You Are a Consultant Offering Advice to a Large Manufacturing

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The Answer is In many ways, innovation is the most important source of competitive advantage. This is because innovation can result in new products that better satisfy customer needs, can improve the quality (attributes) of existing products, or can reduce the costs of making products that customers want. The ability to innovate new products or processes gives a company a major competitive advantage that allows it to: (1) differentiate its products and charge a premium price, and/or (2) lower its cost structure below that of its rivals. However, the failure rate of new-product introductions is high because of factors such as uncertainty, poor commercialization, poor positioning strategy, slow cycle time, and technological shortsightedness.

To achieve superior innovation, a company must build skills in basic and applied research; design good processes for managing development projects; and achieve close integration between the different functions of the company, primarily through the adoption of cross-functional product development teams and partly parallel development processes.

You Are a Consultant Offering Advice to a Large Manufacturing

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