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Take your time! This is just the beginning, post any ideas you have on this wall

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Take your time! This is just the beginning, post any ideas you have on this wall

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The failure rate for new products and services can be as high as 90% in some sectors. Luckily there are some simple ways to increase the odds your product will avoid the same fate. Follow these five steps to optimize your new product's chance of success:
1. Identify An Opportunity And Generate A New Idea To Fill It
If nobody wants or needs your product, it is bound to fail. The starting point for all product development should be to analyze the needs of current and potential customers, their levels of satisfaction with what the competition is offering, their consumption habits and the technical possibilities for improving existing products.

Managers with ample experience and a strategic vision of the company, the competition, the clients and the suppliers are key to this process.

From the celebrity realm, consider Ferrán Adrià, chef and face of the famous El Bulli restaurant. Adrià's method for generating new ideas called for breaking down barriers between different groups in the creative team; defining goals and deadlines; earmarking the money, time and human resources needed; and documenting and analyzing the data obtained.
2. Measure The Opportunity
Once you've gathered information on market trends and your strategic objectives, the next step is to analyze the segment or segments that the product is geared toward and predict future buying habits as much as possible.

Product development tools (such as the Kano model) can help identify needs and group them by established criteria.
3. Develop The Concept
In this phase, the new product idea is refined to best serve the needs of potential clients and stand out from the competition.

How can this be achieved? Get opinions from leading users who may foresee future needs in the market. Also, rely on a team with expertise in various disciplines: design and production people for the technical requirements, marketing experts for reaching customers, and finance and management departments for determining what funds are available.

The three golden aims in this phase are to satisfy the client, stand out from the competition, and show the greatest potential for turning a profit.
4. Testing, Testing....
Now you need to create your prototype and, essentially, assess how well it performs. Does your product:

* Offer a series of features that satisfy customer needs?

* Arrive on the market at an opportune time?

* Perform efficiently with regards to development and manufacturing costs?

* Maintain a healthy equilibrium between the launch cost and the product's capacity to turn a profit?

It's also good to keep in mind that investing in cost reduction early can increase profitability. Cutting product prices can increase market share, which in turn trims distribution costs and discourages the competition.
5. Position And Launch
With the product designed and studied thoroughly, the next step is to decide on its strategic positioning. How do you want potential customers to perceive the product? This stage needs to take into account economic, but also functional and emotional factors.

Traditionally, functional innovations were emphasized in new products. But this has become less sustainable in the current climate, as technology advances allow competitors to respond and new innovations to enter the market quickly. When price and features of rival products are similar, differentiation is largely due to the emotional factor. This is at the heart of the relevance of brand image, communication and the so-called intangible attributes of a service or product.

Take Coca-Cola for example. Its advertising strategy has veered away from the beverage's features, instead seeking to establish an emotional connection. Its latest campaigns, "Open happiness" and "Taste the feeling" are right on-trend.

It's a competitive world out there. Planning carefully and remembering the human factor can pay dividends when launching new products.
Juan Manuel de Toro is a professor of marketing at IESE Business School.
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By Juan Manuel de Toro Shutterstock The failure rate for new products and services can be as high as 90% in some sectors. Luckily there are some simple ways to increase the odds your product will avoid the same fate. Follow these five steps to optimize your new product's chance of success: 1.

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Being a successful entrepreneur is part art, part science. The more "science" you rely on, the better your chances for success. Yes, you need a great idea, but millions of people have great ideas.

Successful entrepreneurs are able to create and run businesses, which means overseeing the accounting, marketing, human resources, IT, legal compliance and other non-creative aspects of running a business.

You might have a winning product idea that everyone loves and wants to buy - but if you make it for ​$1.50​ and sell it for ​$1.60 ​, you're going to fail. Successful entrepreneurs reduce as many risks as possible before they launch. This means writing a detailed business plan that requires you to research every area of your business to spot potential problems and opportunities.

A successful business plan includes detailed information about your product and your competitors. It analyzes your target customer. It includes information on different pricing and distribution strategies. It includes a budget with conservative and aggressive projections.

The more aspects of your business (not product or service) you research in advance, the more likely you'll succeed. The U.S. Small Business Administration provides a nine-point format for creating a business plan for your new idea.

To become a successful entrepreneur, you must be able to trust the people who work for you, and that means hiring people in specific areas who know more than you do. This also means you can't micromanage them.

If you don't have formal training or experience in sales, marketing, accounting, advertising, hiring and firing, social media campaigns and IT, don't try to figure those out yourself or tell others how to do their jobs.

In the beginning, it might be most cost effective to hire contractors. After you've worked with experts for a while, you'll be better able to hire the talent you need as employees.

One of the biggest reasons small businesses fail is poor cash flow. This means the company can make a profit on paper, but it doesn't get its cash from sales in on time to pay its bills. Not managing your accounting properly can also result in your paying too much for goods and services, paying too much interest on loans and credit cards, and overpaying on your taxes.

Bookkeeping is simply recording your numbers. Accounting helps you create a wide variety of documents, such as a balance sheet, cash flow statement, annual budget and profit-and-loss statements. Without solid accounting, you won't be able to maximize your profit margins and minimize your expenses.

Most entrepreneurs need to raise capital, sometimes several times during their initial growth. If you aren't a charmer and can't make great presentations to potential investors or lenders, find someone who can do this for you.

Successful entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes, points out Knew Money. For example, you get a large order from a retailer and they need 10,000 units by May 1. The day before your product is scheduled to arrive, the supplier who is making your product for you tells you he couldn't get them ready. You lose your 10,000-unit order and that retailer will never work with you again.

You made three mistakes: You trusted someone else with your business, you didn't check in with a supplier well before deadline to see if everything was on schedule, and you had no Plan B to fulfill the order.

The good news is, you will never make these three mistakes again. While you don't want to take risks that can bankrupt your company, don't be afraid to take smaller risks that might offer a big payback, but have only a small downside. Each time you fail and learn from your mistake, you eliminate a potential reason for failure in the future with other projects.

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How to Be a Good Entrepreneur. Many people have dreams of starting their own business and being their own boss. Unfortunately, not everyone has the qualities to succeed as an entrepreneur. Before taking a leap of faith and quitting your job to pursue your own venture, consider the qualities that contribute to business ...