How can you overcome the risks of product R&D in a dynamic market?

Knowing your market needs is one of the important part for new R&D products. The main objective for R&D is the develop something to solve some problem. You need to work with your sales and marketing team to understand what customer is complaining on your existing product/the product of your competitors. Then you analyze and create an improvement on top of that. Now you have help the customer to solve their problem based on the R&D that you have done.

At the core of any successful product is a deep understanding of the customer. It's not just about creating something new, but about solving real problems and fulfilling genuine needs. Traditional methods like surveys and interviews are great, but observing customers in their natural environment can reveal hidden pain points and needs they might not even be aware of themselves.

Understand the customer needs, it’s pain and start working. Early you understand, you can manage your work more systematically to evolve as a solution provider in a best way. Market is competitive and moving fast. Understand the sense of urgency and revert in time.

Directly speak with end users always provide their true needs that allow right design input be defined with lower risk. Incorporate product feature that can improve daily life of end users often can tackle dynamic market.

Dynamic market is characterised by rapid change in perception and needs. To overcome the risk, product R&D experts must understand the dynamism in the market, as well as the trends. With this, they can predict where the market is going and then design accordingly. Bottom line is, to overcome, 1. The product must be designed with the future in mind. Else, the product would be half way obsolete even before it has passed through the rigorous R&D process to the market. Design in such that you have the liberty to flexibly adjust in future to adapt to changes in perspective and market needs. 2. Find a balance between product adaptability and feasibility in the market you serve 3. Continuous feedback from customers wins it all.

To counter the risk of losing due to dynamic market. Following is necessary - - continuously monitoring the product upgrade requirements - creating product development portfolio for next 5 -10 years - follow the out of the box ideas what can replace your product in market

Crear algo inédito implica una disyuntiva interesante: los clientes a menudo expresan deseos, no necesidades concretas. Como decía Henry Ford, si hubiese preguntado a sus clientes, habrían pedido caballos más rápidos, no coches. Esto subraya la importancia de anticipar y liderar el mercado, enfocándose en tendencias emergentes en lugar de necesidades inmediatas. Se trata de vislumbrar y satisfacer demandas futuras, guiando a los consumidores hacia lo que necesitarán, más allá de lo que creen querer.

The best way to mitigate the risks when developing a new product or working in the R&D&I area, will require to know some special elements, most of the time, just to know your customers will not be enough. More than to know your customers, you need to know for what culture you are developing for. You need to know the history of your target public, otherwise even having a great product, you might miss the target, because the "culture eats the strategy in the breakfast". So, if you want to be successful in your new product, pay attention to the culture of your customers and mainly in the culture of your own company. Misalignment of expectations around culture can put years of developments into the garbage.

Understanding your customers is the crucial first step in product development. I often use surveys, analysis, personas, and user journeys to gather data and identify the product's value. Validating assumptions and continuous customer feedback integration are key to creating a successful and satisfying product.

In my experience, adopting agile methods goes beyond just following a set of procedures; it requires a profound shift in organizational culture. At the core, agile is about fostering a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. Teams must be empowered to make decisions, experiment, and iterate, often learning more from failures than successes.

Adopting agile methods constitutes the second crucial step in mitigating the risks associated with product R&D. Agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, and Lean, provide a framework for delivering value to customers through short, iterative cycles. These methods empower you to prioritize critical features, continually test and enhance your product based on feedback, and promptly adapt to shifting market dynamics and customer demands. Embracing agile practices substantially reduces the risks associated with inefficiency, delays, and project failures, while simultaneously enhancing the speed, quality, and adaptability of your product R&D efforts.

This is indeed very true. Building a cross functional team is one of the most important part. When you do R&D, your final goal is to launch your product and sell in the market. The expertise in R&D is solely focusing on technical skills. You must build a strong team whereby you need to include sales and marketing team to position your NPI products, your QA team to set the new or existing standards, your finance team to deal with all the payment for your R&D expenses and your upper management to make any big decisions.

The cross- functional team is the core of any R&D. Ideas with proper market study and sales analysis makes a product successful. All core domains with relevant skills coordinate for success of the product with proper communication and sharing information.

In my experience, the magic of cross-functional teams lies not just in having diverse skill sets but in blending different thought processes, which often leads to unconventional solutions.

specific the requirements and relevant information and start with feasibility test to get the upper and lower range/spec., meaning that you can know the scopes, it with the available resources for budget and time.

In my experience, when teams deeply embed design thinking, they move beyond just creating products to crafting experiences that resonate with users on emotional and functional levels. This is because design thinking pushes teams to not just listen, but to genuinely understand and feel the pain points and aspirations of their audience.

Apply design thinking The fourth step to overcoming the risks of product research and development is to adopt design thinking, an innovation and problem-solving approach that focuses on people and continues to be iterative. Design thinking, which consists of five phases: empathize, define, generate ideas, simulate and test, can help you understand your customers and their challenges, generate and evaluate ideas, and create and refine prototypes that meet customer needs and expectations. By adopting design thinking, you can encourage a culture of compassion, creativity, and experimentation in your product research and development.

In my experience, the immediate visual and functional feedback these tools provide is akin to getting a reality check: it helps in spotting potential roadblocks or misalignments with user needs before they become costly mistakes.

En nuestro campo, la impresión 3D es una revolución, permitiéndonos materializar diseños en modelos físicos, a veces en tamaño real y funcionales. Este avance agiliza la validación antes de mecanizar o fabricar moldes, transformando significativamente el proceso de desarrollo y producción, e impulsando la innovación al permitir pruebas rápidas y ajustes precisos en las etapas tempranas del diseño. La impresión 3D no es solo una herramienta, es un cambio de juego en la creación de prototipos.

In my experience, you always learn from failures. Failures reveal weaknesses in R&D processes. It often leads to creative problem-solving. When something doesn't work as expected, it encourages teams to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions. Failure generates valuable knowledge that can be shared within the organization.

cuando comienzas una investigación o desarrollo de cualquier cosa, nunca va a funcionar a la primera. El inicio de todo es el error y a partir de ahí ir mejorando. Los prototipos son la base empírica de que el proyecto es posible.

R&D teams learn to be adaptable and flexible in the face of setbacks. Learning from your own failures can give your organization a competitive advantage. It allows you to iterate and improve products or services more rapidly than competitors who may be afraid of failure.

En el desarrollo de productos, es común encariñarse con ellos. Sin embargo, es crucial recordar que forman parte de un modelo de negocio que puede no reflejar nuestra percepción de uso. Estos productos están destinados a una diversidad de usuarios, con necesidades y perspectivas que pueden diferir significativamente de las nuestras, lo que requiere una visión amplia y adaptable en su creación y comercialización.

The most significant risk in software R&D is quality and, therefore, not allocating enough resources to quality insurance. You can have the best-positioned product, but if it does not work, it will not sell. Agile methodology is acceptable if QA can sustain the “short” development cycles.