the same time keep the new knowledge in
the project confidential.
There are three important factors to consider in managing the team:
1. Education and training of the team.
2. Over-confidence of the team.
3. Cultural and societal background of the team.
Education and training of the team is important (Cooper, 1999). The team
needs knowledge of the PD Process and also the general and specific knowledge
needed for the various activities. Team members may be lacking in knowledge
of the PD Process, its decisions, outcomes and activities. When people have
neither education nor experience in product development, it is not sufficient to
have a PD Process on the internal computer network to which they can refer.
They need a training course on the PD Process in the company, with examples of
past projects as illustrations. The project leader needs an advanced course on
ensuring effectiveness and efficiency of the PD Process. The specific and the
general knowledge varies according to the project and the person’s part in the
project, and therefore the educational level of the team members varies a great
deal from the young scientist with a PhD to the process worker with many years
of experience. If there is not the capability and knowledge for a particular
activity such as market research, technical research or consumer research, either
team members will need to have further education or the capability will have to
bought from outside.
Over-confidence can be a problem in managing product development
(Cooper, 1999). There appears to be a tendency in some companies and with
some product development personnel to say we do not need to do that activity –
302 Food product development
we know it all. Sometimes this may be true, but many times it just shows a lack
of knowledge. There appears to be little training, and indeed little research, in
judging what knowledge is essential to a project, yet lack of knowledge
combined with over-confidence is related to a high risk of failure. Any dropping
of critical activities needs to be made in full awareness of the risks and costs
involved. For incremental product change, there is often a situation in which:
? extensive tacit and explicit knowledge of the product category exists;
? the marketing strategy and plan need only minor changes from project to
project;
? the production knowledge is known and in use within the company;
? the production capacity exists with little need for change to production
method.
In this case, the team can consider dropping activities such as scale-up of
processing, research for the market strategy and large-scale test marketing. But
in radical innovation, where there can be little of this specific knowledge in the
company, there can be real dangers in dropping activities such as business
analysis before launch and test marketing of the new product with its new
production and marketing methods.
The cultural and societal environment also affects the organisation and
working methods of the product development team. There can be differences in
the general society and also among different types of companies so that what is
necessary for product development management in one environment may not be
applicable in another. Souder’s research in various countries in the world
identified differences, for example in comparing the USA and Sweden. In the
USA, the degree of commercial success was related, in both familiar and
unfamiliar markets, to marketing proficiency, development proficiency and
customer service efficiency. But three measures were significant for US
unfamiliar products but not for US familiar products – technical skill adequacy,
R&D/marketing integration and project manager competency. In the more
innovative projects, there was a greater need for technical skills and for a strong
interrelationship between the technical and marketing development. In these,
usually large projects with a lot of unknowns, there was a need for innovative
and adaptable project management. For Scandinavian product development,
R&D/marketing integration and project manager competency were not related
to product success for both familiar and unfamiliar products. This was probably
because US-type integration processes and project manager roles may be
relatively less important in Scandinavian companies, where collaboration among
individuals may be more spontaneous, informal and internally motivated. Their
relatively low importance is consistent with the egalitarian Scandinavian cultural
emphasis on solidarity and cooperation (Souder and Jenssen, 1999). In
comparing Japan and the USA, Souder and Song (1998) identified the greater
Japanese belief in technical expertise in product development; which may be
related to the culture – the Japanese culture emphasises the position of the
technologist, the US culture places more emphasis on the manager. So in
Managing the product development process 303
deciding on product development project management, it is important to
recognise not only the level of innovation – incremental against radical
innovation, but also the cultural background of both the company and the society
surrounding it. Successful management of the product development project
requires careful consideration of the company’s internal and external
environments. Practices that have proven successful in one company and one
society may not be directly transferable to another company in another society.
The product development project needs to be managed in ways that promote
the use and the development of each individual’s knowledge and skills, and also
encourage the coordination among the individuals. The means for managing this
may vary from company to company, but they need to be researched so as to
obtain the optimum capabilities for the company’s product development.
6.7.2 Integrating and managing the work of the outside agencies
The second task is to integrate the work of the outside agencies into the product
development project. There are two different groups – those providing
knowledge to the company during the project and those providing systems for
the commercial development and launching of the product. As shown in Fig.
