For Additional Information:
Dr. William Souder, (205) 890-6407
[email protected]
Phillip Gentry, (205) 890-6414
[email protected]
For some, radical innovations may give an edge
Rushing radically innovative new products to market with a minimum of
"polish" may give large U.S. companies a competitive edge over their
Japanese counterparts in emerging or "high uncertainty" markets.
"If you know a product is going to be a radical innovation, then you also
know that it's going to be changed once it gets into the marketplace,"
said Dr. William Souder, eminent scholar in management of technology at
The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "If that's the case, why cross
all the T's and dot all the I's? If you have a radical innovation,
there's no reason to treat it conservatively."
This "radical" recommendation comes from a seven-year study of 104 new
electronics products developed in the U.S. and Japan. Data were gathered
and analyzed by Souder and Dr. X. Michael Song at Michigan State University.
When they compared new product successes and failures at 15 "Fortune 500"
companies and 15 large Japanese firms, they found that the only
noteworthy competitive advantage for the "Fortune 500" firms was in the
area of radical innovation in markets where there was a great deal of
uncertainty about customers and their needs.
Because marketing innovative products in uncertain markets involves a lot
of risk, developing those products should also involve cutting corners
and limiting costs.
"The companies which have been successful have been the ones that rushed
things to market, even though they weren't finished, recognizing that
changes were going to be made," he said.
Companies which devote too much time and too many resources to perfecting
radical products before introducing them risk losing the first-to-market
advantages. In addition, "you may go in the wrong direction. With some of
these products, the only way to see where you need to go is to get the
product into the field and then partner with the customer."
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