The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi, Ikujiro Nonaka
Source: Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, Harvard Business Review, January 1986
Highlighted sections
a holistic or “rugby” approach – where a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball and forth – may better serve today’s competitive requirements.
Under the rugby approach, the product development process emerges from the constant interaction of a hand-picked, multidisciplinary team whose members work together from start to finish.
leading companies show six characteristics in managing their new product development processes:
- Built-in instability
- Self-organizing project teams
- Overlapping development phases
- “Multilearning”
- Subtle control
- Organization transfer of learning
Built-in instability
Top management kicks off the development process by signaling a broad goal or a general strategic direction.
it offers a wide measure of freedom and also establishes extremely challenging goals.
Top management creates an element of tension (…) by giving it freedom to carry out a project of strategic importance (…) and by setting very challenging requirements.
Self-organizing project teams
A project team takes on a self-organizing character as it is driven to a state of “zero information” – where prior knowledge does not exist.
A group possesses a self-organizing capability when it exhibits three conditions: autonomy, self-transcendence and cross-fertilization.
Autonomy
Headquarters’ involvement is limited to providing guidance, money and moral support at the outset.
The Honda City project team had these instructions from management: develop “the kind of car that the youth segment would like to drive”
Self-transcendence
The project teams appear to be absorbed in a never-ending quest for “the limit”.
they begin to establish their own goals and keep on elevating them throughout the development process.
Cross-fertilization
“When all the team members are located in one large room, someone’s information becomes yours, without even trying.”
“If everyone understands the other person’s position (…) Iniatitives emerge as a result.”
Multilearning
Multilevel learning
Learning at the individual level takes place in a number of ways. (…)
devote 15 % of their company time
peer pressure to foster individual learning
Learning at the corporate level is best achieved by establishing a company-wide movement or program.
Multifunctional learning
Experts are encouraged to accumulate experience in areas other than their own.
“I tell my people to be well-versed in two technological fields and in two functional areas, like design and marketing.”
Subtle control
Although project teams are largely on their own, they are not uncontrolled.
“self-control”, “control through peer pressure” and “control by love”, which collectively we call “subtle control”.
Selecting the right people for the project team while monitoring shifts in group dynamics and adding or dropping members when necessary.
Encouraging engineers to go out into the field and listen to what customers and dealers have to say.
“a 1% sucess rate is supported by mistakes made 99% of the time.”
“But if we do make mistakes, we ought to make them creatively.”
Transfer of learning
the transfer took place through “osmosis” – by assigning key individuals to subsequent projects.
Limitations
It requires extraordinary effort on the part of all project members throughout the span of the development process.
Managerial implications
under the new approach nonexperts undertake product development. They are encouraged to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills on the job.
assign a different mission to new product development.
Once the project team is formed, it begins to rise in stature because of its visibility (“we’ve been handpicked”), its legitimate power (“we have unconditional support from the top to create something new”) and its sense of mission (“we’re working to solve a crisis”).
What we need today is constant innovation in a world of constant change.