The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

11.6. Ten Keys to Implementing DNPD Successfully

From our experience and from the experience of the practitioners we have spoken with, a set of ten key success factors become evident, grouped loosely into three categories: identifying the opportunity, determining the required team organization, and driving execution. Together, these help you avoid the risk of delayed or failed projects and the temptation to overdistribute your core capabilities.

Identify opportunities:

1. Apply DNPD only to projects that are well suited to distributed design

   • Assess the situation against the three dimensions of product, company, and industry characteristics (see Section 3).

   • Be clear on what benefit you are trying to capture and set explicit targets (see Section 2).

2. Identify locations and resources best suited for specific components/activities

   • Proactively scan the market for available talent and centers of excellence.

   • Focus both on the skills needed today and the skills you will need tomorrow to remain competitive.

   • Contrast available resources against those of your competitors. Is there an opportunity to make greater than step-change advances?

3. Retain strategically important aspects of R&D in-house:

   • Categorize components of your process as:

     • Strategic: source of value creation, protect at all costs

     • Important: temporary source of value but distinctiveness expected to erode slowly

     • Nondistinctive: capabilities are widely available, not the source of value creation

   • Evaluate your skills capabilities against each category ...