The River of NPD

I'll be following Lab A on Monday, "Product Development Navigation: Concept through Product Launch" and the analogies between launching and navigation intrigue me.

The "navigation" header caused me to think about a number of "trips" I have taken. Going on Mapquest to get a map. Print it out. Then find out one or more of the following things:

1. A detour that wasn't known (the generator of the map didn't have the latest information--why?)
2. The route had toll roads and I didn't have exact change (didn't specify the map without toll roads), so I had to pay "extra" and had to get off the road for a while since I didn't have exact change for the "exact change" booths and they didn't take credit cards
3. I spent extra time since I didn't specify the "fastest" route, but the shortest mileage (they're not necessarily the same are they?)

Think about what trips would be like if every state had different road signs and there was no conventional looking signage for STOP or YIELD. When we're working overseas or with out of country partners, are their signs the same? Protocols? Preferences? Ethics? If we have international team members, are we sure everybody sees things the same way?

See any analogies between normal trips and NPD? Did we think ahead about what might go wrong? A bridge out? A construction project? We did a contingency plan, didn't we? Were there some tolls (license fees due to an inadequate patent search?) that we had to come up with? When we chose the fastest route, that may have involved some toll roads, did we plan for what we might have to do because we took some short cuts? Put some change in our pocket for contingincies?

If this was a raft trip down a river some additional analogies come to mind. Is everyone on the raft rowing in the same direction? What do we know about the personalities and preferences of the team members? If we're collaborating, what about those of our partner? When we hit rocks in the river, how do we reinflate the raft? Do we have guides with us that might know this strange territory and river we're navigating or do we assume it's the same as the last journey we took? Are rivers ever really the same, any more than roads?

Naviagation is a great analogy and how we handle it in our daily travels can teach us a lot about what we ought to do in NPD. More on Monday during the session as we hear what Sikorsky and Keithley Instruments have to say along with Robin Karol and Beebee Nelson from PDMA.