Profitable Product Innovation: The Critical Success Factors

: This chapter focuses on the critical success factors that underlie new product performance. It is based on the author's and other's research into hundreds of new product launches, probing the question: What distinguishes the best from the rest? Ten common denominators or factors appears to drive new product success, profitability and time-to-market; this chapter outlines these ten critical success factors, and notes the management implications of each. The chapter concludes with a discussion of portfolio management techniques, issues and challenges.Keywords: Product innovation; New product development; Management; Portfolio management; Success factors.