It's impossible to take a new product invention from utter unknown to the number-one seller in less than five years—right? Wrong. Johnson & Johnson division McNeil Nutritionals pulled it off with Splenda, the trademarked name for a food sweetener called sucralose.
How? McNeil's marketers took steps to ensure a well-executed launch, including initially making Splenda available only to diabetics—who then rapidly spread the word about the new product's benefits.
As you know, creating products is risky business: Companies invest hugely in their R&D teams, yet most new offerings fail, with the consequence of serious financial loss. R&D needs marketing to help reduce risk in new product development; marketing needs R&D to be part of the team that creates sources of future cash flow.
To create value for your company, marketing brings important expertise, perspective, and processes to make R&D more likely to succeed.
The first step is to know the typical makeup of scientists or engineers from R&D is very different from yours; and they are likely to have some preconceived ideas of what you are like. Consider the stereotypes about R&D and Marketing:
| R&D | Marketing |
| Tech-centric | Big picture |
| Complex solutions | Go to market fast |
| Scientist | Artisan |
| Detail-oriented | Detail-ignorant |
| Features focus | Benefits focus |
| Problem-oriented | Scattered |
| Inventions without a market | Opinions without justification |
| No concern for price, costs, or profit | Concerned only about sales volume and market share |
| Customer? What's that? | Scientific rigor? What's that? |
| Poor communicators | Expensive advertisers |
| Ivory-tower dwellers | Does a job that anyone can do |
These differences often create obstacles—but, as you join new product development teams, be optimistic that the differences between these two functions can actually serve as sources of strength, with each team bringing unique perspectives to bear on the company's efforts to succeed.
Keeping in mind the typical R&D mindset, consider using these six strategies to work together effectively:1
1. Identify products that offer unique value to consumers
Consumers perceive new offerings as valuable when those products or services have unique features, meet consumers' needs better than alternative offerings do, demonstrate good quality, reduce consumers' costs, and seem novel.
Help R&D select projects for development that meet such criteria by providing comparative analyses of competing products and sharing your knowledge of consumers' needs and costs. Teach your colleagues from R&D about the market power of needs-based segmentation: the idea that customers should be segmented on the basis of their needs.
Simply put, customers in different benefit segments have different needs. Allen Weiss has a terrific primer on the subject.
2. Lead a customer-focused development process
Sharing your understanding of consumers' needs and preferences with your colleagues in R&D can encourage them to keep customers in mind while developing new products and services. Ongoing customer contact through market research is the crucial means by which you generate valuable knowledge of the product and services.
But to gather and present market-research data that will be meaningful and useful to R&D, you must demonstrate the scientific rigor and familiarity with the language of research that R&D experts appreciate. For example, establish a sound statistical foundation for your research, gathering input on methodology if necessary from technical staff on topics such as statistical significance and research design. Pay close attention to your sampling: Do respondents to a survey represent an adequate cross-section of the consumer population you're interested in? Should you augment surveys with focus groups or one-on-one interviews? Could interviews with existing customers shed additional light on potential new customers' needs and interests?
Consider conducting field research—observing consumers as they shop for and use products in your target market. And don't forget to gather input from expert consumers in the product category at hand—chefs, for example, if your company is developing cookware, or physicians if you're working on a new medical device. Insights from these experts can spark additional ideas for new products and services. Talking with staff members from other units in your company—sales, customer service, operations, and so forth—and consulting with trade-show participants can yield further valuable information about consumers' needs.
