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Within the new product development (NPD) environment, what detrimental connotations are associated with the contributors from the Marketing department? This post explores several detrimental connotations about Marketing from an R&D perspective within an NPD context.

Generalizations from my time at HP

During my time at Hewlett-Packard, engineers contributing to new product development typically were assigned to the Research and Development (R&D) group while many of the internal subject matter experts reported to either the on-site Marketing department or the global Sales organization.

Although the development efforts were cross-functional, the ‘D’ in the R&D sometimes had the connotation that a disproportionate amount of the value was contributed by the R&D team.

It seemed that at any given time, contributors from R&D focused on one project related to new product development (NPD). In the most successful groups, it seemed that interruptions were minimized.

Often, contributors from Marketing had multiple product responsibilities that included several current products plus one or two new products. Because of the need to multitask, the work environment seemed to embrace interruptions.

From these characterizations, can you determine who is better equipped to provide better leadership in NPD?

Product Management and Product Marketing Management

As defined by the Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM), the summaries for two NPD leadership roles are:

• Product Management: from idea to launch – the inbound skills. Often this role is filled by someone with R&D or Marketing expertise.
• Product Marketing Management: from launch to withdrawal – the outbound skills. Often candidates for this role have marketing or sales experience.

Product Marketing for current products

One of the primary goals associated with traditional product marketing is to promote current products. This collection of products includes recently released products, older products, and products at the end of their life cycle.

A primary activity of many marketers is to nurture interest in current products and transfer qualified leads to the sales organization. Commonly, Marketers may explore technique in an attempt to attract the attention of potential customers with a traditional advertisement or they may influence the production of content that a potential customers may find in blogs, videos, white papers, and other forms of social media.

The skills required to promote and sell current products have a small overlap with the skills required to develop new products. This is shown below in the style popularized by Jessica Hagy at Indexed.

Why most Marketing Departments do not contribute more value to NPD

Marketing Department contributions to development efforts

Traditional Marketing Departments are likely to spend most of their time promoting products that have been released to manufacturing. When they have responsibilities for a development effort, they may transmit suggestions to the NPD team. In addition, they may be asked to:

• Contribute as a Subject Matter Expert
• Evaluate prototypes
• Contribute to launch events such as creating and delivering new product training
• Contribute to the financial analysis
• Drive additional administrative items such as pricing and licensing issues
• Facilitate meetings with external contributors

Becoming a more valuable NPD contributor

Most engineers prefer expertise more than hierarchy. Engineers are not likely to be impressed by your job title but they are anxious to determine your level of NPD mastery. The list in the previous section can provide guidance as you begin to assess the diversity of your skills.

To minimize detrimental connotations, Marketing representatives should strive for more effective collaboration with R&D representatives. Distractions and re-work should be minimized. Experimentation and validation should be facilitated. Issues related to Product Requirements typically provide opportunities for improvement.

NPD contributors are likely to appreciate individuals that can recognize and evolve nonaligned procedures to produce systemic results. Mastering the knowledge required for certifications such as PDMA’s NPDP or AIPMMs Product Manager and Agile Product Manager can increase your credibility.

Other ideas to improve synergy in NPD teams will be presented in Part 10 of this series.

Other posts in this 10-part Detrimental Connotations in NPD series

Quick Fix, 1/10
Product Requirements, 2/10
Subject Matter Experts, 3/10
Design, 4/10
Designers and Developers, 5/10
Launch, 7/10
Best Practice, 8/10
I know it when I see it, 9/10
Collaboration, 10/10