"X" Marks the Spot

By Ken Westray, PE, NPDP

With the summer movie releases hitting the screens, there is great entertainment in the search for ancient treasure. Just think of the latest Indiana Jones film. But, there is a real-life treasure hunt going on right now and it involves the search for producers of intellectual capital. In other words, who is going to be developing new products at your company when today's baby boomers retire?
 
Demographic Backdrop
 
Almost anyone who has internet access or reads business periodicals is aware of the coming wave of boomer retirements. This is the generation born between 1946 and 1964.  According to an interesting article on this subject in a JB Hunt Executive newsletter from April 2008, this demographic group has around 75 million workers who will soon retire.
 
Waiting in the wings is Generation X. They include people born between 1965 and 1984.  The newsletter suggested that there were only 45 million available workers in this group. Clearly, there will be many more positions than there are people to fill them.  In short, it is reasonable to conclude that there will be a leadership shortage. This applies in developed Western economies as well as China and India.
 
Connection to New Product Development
 
Leadership applies not only to C level executives but also new product developers.  The latter is a source of real treasure, and it needs to be carefully mined.  The real question is "How?"
 
The answer consists of several elements.  They elements include developing and following Best Practices, leveraging Experience, and augmenting Knowledge.
 
The subject of Best Practices in New Product Development merits a future column of its own. As a guide, let's take this summary from National Science Foundation Grant 9529921. It concluded that "the success of the (new) product depends on selecting the right projects, involving the customer throughout the process, and handing off the project in a smooth fashion to marketing and manufacturing. The timeliness and cost effectiveness of the NPD process depends on how human resources are managed in a functional and cross-functional manner. Improvement in process cycle time occurs through intelligent bottleneck management of the project stream." 
 
Experience vs. Knowledge
 
Let's define "experience" as the acquisition of skills and abilities that have proven effective in a given industry.  In most cases, experience is industry specific. Think of it as a silo where the height of the silo would depend on the number of years and different types of roles someone has had in an industry. 
 
By contrast, "knowledge" is a collection of objective skills. Knowledge can come in many forms ranging from the basics (reading, writing, etc.) to MBA knowledge (financial, operational research, strategy, etc.) to business skill knowledge (selling skills, negotiation, and leadership management). To this knowledge list should be now added new product development. Some business knowledge experts estimate it is doubling every 5 years. The need for constant learning is more apparent than ever before.  
 
Advancing the Experience Silo
 
Quantifiable skills propel that learning.
 
As I see it, the path forward consists of several approaches:

1. Develop product development skills through certification programs.  The New Product Development Professional (NPDP) Certification program administered by the Product Development Management Association is an excellent start.
2. Focus on "hard" skills.  A few years ago, it was popular for companies to send managers to "ropes courses." While these experiences were often valuable in team building efforts, they really imparted little in the way of solid skills. A course in statistics will deliver knowledge long after the "ropes course" experience is a dim, distant memory.
3. Be selective in your business reading. Everyone is busy nowadays and reading / thinking time is at a premium. Focus on material where data is presented.  This is especially true of business books. You would be surprised at the number of business best sellers that rely on subjective claims with no supporting data.

To bring the discussion full circle, I'll leave you with an excerpt from a recently received job announcement from a leading medical device company.  It list the following position requirements:

Min. 5 years experience leading the development of new products in the medical device or drug industry.  Strong background in packaging engineering preferred.

Min. BA/BS degree in engineering or science (MS preferred), MBA highly preferred.
PDMA certified New Product Development Professional (NPDP), PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP) preferred.
Experience in lean and value innovation methodologies preferred.

Welcome to the world of life-long learning!