6.13, outside agencies may provide consumer and market research, design of
product and packaging, product testing and consulting in various areas. As the
product development project progresses, more and more agencies can be brought
in to provide contract processing, physical distribution, market distribution and
marketing. The raw materials suppliers and the equipment suppliers fall within
both the knowledge and systems acquisitions; they can be supplying knowledge
Think break
1. Collaboration in the core project team gives a synergy which produces outcomes
that exceed the capabilities of the individuals in the team (Jassawalla and
Sashittal, 1998). Discuss the types of collaboration that you have observed in
core product development teams and how these have affected both the
efficiency of the project and the effectiveness of the outcomes.
2. From your experience, what characteristics of the core team and of the
individuals affect the level of collaboration?
3. Collaboration between the core team and the supporting team in the functional
departments gives a company-wide thrust to product development. The level of
this collaboration depends on company organisational factors such as the
priority that senior management gives to product development and the level of
autonomy afforded to participants in the PD Process. Discuss the level of
collaboration in product development in your company, and how organisational
change and also changes in the attitudes of individuals might raise the level of
collaboration.
304 Food product development
on product qualities, formulation and processing conditions, but of course in the
end hope to supply raw materials and equipment.
Knowledge acquisition methods can vary from casual conversations to
binding contracts. The outside agencies can come into the product development
project for a one-off piece of work or they can be advising throughout the PD
Process. The usual pattern of short-term contracts consists of:
? outline brief from the company;
? proposal from the outside agency;
? discussion and adaptation of proposal;
? contract agreement;
? research reporting;
? acceptance and coordination into product development project.
One of the problems in, say, employing a food designer either to design the basic
product or to contribute aesthetic values to the product, is to give accurate
descriptions of the consumer and their needs and wants, production/distribution
limitations and price/cost limitations. The outline brief needs to include this
information as well as the place of the new product in the company and the
market. Otherwise there will be endless redesign and discussions to get the
design the company will accept, ending in a frustrated designer and unhappy
product development personnel. Another problem is with work that takes a long
time, for example a research programme with a university that involves
postgraduate students. Basically the project is a teaching process for them, and
the company must not expect results that can be accepted immediately into the
product development project; they will need further development to bring them
Fig. 6.13 External agencies and company product development.
Managing the product development process 305
into the project. Also there are often teaching needs that require the students to
do the R&D in a certain way, which is not the accepted procedure in the
company. The company takes risks and cuts corners, which the university
project cannot do if it is to be accepted academically. Using undergraduate or
postgraduate students can be much cheaper than using company staff, but the
company needs to realise the limitations, particularly of extended time.
How problems in building systems for the final stages of the PD Process can
be solved by outside agencies is shown in Table 6.5. The list is not all-
encompassing; many other problems arise; for example importing regulations
and clearance of foods at entry will need a qualified person representing the
company, the risk of loss of product or deterioration of product in transit will
need insurance, and so on. This list is to bring attention to the many problems
that have to be solved, and the systems/people that are available which the
company can contract to use or actually buy. Little in the product development
literature describes research in this area, but it is of course the most costly part of
product development and can also have the greatest risk of failure.
The interrelationships between the company and the systems providers are
commercial relationships and they are judged as usual by their effectiveness and
efficiencies. Very often these relationships are already in place and it is a case of
involving them with the new product. During the product commercialisation
stage, they have to be brought into the discussions on the production, marketing
or financial developments so the procedures cannot only be put in place but have
Table 6.5 Some problems in building systems solved by outside agencies
Problem Some solutions
Little knowledge of process Buy a turnkey plant
Need to trial production Use contract processor
No packaging line Use contract packer
Process control inaccurate Contract process control company
Microbiological safety Contract microbiological laboratories
Need ISO 9001 QA (quality assurance) Contract QA accredited auditors
No physical distribution Contract international distribution company
No storage in market Contract storage company
Poor control over distribution Contract logistics expert
No marketing system in this area Sell product to distributor
Buy marketing company
Poor contact with retailers Contract food broker, manufacturer’s agent
No contact with media Use advertising agency
Little knowledge of importing/exporting Sell to exporter
Use an export agent
Not enough working capital Borrow from bank
Need investment capital to start Loan from bank
Agreement with venture capital company
306 Food product development
the support of the outside agencies. There is a balancing of confidentiality on the
product with the need to have strong cooperation. Where new agencies have to
be sought, the procedures are much more complex, especially working in
overseas markets, where there may not be knowledge of the distribution/
marketing systems, culture or even the language. The primary producer can be a
very long way from the consumer in the other country, and designing a fresh
food for export to an overseas market can provide many headaches as the
producer tries to work through a complex network of export agencies/import
agencies/trading houses/auction markets/retailers. Reactions to products can
take a long time – even years! The larger companies have built up subsidiary
companies in the overseas countries, and may even have product development
groups working in the country, so they have overcome the hurdles and can
proceed with product development in a systematic way. Joint ventures and
licensing operations can also overcome the problems in the new country.
