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Abstract: WinOvations Profits & Personalities:

Relationships Between Profits from New Product
Development and Analysts' Personalities

Profits & Personalities: Relationships Between Profits from New Product Development and Analysts' Personalities

By: Greg A. Stevens, James Burley, Ph.D. and Richard Devine

Presented to the 1998 Research Conference at the Annual International Conference of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), October 5-7, Atlanta GA

This Article provides a continuation of a study of 69 analysts evaluating 267 early-stage New Product Development (NPD) projects in a major global chemical company over a 10 year time span. Positive correlations were found between profits resulting from NPD project analyses and personality attributes of the analysts evaluating those projects. The strengths of correlations between profits earned and personality were compared using two standard psychological instruments, the MBTI Creativity Index and the Kirton Adaptor Innovator (KAI). Both can be used to measure creativity. The MBTI was found to correlate significantly better with profits earned than the KAI.

Additionally, applying Keirsey's theory of Temperaments resulted in developing a new "Rainmaker Index" specifically tuned to profitability from the "fuzzy front end" of NPD. Analysts with MBTI preferences for intuition ("N") and thinking ("T") score highest on this   index.Analysts in the top third of the "Rainmaker Index" generatedn95 times more profit than those in the bottom third ($8,230,000 vs $87,000 mean profit per analyst). this compares to to 11 times more profit for the analysts in the top third of the MBTI-Creativity Index vs the bottom third of the MBTI-CI. Hence, the "Rainmaker Index" increases the odds of identifying analysts who will identify profitable opportunities in the "fuzzy front end" of NPD by a factor of 8.6 times compared to the previously reported MBTI-CI (95/11 = 8.6 times better).

Rainmaker Index vs Profit from NPD

NPD Success Factor

Lower Third

Middle Third

Upper Third

Times Higher than Middle Third

Times Higher than Lower Third

Number NPD Analyses/Analyst 2.61

3.43

5.57

1.62

2.13

% Ideas that Branched 13.3%

19.0%

37.5% 1.97 2.82
% Positive Recommendations 22.5% 25.9% 46.9% 1.81 2.08
Profit per Analyst, $MM $0.087 $0.93 $8.23 8.85 94.6
Profit per Project, $MM $0.03 $0.27 $1.48 5.48 49.3
Total Profit, $MM $2.00 $21.35 $189.30 8.87 94.7

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