Synergistic Benefits From Strategic Guidance Of Product Development Operations

The crux of the composite model is synergistic effects among SPOT domains of practice. Strategy practices have contingency effects which synergistically increase the effect on performance of practices at the operating core of the composite model: Organization, Process, and Tools/Technologies (OPT). The variance that OPT practices explain in development performance is almost always augmented if deployed in combination with any of the seven subsets of practices in the domain of strategy. The synergistic and direct effects of strategy documented in this chapter identify hundreds of ways of optimizing development performance. By contrast, many alternatives to concurrent product development (CPD) focus on tangible cost-cutting methods without strategic guidance. Books on strategy abound but often lack processual tactics for implementing them to improve diverse operational capabilities.Strategy guides the troika of operational domains of practice toward achieving competitive advantages. Strategy practices add to the variance organization, process, and tools/technologies explain in development performance two ways. One is by direct effects on performance beyond its shared variance with each of the troika of practice domains. The other is by mutually reinforcing each of the operational domains of practice so that their effect is multiplicative, e.g., 1 + 1 = more than two. Three key strategy practices are selected from the 10 Big Bangs documented in Chapter 8 to illustrate its additive and synergistic effects: (1) Target a diverse portfolio of competitive advantages to optimize integration of SPOT domains of practice at the operating core, (2) Import outside knowledge essential for realizing strategic aims in dynamic complex markets, and (3) Align choice of product and process development projects with strategic aims. Readers may review the combinatory benefits of these three strategic practices with Organization, Process, and Tools/Technologies for mean values in the SPOT database and prioritize. By substituting their own scores, readers make combinations of practices uniquely beneficial for improving performance in their own enterprise in Appendix Tables 9A.1, 9A.2, and 9A.3 for combinations with organization, 9B.1, 9B.2, and 9B.3 for combinations with process, and 9C.1, 9C.2, and 9C.3 for combinations with tools/technologies.