Another problem is that foods are biological products, which can deteriorate
with time. The distribution system looks suitable on paper but when the
distribution development is taking place, there are discoveries of blocks in the
system, for example slow unloading of cargo, changes from one container to
another in using several airlines and bad vibrations in transport.
6.8 Company organisation for product development
Organisation and organisational changes were a significant part of food company
management in the 1980s and 1990s; this management structuring and
restructuring affected product development. Companies bought or amalgamated
Think break
1. What are the major problems that your company has encountered during
commercialisation and launching of a radical new product? What outside
agencies has the company used to solve these problems?
2. How do you judge outside agencies providing marketing research, engineering
consulting, packaging design and advertising design during commercialisation?
3. How are the distribution/wholesaling operations of marketing to the food service
industry similar to and different from those of the food retailing industry? If you
had been marketing to retailers, and had a line of new products designed for
small family restaurants and takeaways, how would you design the distribution
for these products?
4. What are some of the problems involved in exporting a new product into an
overseas market? What investigations would you make to identify any import
controls and also internal food regulations for the food product? What outside
agencies could you use?
Managing the product development process 307
with other companies to obtain new brands and new products, and either brought
together the product development and R&D groups in the two companies and then
reduced the size, or dropped the product development group in one company. Then
it was found that the various technologies in the conglomerate companies did not
match, so they divested themselves of some areas and went back to their ‘knitting’
or core group. Other companies decided that they were only in marketing and sold
off their processing plants and technologies; some decided that cost-cutting was the
name of the game and divested or at least reduced their R&D departments. In all of
this reorganising, the processing and marketing technologies were certainly split
apart and in many cases were reduced, and product development was absorbed into
one or the other. Today there is a need for a more dynamic management system
that can grasp the idea of total technology and also be aware of changes occurring
both technologically and in society.
There is no right or wrong structure for product development management.
The place of product development will be determined for individual companies
on the basis of:
? company strategies and objectives;
? industry environment;
? economic climate;
? company’s existing product mix;
? level of technical orientation;
? level of market orientation;
? personnel involved;
and dare we say, the prevailing fashion in management!
6.8.1 Formal organisations
On the whole, product development is a misunderstood or perhaps underrated
profession. This often results in the product development function becoming an
appendage rather than central to company strategic thinking. This in turn leads
to product development becoming the domain of marketing or technical, mainly
because senior management does not realise what it is and what it can do.
Product development can be made to work with almost any organisation
providing there is a commitment to product development from top management
and a product champion, but the type of product development and its
effectiveness and efficiency vary. Marketing tends towards incremental product
changes, production to cost reductions and R&D to radical innovations.
Technical
‘Technical’ is often the home for product development: this may be R&D,
production, laboratory or engineering as shown in Fig. 6.14. R&D is often the
home for product development in large multifunctional food companies, as it is
the base for new scientific and technological knowledge in the company, and
also in primary production because of the long time needed to breed new plants
308 Food product development
and animals. The first problem is whether to organise product development
within the individual scientific disciplines or to have separate product
development groups, in other words split the R from the D (Urban et al.,
1987). Within the scientific disciplines, there may be a lack of multidisciplinary
research and it may be difficult to impose a tight time frame; the project group
may have little real contact with the basic research, and none with consumers
and production. A large multinational may try to get over this by having the
incremental product development with the individual companies or areas, and
the radical innovations in R&D. It is obviously a major problem as one sees the
large companies cycling back and forth throughout the years.
Engineering is often the home in companies that are based on process
development, especially food processing equipment systems. Process develop-
ment is often strong in European food companies, because this can be an area for
radical innovations. Usually the processes and the equipment are sold to food
manufacturing companies, so there is not the same need for consumer input into
product development. In the smaller companies, the laboratory or production can
be the home for product development. The laboratory can be responsible for
quality assurance and product development; product development usually
emphasises incremental product improvements. Production controlled product
development concentrates on raw material and processing changes, usually with
the object of reducing costs, improving yields and improving quality. These are
very general categories, and individual companies with different types of
enthusiasts for product development can develop radical innovations from the
laboratory of a small company.
