As it does at Corning, this strategy guides the business’s product development
efforts and helps to steer resource allocation and project selection. A comprehensive product innovation strategy must include, among other elements, clearly defined objectives and defined strategic areas of focus; it must have a widely understood role in broader business goal. Further, the innovation strategy implemented in best-performing businesses is more than just a list of this year’s development projects; it has a much longer- term commitment. Companies with effective product innovation programs rely on a number of tools to implement them, including strategic buckets for resource allocation and strategic product roadmaps. Across the board, top-performing businesses build these elements into their product innovation strategy; poorly performing businesses do not. For example, on average, only 27.6% of businesses develop a product roadmap, but best performers are about twice as likely to use road- maps as poor performers (Figure 1). There is an even greater discrepancy in the use of strategic buckets, a resource allocation strategy that ensures availability of resources for critical products, with 41.4% of top performers and only 15.4% of poor performers using strategic buckets.
The message for senior management is that if your business lacks a product innovation strategy that includes these key elements, this deficiency is likely hurting your business’s performance. The time is ripe to develop and install such a strategy, an effort that should be led by the business’s leadership team. Developing a product innovation strategy requires sustained, high-level effort; the work can be facilitated and guided by the use of a framework. The strategy development framework we developed based on observations from our study of best- performing businesses can be a helpful tool (Figure 2). This guide serves as a useful starting point to develop your own product innovation strategy.