The success of any technology business project depends on the accurate information of the market coupled with the reliability of technological components along with other user-based parameters. It was an old school thought that the technological information on innovations would have priority than market knowledge for any related product. The story of Polaroid which lost the advantage of being the technological leader in digital imaging due to the poor information on the markets should be an eye-opener to this conventional wisdom.
Due to the limited insight into the consequence of technological and market knowledge for New Business Development (NBD)Projects, detailed research was undertaken to investigate the influence of the above-mentioned factors on the project management characteristics of NBD projects. The studies clearly suggest that project autonomy is the most driving force that determines the successful exploration and both technical and market information.
The basic study was undertaken on NBD projects of a retail business chain called Domus. Most of its personal care and health care products were facing a significant reduction in sales and hence, new business opportunities on new product lines were also on cards. The NBD projects, that Domus handled, were cross-functional in nature with both engineers and managers assigned to each project controlled by a Project Manager. The detailed analysis of the projects chosen for the research clearly gives valid explanations on the hypothesis that “autonomy is necessary for the collection of proper technical and business information” for successful NBD projects.
Among the eight projects investigated, in spite of the absence of proper market information, two of them were very successful due to their ability to utilize the existing business information. Out of the other six which required detailed market information only two turned successful. The failure of the four projects was accounted to the introduction of poor business criteria before putting into commercialization. The success of two in this segment was attributed to a well-structured test marketing program designed to assess the effectiveness of developed product propositions and marketing campaigns. These cases clearly emphasize that the success of NBD projects can be assumed by establishing an alliance with the management team for the new market information.
Business intelligence is a critical component in any commercial venture, especially in new launches. This calls for a simultaneous collection of information from both the technological and marketing divisions of the units concerned. As the study outlines, project autonomy is the key deciding component in determining success. This is certainly convincing as unless the basic issues addressing the technological capability as well as business issues are known, a business-winning proposition cannot be framed. Further, the system must also have the flexibility for a strategic alliance with external sources which might be necessary to generate new information.
Another major step that could be incorporated is to update the technological support or research member on relevant business intelligence information. These approaches could provide necessary inputs that the business system needs in the product design stages itself thus reducing a major chance of failure in case the autonomy component is not very dominant.
References
Burgers, J Henry., Van Den Bosch, Frans A J., & Volberda, Henk W. (2008). Why New Business Development Projects Fail: Coping with the Differences of Technological versus Market Knowledge. Long Range Planning, 41(1), 55-73.