Marketing
‘Marketing’ is also often the home for product development, especially in a
strongly marketing-oriented company. There may be a product manager who is
Fig. 6.14 Technical product development.
Managing the product development process 309
responsible for a product area, both established and new products or there may
be product managers who are responsible for the established products and a
product development manager for the new products. The product development
manager is responsible for coordinating all the market and consumer research,
and the complete marketing mix for the product, and cooperating with the
technical and production people in developing the product and producing it.
Marketing also has problems in setting up an organisation for product
development as is seen in Fig. 6.15 which outlines the development of the
product development organisation in a fictional company ‘Rainbow Products’.
Fig. 6.15 Rainbow Products product development organisations.
310 Food product development
The advantages of the product manager system are:
? familiarity with the product area;
? good connections with outside agencies such as advertising agencies, market
researchers and retailers;
? real commitment to expanding the product area;
? involvement in all aspects of development;
? direct concern with day-to-day marketing.
Disadvantages of the product manager system for new products are:
? working under great pressure to produce short-term results for all products;
? difficulty in handling complex new products;
? little or no understanding of technological developments;
? difficulty in motivating people in other functional areas.
The product manager often has great difficulty in understanding the radical inno-
vation and its relation to consumer needs and wants. Therefore they tend to produce
minor product variations and product line extensions. This is also true when other
people in the marketing department are responsible for product development.
Think break
Rainbow Products (Fig. 6.15), 20 years ago was an old-established company selling
packaged consumer goods such as special flours, dried peas and beans, baking
powder, peppers and spices, when the new general manager decided that the
company should increase its range of packaged products. Gradually over the years it
has marketed cake mixes, fruit drink powders, dried soups, bread mixes, hot
chocolate drinks, health drinks, and recently has expanded into UHT soups and
drinks. It has met several product development problems over the past years and
reorganised its product development to overcome these problems.
You have been brought into Rainbow Products by the Chief Executive (who
started product development when general manager). You have asked him and his
staff some questions about their product development:
? Planning of products and go/no-go decisions: new product committee consisting
of marketing manager (chairman), new product marketing manager, product
planning manager and market researcher. Sometimes the Chief Executive sits in.
? PD Process: generation, screening and evaluation of new products; feasibility and
concept testing; product development and consumer tests; marketing plan
development; pre-test on product name, packaging, pricing, advertising,
promotion; test marketing; national launch. Emphasis on testing at all stages.
? New products: product manager’s comment that what is a product modification is
regarded as ‘new product’ by the new product group. They spent two years
developing an instant chocolate sponge, which was eventually killed because the
market did not want it.
Managing the product development process 311
This example shows how product development is very much influenced by
people, their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and indeed their culture. It is
important to recognise this when managing people in product development.
New product department
A new product department is sometimes used to integrate and coordinate the
company’s capabilities and bear the responsibility for product innovation (Urban
et al., 1987). This can work well where there is already good integration
between functional departments, but can be left out on a limb if there is
competition among functional departments. It certainly focuses the company’s
product development and also can combine the product, processing and
consumer research in the early stages, but it is never large enough to do the
marketing and production development in the commercialisation and launching.
All these formal systems can be suitable for incremental product changes, the
choice being dependent on the character of the company and its staff, but they
are usually not a successful structure for radical innovations.
6.8.2 Dynamic, changing organisation
The radical innovation needs a more dynamic product development organisa-
tion, which can change with the, often unpredicted, changes in the project. Some
organisational methods are: matrix, subsidiary/divisional, entrepreneurial/
venture, corporate structures.
? Control of product development: product planning manager said a problem was
that on the new product committee, each member’s vote counts as only 1,
therefore technical research has little say. One of our new instant puddings never
satisfied the committee, and it went back and forth with minor changes for two
years.
Now as a consultant answer the following questions:
1. What factors do you think caused the recent problems in the company’s new
products?
2. Do you think they were caused by:
(a) lack of knowledge in the company,
(b) lack of discrimination between incremental and radical new products,
(c) poor collaboration, decision making, project control?
Can you identify any other factors?
3. How do you think product development should be planned and controlled in the
future?
