Management Essay: New Product Process (NPP)

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Case Lego
New Product Process (NPP)
The NPP consists of five stages, which are the discovery, scoping, building the business case, development, testing and validation, and finally, the launch. Discovery encapsulates the discovery and generation of ideas. Scoping assesses the merit of the entire project and more so, the market prospects it offers the firm. Building a business case is all about articulating the feasibility of the idea from technical, marketing, and business perspectives. In the development stage, the management begins translating their plans and ideas into concrete deliverables. Testing and validation concern the endorsement of the entire project from the commodity, processes involved, customer acceptance as well as the economics involved. Finally, there is the launch, which involves the genesis of production and eventual delivery of the products to the marketplace.
When it comes to LEGO, there are viable concerns that the current NPP is not consistent with the initial stages of the firm. In its initial growth stages, LEGO was responding to the market gaps that were present and needed to be fulfilled. This position enabled them to articulate their decisions through the fuzzy gate process where every decision was perceived on whether it aligned with the founded business model. However, the internet has brought significant changes to the extent that they are responding to the external environment rather than their strengths. This position has coerced the articulation of ideas that fail to align with the fuzzy gate system as the firm makes effort to guarantee its survival.
Product Innovation Charter (PIC)
In establishing the company’s PIC, the management at LEGO has to articulate various elements. PIC is a strategic document containing the company’s “goals, objectives, guidelines, and boundaries of the project. It is the ‘who, what, where, when, and why’ of the product development project” (Product Development and Management Association). The first part, which is the company’s ‘who’ relates to the primary customer target for the customer. The company’s business model is founded on fulfilling children’s needs. It does this through the provision of plastic bricks and wooden toys that infants and very young kids can use in their early years. In this case, a new possible product would be to create an online LEGO game to keep its customers in the loop. In this way, the game can be a revenue model through charges over various stages as well as an advertising platform.
In creating a concrete ‘where,’ the company has to establish ...