New Product Commercialization: Common Mistakes

V. Kasturi  Rangan

Background Note | HBS Case Collection | June 1994 (Revised March 1995)

New Product Commercialization: Common Mistakes

Abstract

Addresses the common mistakes made in new product development and launch. Many times customers' and suppliers' perceptions of the degree of product/market innovation do not match. One of them may view the innovations as a "breakthrough," but the other may view it only as an incremental improvement of an existing solution. Such a mismatch will inevitably lead to faculty commercialization. But even if the match is perfect, this note argues that breakthroughs and incremental new products require quite different new product development processes to enable commercial success.

Keywords: Product Development; Product Launch; Problems and Challenges;

Format: Print

13 pages

Educators Purchase

Citation:

Rangan, V. Kasturi. "New Product Commercialization: Common Mistakes." Harvard Business School Background Note 594-127, June 1994. (Revised March 1995.)

Last Mile Health is a non-profit organization that focuses on recruiting and training community health workers to reach remote rural communities with basic health services. Founded by Raj Panjabi, a Liberian who immigrated with his family to the United States during the Liberian Civil War, the case traces the founding and early years of Last Mile Health, before the organization is faced with a choice during the Ebola outbreak in 2014: should they pursue a significant amount of new funding to expand into other areas, or should they stay focused on training community health workers.

The case describes the 25-year transformation of Peabody Essex Museum, which was created in 1993 by the merger of two sub-scale predecessor cultural institutions, operating since 1799, in Salem, Massachusetts. Dan Monroe, its founding CEO, began a process of building the institution, which, when he arrived, had a budget of $3 million and an endowment of $23 million in 1993, as compared to a budget of $33 million and an endowment of $650 million in 2018. Monroe made changes in practically every aspect of the museum’s operations as PEM broke into the ranks of the top 15 museums in the U.S. All of this was happening at a time when museums in general had lost some 20% in visitation as a result of significant shifts in population demographics and what they understood by “cultural experience.” As Dan Monroe handed off the reins of an institution that had successfully run counter to trend to his successor in 2019, the trustees of the museum and its new CEO faced the challenge of how to keep the positive momentum going—and how potentially to reinvent PEM again for a rapidly changing world.

Faculty & Research

New Product Commercialization: Common Mistakes

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author