New Product Development Strategic Planning

It has been a while since I posted something - summer kicked in, workload and also some time taken out to work out what my topic should be for my Exec MBA dissertation (Management Challenge in Henley Business School speak).  So where are we now?   Topic decided - I will elaborate more in future posts.  It is a topic that is certainly of interest to the product management community and to anybody that has been involved in a merger or acquisition.

In the mean time, a colleague sent this to me today - it certainly resonated and is closely related to my research topic as well:  Strategic Plans for Product Development:

Scenario Planning and the process of innovation

Sometimes there comes that nagging feeling that one just has to churn out some content, but I have been resisting the temptation.  In the mean time I have been trying to work out what exactly I wanted to say.

The questions that I have been working out how to phrase are these:

• How can one take the various processes that are used to drive innovation as a practice and apply the same principles to scenario planning and analysis? 
• Which processes are best and which elements make sense to look at?  
• Models and methodologies abound, as do different schools of thought. The real question is where is a good place to start?

Product Strategy and Portfolio Development need Scenario Planning

I have been thinking about innovation, and how to identify, and then prioritise potential product portfolio development options.  Quite often, the choice of what needs to be done in order to rejuvenate a product portfolio or evolve it into the next generation of offerings is driven by individual personalities, or a limited leadership group, or just simply "group think"  that is driven by financial decision making metrics, or the latest "pet" idea.  How then can the business ensure that all angles have been covered before a decision is made?