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The Stage-Gate® Process: From Idea to Profit

  
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A new product starts out with an idea that someone believes will generate big profits which actually happens in many instances, too. In many others, however, new products result in costly failures.

    Stage-Gate Process: From Idea to Profit
What is Stage-Gate®?
The goal of Stage-Gate® is to improve the chances that the new product becomes a success. It does so by providing a roadmap with well-defined stages and decision gates which guide project teams and management on their risky journey from idea to a profitable product. The roadmap helps the company not to omit critical activities and to build scientifically proven best practices into every single development project.


Some companies make far more money than others
The best-performing companies (top 25%) have a Stage-Gate® process that generates a profit in almost 80% of their new products. The poorest 25% have a success rate as low as 40%. The average is 56%. These differences translate into many millions on the bottom line. So if your company is not already among the best, you have great potential for notably increasing profits.

Causes of profit or loss are known
International innovation guru Robert G. Cooper (and the father of Stage-Gate®) has conducted the most comprehensive research in the world into the causes of success or failure, the speed of and the gains/losses generated by new products. His research enables us to explain success and profit. The best-performing companies (top 25%) use specific methods or best practices in their development process to a far greater extent.

Systemise your profit-generation using the authentic Stage-Gate® Process
Our Stage-Gate® Guide was developed together with Dr Cooper. The Stage-Gate® Guide is based directly on his research and has been tested and fine-tuned through our efforts involving a large number of companies all over the world. This enables us to offer a user-friendly process that conveniently incorporates the essential best practices into your development process.


Typical Stage-Gate® process for large-scale projects

stage-gate process

Stages: Stage-Gate® divides the process into specific stages.
  After each stage, specifically agreed results (e.g. a prototype, a market survey, or a testing plan) are delivered.
  All stages cut across the organisation, i.e. they include development within product design, marketing and manufacturing.
  The first stages are the least expensive. Although the subsequent stages are increasingly costly, they provide an increasingly sounder basis on which to assess whether it makes sense to continue or stop the project.

Gates: go/kill decisions
Gates are meetings where a designated management group (the gatekeepers) decide whether a project should continue or stop. The project manager and his/her team present the results of the stage just completed. The gatekeepers assess the results on the basis of the criteria agreed which must clarify:
  whether the work has been performed, the results agreed are present, and the quality of the work is up to par;
  whether the project is still commercially attractive;
  whether the schedule and budget are still viable; and
  the plan ahead, including the results to be delivered after the next stage, the time schedule and the resources needed by the project manager and the group in order to deliver the results.

There are two basic methods for generating profit in product development:

1) Ensuring the quality of the development tasks
  Our Stage-Gate® Guide is a complete working programme showing the methods and best practices you need and the stages where they occur.
The instructions and checklists include the critical tasks of preparing a project, working together with customers and end-users, developing unique customer benefits, setting up interdepartmental teams and much more besides.

2) Committing to the right projects
  In this area, it is important to be adept at selecting the most promising projects and combining them in the optimal project portfolio. The StageGate® Guide contains procedures and ground rules for professional gate meetings (decision-making meetings) - not least the crucial scoring and decision-making models based on Cooper's research into how to predict success/failure with great certainty early in the development process.

Overhaul your development function
A best-practice development system can increase a company's success rate by 10% to 30% and reduce the time from idea to profit by 30%. This will also increase company profits by millions, frequently by just as many millions as the development budget.


 Read more about best practices in product development.
 Download articles and information.
 Benchmark your development process to determine whether it is based on the critical principles of success.
 Order material about StageGate® and measuring development efficiency (benchmarking) via our Contact page.