Strategies & Analysis
The speed and
market/customer
demanded
accuracy of
communication
that surround
a serivice
or product
development
component
requires vastly
improved
market demand
assessment
accuracies to be
input with much
greater speed.
by Phil Phillips, PhD
Contributing Editor
phillips@chemarkconsulting.net
There is an old saying from Rudyard Kipling, in his Barrack-room ballads, 1892: “Oh, East is East, and West
is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Its
meaning is simply, two things which are so
different as to have no opportunity to unite.
Kipling was lamenting the gulf of understanding between the British and the inhabitants of
the Indian subcontinent.
In our current global communication condition, while the worlds’ physical platelets
have basically stayed the same over the past
500 years, the cultural and communications
dynamics have moved at warp speed in the
past 75 years and are now not just bumping into each other, they are in fact overlaid
onto each other. This fact is forcing the business of doing business into an exponentially
more complicated and equally demanding
business orbit.
The speed and market/customer demanded
accuracy of communication that surround a
service or product development component,
therefore, requires vastly improved market demand assessment accuracies to be input with
much greater speed.
In other words, the market/customer bases
we’ve served in the paints, coatings, adhesives,
and sealants industries in the past have moved
into another orbit of tolerance and we in these
industries must adapt or fall out of favor, thus
being unable to fulfill our strategies.
Marketing & R&D
To succeed in our industries today a business
must be driven by Marketing, which takes the
lead from beginning to the end of a product/
service development process. Assuming the
Marketing function is strongly creative and
narrowly focused on targeted strategic mar-kets/customers, it must first accurately identify
market needs, including but not limited to,
product performance in target markets’ use
environment; balance in value in price/cost ratios; and other elements that could influence
product/service.
This “package” of understanding, developed by Marketing, is then brought to the
internal “team” for developmental planning.
The key players on this team are . . . Research
& Development; Product/Service Manager;
Manufacturing and Purchasing. Once the team
signs off on the development plan, R&D will
then produce initial products that are first tested internally to the extent of the company’s’
internal capabilities.
Once this is completed and the product fits
the identified structural specifications, R&D
will identify an outside testing facility recognized by the target market as an authority, for
the first Beta Test.
Never the Twain Should Meet!
