The process of taking a product or service from conception to market is typically based on a series of milestones and gateways. Often referred to as new product introduction (NPI), this framework covers the extended product lifecycle — from ideation and concept definition, through development and testing, into prototyping and commercialisation, and ending with the product launch.
New product development (NPD) expands the scope of NPI to include upfront product-line or service-platform strategy, business analysis, marketing, commercialisation, maintenance, and aftersales operations.
OEMs build NPI-NPD frameworks to organise how they bring ideas to market — funnelling concepts and plans into lean, scalable delivery operations. That spans concurrent engineering, supplier integration, and regulatory compliance, alongside organisational focuses like ongoing learning, risk and issue mitigation, design for excellence, and the embrace of digital and rapid prototyping.
Established OEMs mature their NPD processes over years — learning from feasibility, prototyping, and pilot builds, and from operational efficiency at scale. NPD has to remain a facilitating process that helps teams get products to market, rather than a bureaucratic one that stands in their way. It's a process of continuous discovery and reinvention, especially as disruptive business models and technologies keep appearing and sustainability imperatives rise in prominence.
This article covers how established OEMs can continue to innovate and reinvent their product-development practice from the inside out — with particular focus on how they can co-innovate across learning networks, become more agile, and compete against new entrants.
Effective product development requires a joined-up combination of creativity, benchmarking, concurrent engineering, consensus-building, design and process verification, pilot validation, and continuous improvement. As a product matures, it has to comply with market-based standards and industry legislation. From a quality-assurance perspective, it also needs to meet minimum standards of safety, effectiveness, and efficiency — supported by approved certification warranties from suppliers. That implies a level of agility to experiment and learn about new technologies and processes, combined with the rigour and data traceability needed to implement consistent, sustainable operations and changes. The required balance evolves as the product matures into manufacturing and sourcing requirements.
Mindset shifts toward rapid learning cycles
In a 2018 article, McKinsey outlined the fundamental trademarks for organisations to progress successfully toward agility:
- North Star embodied across the organisation
- Network of empowered teams
- Rapid decision and learning cycles
- Dynamic people model that ignites passion
- Next-generation enabling technology
Against each of those, established OEMs need to assess their ability to change — and potentially deviate from their standard operating procedures, methods, and tools. Without embedding continuous improvement, enterprise processes and tools can, over time, hinder co-innovation, creativity, learning, and the speed of delivery industrialisation. Effective learning implies rapid decision-making and failing fast. That change can require a real mindset shift, especially as OEMs often develop execution frameworks and governance based on how they operated in the past — with delivery models that may no longer be optimal for the new business models now in play.
Developing products through sprint-based experimentation and a minimum viable product (MVP) approach may contradict — or actively conflict with — most legacy NPD frameworks, which tend to be waterfall-based with rigid stage-gate deliveries. In the same McKinsey article, a series of mindset shifts were outlined for organisations transforming toward rapid decision-making and learning cycles — not least a new approach to managing risk and uncertainty.
To deliver the right outcome, the most senior and experienced individuals must define where we're going, the detailed plans needed to get there, and how to minimise risk along the way.From
We live in a constantly evolving environment and cannot know exactly what the future holds. The best way to minimise risk and succeed is to embrace uncertainty and be the quickest and most productive in trying new things.To
Data traceability and enterprise collaboration play a critical role in supporting that mindset shift — often associated with digital transformation and organisational change.
Fostering effective data stewardship toward competitive advantage and sustainability
Agility is now linked to both competitive advantage and sustainability:
- The ability to do things differently, more effectively and/or efficiently — unlocking new value, such as new business models.
- The ability to holistically embed new sustainability requirements, and to experiment toward unlocking new solutions.
- The ability to effectively implement change, do things differently, and outperform competitors when accelerating time to market and winning new market share.
In seeking organisational agility, mature OEMs can ring-fence pilot projects to experiment "outside the box" they currently operate in — removing legacy constraints and contextual barriers to change. In practice, that can translate into two concurrent strategies:
- Optimising what already exists — becoming more agile without reinventing the wheel.
- Introducing skunk projects or shadow teams to experiment on removing existing barriers, thereby opening the door to new product-service ideas and operating models.
That typically means building new NPD variations, or enhancing the existing framework with agile-based delivery models, governance, and tactical operational tools — getting digital fast without compromising data continuity. Stage-gate events don't need to disappear, but they don't have to remain the bottleneck for decision-making either. Waterfall-driven gateway events often drive the wrong behaviours and outcomes: teams that "use the process" as a collaborative tool rather than proactively shipping outcomes.
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