E-Marketing Professionals

Factor 3 : Adequate Resources for New Products. There is no free lunch in the new products war! Some companies in our studies had cut product development efforts—R&D and marketing money and staff—to the bone in an attempt to produce short-term profits. The longer-term effects are, however, very negative. Top performers commit the needed resources; specifically:

• In top-performing businesses, senior management has devoted the necessary resources—people and money, marketing and technical—to achieve the business's new product objectives. By contrast, average and poorer performers tend to be very short on resources and dedicated players. Marketing resources devoted to new products is a particular area of weakness.

• R&D budgets are adequate—judged to be sufficient in light of the business's new product objectives.

• Finally, the necessary people are in place and have their time freed up for new products. The latter is an important point: often people are designated to be on product development teams, but they are not dedicated—they have their "real jobs" too (for example, marketing and operations people). And time was rarely freed up to enable these people to participate in new product projects as fully as they should have. The resources are there in theory, but not in practice

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