Let’s run a scenario together in which we imagine that we are all members of the steering committee to reconstitute the NPD pipeline at BigCo Technologies. BigCo is a manufacturer of hardware encryption devices and we have a successful line of components sold to Internet communications companies and satellite communications companies. We are aware that encryption is moving “down market” to data centers, servers, personal computers, and handheld devices. We are also aware that some seemingly scifi technologies are being developed elsewhere like quantum computing and we know that our current state of the art is always in danger of being outpaced. We generate $500 million in sales each year and a typical product line generates upwards of $50 million in revenue with 35% margins. The new CEO (who constituted this committee) has dedicated 20% of all revenues to R&D.

Please answer the following in a couple paragraphs:

1) How we might allocate that budget. What would our portfolio of projects look like?

2) What kind of NPD process would we put in place? Would we put different processes in place for different kinds of efforts?

3) Who will run the NPD process? Who gets to contribute to it? How do we get the ideas that go into our “funnel”?

4) What kind of stage gate(s) would we use to maximize success rates.

5) How would we measure success?