- What are the various troubles incurred in the office products?
- What differences do the processes for the different products exhibit?
- How critical do you think resource sharing is in office case?
- Optional Reading: Cooper R. G. "Third Generation New Product Processes", Journal of Product Innovation Management, 11, 1994, 3-14
- What are the most important user needs in the water purifier market?
- Interview one or two wilderness enthusiasts that you know.
- Optional Reading: Griffin A., and Hauser J. R. 1993. "The Voice of the Customer", Marketing Science, 12 (1), pp. 1-27
- Optional Reading: Lynn G. S., J. G. Morone, and A. S. Paulson, "Marketing and Discontinuous Innovation: The Probe-and-Learn Process" California Management Review 38, Spring 1996, 8-37
- What do you think are the reasons that the Kittyhawk project failed?
- What do you think of the product concept the Kittyhawk team pursued?
- What is your view on the concept selection process?
- Optional Reading: Bower J. L. and Christensen C. M. "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave" Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 1995
- Optional Reading: Von Hippel E. "Creating Breakthroughs at 3M", Harvard Business Review, September-October 1999.
- Optional Reading: Thomke S. D. "Enlightnened Experimentation: The New Imperative for Innovation" Harvard Business Review, Feb 2001
- The exercise will be announced in due time. The teams should note that they will present their findings session no. 8
- Just bring an old VCR tape, it may not survive, so please be prepared!
- Please discuss the company strategy as it appears in the beginning of 2009
- What does this imply for the development strategy of Auto-diagnosis? What should Sam aim for?
- Outline at least one key strategic dimension that the leadership team should focus on.
- Optional Reading: Markides C. " A Dynamic View of Strategy", Sloan Management Review, 40 (3), 1999
- PLEASE PREPARE THE QUESTIONS AT THE END OF THE CASE
- Loch C.H., Pich M. T., Terwiesch C., and Urbschat M. " Selecting R&D Projects at BMW: A Case Study of Adopting Mathematical Programming Models", IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 48 (1), pp.70-80
- Optional Reading: Ted Klastorin, Project Management Tools and Trade-offs, Ch. 3, J. Wiley & Sons
- Do you think Dragonfly has any chance to make it on time? Would you invest your money in it?
- What could be a derailing factor for timely completion of the project?
- Krishnan V., Eppinger S. D., and Whitney D. E. 1997. "A Model Based Framework to Overlap Product Development Activities", Management Science, 43 (4), pp. 427-438
- How would you evaluate Team New Zealand's use of simulation in the design process? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
- What yacht construction strategy should Team New Zealand follow? Why?
- Identify the different contingencies that Crossair faces while undertaking the project
- DeMeyer A., C. H. Loch, and M. T. Pich "Managing Project Uncertainty: From Variation to Chaos", Sloan Management Review, 43 (2), Winter 2002, 60-67
- When should PayMyBills.com their new product?
- What recommendations do you make concerning the outsourcing of the paper works? How do you evaluate the scalability (cost of handling a customer with more customers signing on) of the product?
- What are the strengths in the development process used?
- The price of a package is 80,- DM (compared to 20,- for a package of penicillin) with gross margins of 65,-. What is the discounted difference in gross margins of the GP market strategy compared to testing the product in hospitals (at 20% of the volume) for 3 years? Assume the GP strategy had resulted in sustained average monthly volumes of 150 000 units, as in February 1995, and assume a discount rate of 15% per year.
- What would you answer to John Hammer's suspicion that there may be a management failure at Alpex?
- What organizational problems is Magnus Norborg facing at Gemstone?
- Do you feel that R&D can be measured in conventional ways (e.g. financial measures)?
- Optional Reading: Loch C. H., and U. A. S. Tapper " Implementing a Strategy-Driven Performance Measurement System for an Applied Research Group", Journal of Product Innovation Management, 19, pp. 422-436
- Class Participation: 20%
- Case Write-ups: 20%
- Course Project: Intermediate reports (deliverables) and presentations: 30%
- Course Project: Final report and presentation: 30%
MGT 3744: Managing Product, Service and Technology Development
Professor: Stylianos (Stelios) Kavadias
Office: 452 Technology Square Management Building
Phone: 404-894-4370
Office Hours: With Appointment.
Course Description and Learning Objectives
The development of new products and services (NPD/NSD) has emerged as one of the key themes of competitiveness after the 1990s. And yet, it is still treated in many firms as a "black hole" into which management allocates lots of resources (money), hoping that enough useful things will come out to sustain the company for a few more years on the run. Have you worked in marketing, finance or sales? Then you are likely to be familiar with that view. The recent times of economic distress have renewed the emphasis on innovation identifying it as the major thrust for the sustaining competitiveness of the US economy (Innovation Economics, Business Week, September 2008).
