With a typical 12 to 1 failure to success rate, leading companies have concluded that current methods of research are not all that helpful and that a high failure rate is simply a cost of business that cannot be overcome. Because the future cannot be predicted, most firms have concluded - with seemingly infallible logic, that the ultimate success or failure of a product cannot be accurately predicted. This is a common, but unwarranted conclusion. Likewise, a product can be shaped and created to meet the criteria that customers are going to use to judge its future value, thereby enabling a firm to predict a product's relative success or failure. Consider the following.
Customers use certain criteria to judge the value of a product.
A product's ability to meet these criteria reflects its relative value. Newly released products are often declared failures because of their inability to meet the criteria that define value in the eyes of the customer. It is at this point that companies often find out what criteria customers are using to judge the value of their products. Indeed, this challenge is at the heart of the dilemma facing organizations attempting to successfully manage product innovation. Incredibly, these criteria can be uncovered when needed and used to define successful, even breakthrough products.