Page 225 - Free the Idea Monkey

We tend to be fatalistic. As marketers, we seem to go into new
product introductions with the expectation that we are going to fail.
So we deal with new product failures, like the way an overweight
person does with their problem: we periodically make half-hearted
efforts to fix things ... and then give up.

Just like someone who resigns himself or herself to being over-
weight, we conclude that there is nothing we can do to improve our
batting average when it comes to introducing
new products. Instead of throwing up our
hands and saying “woe is me,” we
should be studying our past suc-
cesses to see what we should do
the next time we introduce some-
thing new.

That, of course, takes us full cir-
cle, underscoring as it does the need
to have a replicable process to make
new product development as pain-
less as possible.

Blaming the CEO and others for not being more supportive about
new product development is a waste of both time and mental energy.
Look in the mirror and try to figure out how to make things better.
Addressing the four problems we just talked about is a good start.

210 T A K I N G T H E L E A D