4. What personnel does the company need in product development in the future?
5. What could be the management structure? Who should be responsible for
critical decisions, for the effective and efficient running of the projects?
312 Food product development
Matrix organisation is where the product development team member is also a
member of a functional department. An individual staff member who is
contributing to a product development project will be responsible to the project
manager for the daily work on the project but will remain responsible to the
departmental head on the standard of work and career direction. This can bring a
wide variety of knowledge and skills into the product development project as
needed, but can cause uncertainty, hesitation and strife between the two managers.
Subsidiary/divisional is where the product development projects are divided
among subsidiary companies, or product divisions, in large companies, and they
may be supported by corporate groups in R&D, market research, strategic planning
and intellectual property. This means that there is a small product development
group embedded in the functions of the subsidiary with specific knowledge,
supported by strong groups in the central research. This would appear to be the
optimum system for large multinational food companies, developing incremental
products in the subsidiary and the radical innovations in the corporate research. But
it can build communication problems, which can cause lower technology in the
incremental products, and difficulties in technology transfer for radical innovations
coming from the corporate research. To keep them as a combined product
development structure needs more than the occasional visits between corporate and
subsidiary; it needs combined knowledge building by moving staff between groups
and joint workshops. Another problem is that the subsidiary may identify a radical
innovation, but is not allowed to develop it and so becomes frustrated.
Venture/entrepreneurial seeks to introduce some of the attributes of the
small entrepreneurial company into the large, multinational food company. The
basic philosophy is to provide maximum responsibility to the venture manager/
project leader who is able to recruit the members of the team, free to use the
resources as long as the budget is kept, and organise the activities within the
overall aims of efficiency and effectiveness. The team creates the ideas and
develops the product through to the launch and, if successful, the team may be
allowed to form a company. This gives the opportunity for creative people with
management and general business abilities to build a new product area for the
company. The company not only has a new product platform but also has
someone who has the abilities and the experience to develop new products in the
future. If the idea is not developed to full commercialisation, and the project
leader returns to their own area, the company has an employee experienced in
product development. Venture/entrepreneurial is for introduction of radical
innovations and not incremental products.
Corporate structures include new product committee, corporate new
product task force or a group of directors on the Board. All of these report to
the Board or at least the Chief Executive, and are formed from the senior people
in the company. This is bringing innovation into the company at Board level,
and is more likely to occur in the new enterprise, rather than the large, long-
established company. These groups will set the product strategy for the
company, coordinate the projects in the product development programme,
monitor the progress of the projects and provide the critical decisions and the
Managing the product development process 313
resources. A task force may be formed for a major project with high capital costs
and risks. With these structures, top management has taken responsibility for
product development in the company, and has taken control of it.
In conclusion one cannot say that any one structure is the way to manage product
development, but that there are right and wrong ways to manage specific types of
product development in specific companies. Incremental product development can
have a semi-permanent, slowly changing structure which not only creates
knowledge but stores the knowledge either in explicit data sources or in the tacit
knowledge in the heads of people who have been in product development over time.
Collaboration between people who have the multifaceted knowledge needed for a
project is built up over the years. They work closely and develop an extensive shared
knowledge. The company becomes a product development team, which splits into
small teams for the projects but always feels connected together through the projects.
This is very much easier to do in the small company, but the larger companies need
to have large teams in different product areas or in different geographical areas, or in
different markets. Radical innovations need a much looser, more temporary
structure, because they are working in areas of not easily predictable change. Their
organisation needs to give the dynamism to drive the project forward to completion.
In all product development organisations, there are some key ingredients:
? A corporate commitment to product development, starting at the top of the
company. Product development is a major part of the company culture.
? One person takes responsibility for a project, no matter how large or small.
? The project leader or the product champion, if the project is too small for a
team, should have direct access to personnel and their knowledge needed in
the project.
? The project leader manages the people working in the project, makes
decisions and is accountable for the project.
? Critical decision making is by top management, but all other decisions
involve people responsible for the project.
As food enterprises grow from the small company with a few entrepreneurial
individuals running or indeed comprising it, the need for more elaborate
organisation grows and with that comes the need for explicit frameworks to
maintain and expand the activity. Systems will be tried, become accepted and
are used often, and then have to be adapted as the company grows. Product
development changes a company, and the system for product development needs
to change. It must not become a rigid, bureaucratic system, but retain the
dynamism needed for successful product development.
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