This course offers a systematic overview of the management issues that arise during the process of new product development (NPD). The development process requires integration across the traditional management functions. The course introduces tools and concepts for both linking development to strategy, and for managing the development process for speed, efficiency, and market impact. Through a combination of cases and reading articles, the course covers a wide range of topics.
The course is divided in two large components. The first one focuses on the theoretical perspectives and frameworks concerning the management of the development process. We follow the development process from the initial steps of identifying the customer needs and conceptualizing the product, to production ramp-up and product launch issues. A thorough understanding of the fundamental principles that govern the NPD process should emerge from the first component. More specifically, the notion that the NPD process entails "information processing and transformation" must be realized. The development of a new product concerns mainly the transformation of an idea (that is information at a raw, primitive stage) into an actual product or service (that is finalized information that fulfills consumers’ needs) through a number of intermediate stages (NPD process steps). Course participants will become familiar with the key stages, such as concept generation, evaluation and selection, together with strategic decisions, like product portfolio selection and technology choice, and operational methods such as project planning, prototyping planning etc. The insights that the course offers constitute the basis for anyone who wishes to get involved with the development of new products, independently of her/his function within the organization.
The second component is the application of the theory in practice. Students are expected to "develop" a new product in parallel to the course following the theoretical developments. This second component of the course aims to convey a basic principle that must not be overlooked in management: theory is always less complex than practice. Hence, it helps to recognize the intangible "bits and pieces" of reality in NPD, e.g. team cooperation and management. Students work in teams throughout the semester, and they have to achieve a modus operandi in order to attain the desired outcome. This "tacit" learning aspect offers important on-hand experience. Furthermore, the project offers the opportunity to apply some of the theoretical underpinnings of NPD in a project, finding out the limits of theory application in practice.
Course Tentative Schedule
Session 1: Introduction and Overview of the Course
Session 2: The Product Development Process
Case: Microsoft Office for Windows: The Next Suite
Session 3: User Need Identification
Case: SweetWater
Session 4: Product Specifications and the Innovator's Dilemma [CASE WRITE-UP 1]
Case: Hewlett-Packard: The Fight for the Kittyhawk
Session 5: [PRESENTATION 1] Team mission statement
Session 6: Generating Product Concepts
Session 7: Brainstorming Exercise
Session 8: Brainstorming Exercise - the presentations
Session 9: Design for Manufacturing
Session 10-11: [PRESENTATION 2a,2b] Customer Need Identification
Session 12: Developing an NPD Strategy
Case: Auto Diagnosis (A): Revolutionizing the Auto-Repair Process
Session 13: Project Portfolio Selection and Resource Allocation in R&D [CASE WRITE-UP 2]
Case: United Beverages: New Product Genius or One-hit Wonder?
Session 14: Organizing Product Development Teams - an in-class exercise
Session 15: Project Management: Beyond CPM
Case: Dragonfly: Developing a Proposal for an Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
Session 16: Concurrent Engineering
Session 17: Prototyping
Case: Team New Zealand (A)
Session 18: Project Management Under Risk[CASE WRITE-UP 3]
Case: Crossair: The Introduction of the Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS)
Session 19-20: [PRESENTATION 3a,3b] Concept generation, selection and prototyping plan
Session 21: Managing Highly Uncertain Projects
Session 22: Product Launching / Scalability[CASE WRITE-UP 4]
Session 23: R&D Organization , Global R&D
Case: The Development of Nopane
Session 24: [REPORT - NO PRESENTATION] 1st round of prototyping results
Session 25: R&D Organization , Performance Measurement
Case: Gemstone Inc.: Measuring Research Performance
Session 26: New Product, Service and Technology Development: Overview and wrap-up
Session 27: Final Student Presentations , Working Prototypes
Session 28: Final Student Presentations , Working Prototypes
Course Grading Policy
Evaluations will be based upon the following components weighted as indicated:
Class Participation does not refer to regular class attendance; it goes beyond student simple presence in class. Students are expected to prepare the cases in advance, and participate actively in the class discussion enriching the views of their classmates as well as mine. Please, ensure that comments made do not insult in ANY way fellow classmates and/or the instructor. Although I will not take class attendance students should be aware that missing a session impacts the total grade through less participation. In addition, each session contains key elements to be used for the final project. This will constitute the individual performance part of your grade. In the past students complained ex-post because their grade was shaped by the class participation component; be aware I plan on measuring class participation as I have always done.
Case write-ups should address the questions that accompany the case assignment. In preparing your write up, you should be aware of two major points: (a) be concise and well structured; I am not supposed to guess what you may have implied by your write up; Note also that lengthy write ups DO NOT necessarily get better grades, (b) be punctual; late submissions will be penalized by 20% less on grading. The case write-ups will have to be done ONE by each team, and together with the course project they will determine the team performance part of your grade!
Course Project; see the details in the attached file.
Honor Code
The GeorgiaTech Honor Code applies. Students are responsible for the information contained in the Academic Honesty policies found here .