Business Screens - making it tougher

Some people have no difficulty at all in dreaming up new business opportunities; the ideas just seem to flow from them. So, it goes without saying than any company staffed with one or two creative types will have an ample number of new product development ideas.

The danger these companies face is that they risk working on too many product development opportunities at the same time. Despite the flood of new ideas, they achieve little success because their efforts are diluted across too many ideas. These creative individuals need the operational discipline of the commercialising technology process and a business screen against which all projects are rated, prioritised, endorsed or stopped.

The business screen is a tool that describes certain ‘must have’ and ‘desirable’ product development characteristics and is called into play when the project is ready to move from one stage in the Commercialising Technology process into the next. These are also the occasions when the management team are typically asked to support a higher level of resource commitment and hence the need for a tool against which progress and achievement can be measured. The severity of the business screen used to rate the product developments varies along the Commercialising Technology process.

Business screens will be different across industries, products and markets but typically the ‘must have’ criteria will include questions addressing:

• Strategic alignment: Is there a good fit with our current activities?
• Product performance: Why will customers choose to buy it?
• Market attractiveness: Can the market accommodate this product development?
• Technical feasibility: Can we produce it on our existing plant?
• Risk: Are the risks acceptable for the return it generates? 
• Return: What price can we sell at?
• Regulatory: Does it comply with international regulations?

 The business screen used to assess projects passing from Concept Ideation into Feasibility Analysis is more qualitative than the screen used to allow projects to pass into Product Development. The reason for this is that early stage concept descriptions are based mainly on readily available information and hypothesis.

By the time the concept is ready to enter the Product Development stage of the Commercialising Technology process significantly more quantitative data will have been collected and validated in the marketplace.

In summary, business screens get tougher to pass because of the need to identify weaker concepts and halt their progression in order to save scarce resources to devote to more valuable opportunities.

Each business screen review in the Commercialising Technology process leads to a decision to pass, recycle or halt product development.