Headford Ridge believes that the reason nine out of ten new products fail is because of the extreme dogmas that many organisations adopt in NPD. On the one hand there is a school of thought that demands a rigorous research-based approach with highly disciplined decision gates. Because this approach takes too long and is often cumbersome and expensive, other organisations adopt the opposite extreme in NPD, which is to 'throw mud at the wall' in a stream of unstructured and ill-conceived market entries that are doomed to fail.
The trick, we believe, is knowing when to cut corners and being prepared to use innovative approaches to rapid market testing.