E-Marketing Professionals

Factor 2: A Clear and Well-Communicated New Product Strategy for the Business. Do you have a clearly articulated new product strategy for your business? If so, you're in the minority. But businesses that boast such a strategy do better, according to the benchmarking results. Having a new product strategy for the business means:

• There are clear goals or objectives for the business's total new product effort; for example, what percentage of sales or profits new products will contribute to the business.

• There are clearly denned arenas—specified areas of strategic focus, such as products, markets, or technologies—to give direction to the business's total new product effort.

• Specified resources are allocated or deployed against each arena (for example, how much will you spend on product development in market A versus market B; or on technology platform X versus Y?).

• A strategy for how to attack or win in each arena is defined (for example, whether you'll be a niche player, or low-cost provider, or value-added competitor; whether you'll be the innovator or fast follower, and so on).

• The strategy has a long-term thrust and focus, including some long-term projects and platform initiatives (as opposed to a short-term plan and a portfolio of quick hits and incremental projects).

• And finally, the role of new products in achieving the business's goals and the new product strategy for the business are clearly communicated to all who need to know

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