Jan 23 2009
Why New Clean Tech Products Fail – Top 10 Reasons
The majority of new products fail.
Statistics on the exact percentage that fail may be a matter of some debate. Still, most product innovators and academics would agree that more than half of new products fail to meet their financial goals in the marketplace.
Why? EcoStrategy Group has compiled a list of the top 10 reasons. Read about them in more detail in our white paper and then let us know what you think. Do you agree? Are there other reasons you would add?
- Target market is not defined correctly.
- Product is mis-positioned.
- Product’s benefits are not understood by the target customer.
- Product doesn’t address important customer needs.
- Product is seen as incomplete, or it requires too many ancillary services or
other pre-requisites. - Product costs too much or the total cost of ownership is out of line with
perceived benefits. - Sales and marketing efforts are not focused and aligned.
- Sales cycle is longer than expected.
- The company is under-investing in marketing and sales efforts.
- Market is smaller than originally projected or product is too far ahead of the
market.
I definitely agree with the list, and the one thing I might have added is that a successful salesperson can serve as a remedy to these issues. They can make the customer better understand the benefits, address the customer’s needs relative to the product/service, line up costs with benefits, and consolidate and solidify the message sent to the customer. Also I imagine a consulting firm can be the remedy to all of the problems. Good read.
Richard Walsh
Green Building Focus
rwalsh@greenbuildingfocus.com
The reasons given above are all correct and statistically only 3% of New Products succeed but as stated these may be debatable. What i would like to bring on is the human role in New Product failure. Most organizations are sparsely populated with individuals of different views. This is because the voice of the executive is more dominant than that of the subordinates. Those that have different opinions are usually silenced , excluded or ostracized completely. The remaining employees `suck up` to the executives to such an extent that faulty ideas are passed on during the idea screening process because it would please the boss if they had their way although the new product is doomed from the start in a way that i will describe as the Craddle to the Grave phenomenon.