29.03.2024

Accelerated Development – Accelerate Your Business

Accelerated New Business Development is an approach to overcoming the barriers of the traditional New Product Development process. What is the key differentiator?

Once a project is commissioned, it moves without disruption into commercialization.

Each stage generally requires a gate or management approval to proceed from one to the next. At any gate, the project could be killed, shelved or delayed based on economics, risk, conflicting objectives, or resource availability. It is usually some combination of these.

Most companies have some variation of a generic Stage Gate New Product Development Process:

  • Concept geneneration
  • Market validation
  • Business case development
  • Technology development and prototpying
  • Product launch

Although the Stage Gate process has its benefits and was widely accepted as the norm, it also has some major drawbacks:

  • Although advertised as more efficient, it generally takes longer than one would expect, often because of delays resulting from management scheduling for the “gates” sessions
  • Risk assessments may utilize less than adequate market intelligence
  • Resources may not be available when needed
  • Lack of alignment across functions contributing to the gate deliverables or the “silo” effect
  • Weak business case assessments mean weak budgeting and funding
  • Enabling risk aversion (Don’t do anything you are uncomfortable with, despite the facts)

accelerated development

Accelerated Development

Accelerated New Business Development is an approach to overcome these barriers, and is very different from the traditional New Product Development process in many ways. The key differentiator is that once a project is commissioned, it moves without disruption into commercialization.

This means

  • Project scope and a set time for completion. The plan is built around these parameters
  • A streamlined process for moving through the steps, with “quality” designed in from the start, is agreed upon across functional leadership and their teams
  • A dedicated project leader and team skilled to execute the total project burden
  • An agreed upon budget necessary to effectively and successfully complete the work

Accelerated Development begins when the leadership has determined that they want to proceed to commercialize a new business opportunity.

Prerequisites include

  • An opportunity that is core to their strategic business objectives
  • An externally validated market opportunity
  • A business case that describes the risk reward quantitatively
  • Access to sufficient resources (money and people) to carry the project to completion
  • The internal capability for commercialization exists and potential barriers are manageable
The Benefits of Accelerated Development

Accelerated Development requires an initial business case to be considered early in the process, which then becomes the basis for commitment. The key is quantifying the market opportunity. This approach has four benefits.

Accelerated Development requires that all elements of the business be designed in from the project beginning. These elements include the market you intend to attack; your go-to-market approach; design-in quality in all aspects; and a high level strategic positioning. To effectively address business design, a full and completed market assessment is required. This assessment includes

  • An extensive and “projective” market analysis
  • A fact-based understanding of customer needs and desired outcomes. What would cause them to change what they are doing today?
  • A clear understanding of how your value proposition will be perceived, and how much the market will pay for it
  • An initial understanding of channel options
  • An early assessment of reward and risk factors and potential

Need help accelerating your business development? Just ask us to

  • Provide business and process support from beginning to end, as needed
  • Provide qualitative market learnings using our Rapid Value Assessment™ process
  • Provide quantitative market intelligence and analysis using our Breakthrough Toolkit™
  • Build your business plan
  • Craft your go-to-market strategy and implement it

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