Stage-Gate Process of New Product Development

Stage-Gate refers to the process of value-creating business as well as risk model designed to profitably and rapidly transform the organization's noble new concepts into gaining new products. When incorporated into the organization, it develops a culture of products innovation brilliance- accountability, product leadership, customer and market focus, robust solutions, high-performance team quality and speed (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2001). The Stage-Gate model operates on the perception that the innovation of product starts with concepts and finishes once the product is launched effectively in the market. It all entails more of benchmarking research that premised on the Stage - Gate model and is wider and a lot of cross-functional review of the product development procedure. The Stage-Gate model often assumes the chaotic and complicated process of idea, transforming from inception to launch, then split it down into minor stages, that facilitating site for project activities. At its absolute, Stage-Gate includes Pre-development Activities, Development Activities, and Commercialization Activities into a single comprehensive, robust process (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2002).

Project Charter: It refers to the document, given by the sponsor or the initiator of the project that formally permits the project existence, and offers a manager of the project with the power to apply organizational resources to the project activities. The project character offers initial outline and responsibility, outlining the objective of the contract book, recognizes the key stakeholders as well as defining the authority of the project manager. Project Charter together with and contact books are considered as the reference of authority for the forthcoming of the project (Hayes, 2000, March).

(1)

Telephone, Inc. has opted for a wrong choice by deciding to produce a second-tier level of quality. Take this into consideration, if a teenager buys a telephone and uses it, he or she will be discontented with the phone since the text messaging functionality id of the second tier of quality, which was not his expectation. Therefore, the phone performance will be a dissatisfying one for the teenager. Consequently, the teenager will inform his peers and friends about the phone quality of telephone stating that they are of second tire quality. The teenagers will cease from buying Talkaphone product of second tire quality. On the other hand, the senior citizens will be satisfied with the second tire products since they are not interested in the expensive products, therefore this quality of the product will be most preferred to this kind of generation (Mu & Lee, 2005).

(2)

Marks contend that: with modern information technologies, collocation of team members on this project is no longer important, and should not even be considered. Generally, it relies on upon the sort of work to be done, and also the workforce demographic.

Pros: Collocation manages particular points of interest like in a creative or collaborative environment. For instance, a group of fashion designers should be physically in close proximity to effectively work together. If projects (like fashion design) needs attention to details, it is important for collocation. In a working environment which values collaboration, applying modern information technology like video conferencing may lead to social loafing. The term social loafing' signifies to the state whereby the contribution of the people to collective performance goal reduces the size of the group members expands (Wang & Lo, 2002).

Con: In the event that there is no collocation of teams, various problems will emerge in relation to the team members that reside in different parts of the world. Firstly, the expenses of purchasing the new technology increase the cost of the project. There are costs associated with the multiple communication technologies like video-conferencing and instant messaging. Then, if the colleagues have the location with different time zones it is hard to arrange a virtual meeting where all members are online (Wang & Lo, 2002).

Particularly in the modern times, where to telecommute approaches are broadly applied, collocation may not be significant. Essentially, in companies like Yahoo, whose CEO as of late put an end to telecommuting policies, demographics might be an issue. Statistics reviews like performance by ORC research shows that the millennial era tire of the US population chooses to work in circumstances that permit flexibility like that offered to telecommute policies. It is still to be seen if there will be an organization reaction at Yahoo coming from the withdrawal of the strategy. Hence, the effect of collocation ought to be weighed against the objectives and estimations of the values of the organization of the group or organization, before the choice to depend entirely on technology is made (Wang & Lo, 2002).

(3)

Adopters are the group of customers that NTP, Inc needs to target. The panel to access the internet to get the recipe, as well as nutrition information that is fitted in the new refrigerator, would suit them. The new refrigerator is an innovation; therefore, it has features that have never been including in the earlier refrigerators. Decisively, in the innovation adoption lifecycle, the NTP, Inc suitable targeted group is the early adopters (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2001).

Also, innovators are considered to be the first people to adopt the innovation. Innovators are risk takers, youngest in terms of age, they also have lucrative financial liquidity, the highest social class, social, as well as having the closest contact with scientific foundation and interactions with other innovators. Risk lenience has them adopting technologies that may ultimately fail. The financial resources aid in absorbing these failures (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2001).

References

Cooper, R. G., & Kleinschmidt, E. J. (2001). Stage-gate process for new product success. innovation Management U, 3, 2001.

Cooper, R. G., Edgett, S. J., & Kleinschmidt, E. J. (2002). Optimizing the stage-gate process: What best-practice companies doII. Research-Technology Management, 45(6), 43-49.

Hayes, D. S. (2000, March). Evaluation and application of a project charter template to improve the project planning process. Project Management Institute.

Mu, Q., & Lee, K. (2005). Knowledge diffusion, market segmentation, and technological catch-up: The case of the telecommunication industry in China. Research Policy, 34(6), 759-783.

Wang, Y., & Lo, H. P. (2002). Service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavior intentions: Evidence from China's telecommunication industry. info, 4(6), 50-60.