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A study was conducted of 69 analysts evaluating 267 early-stage New Product Development
(NPD) projects in a major global chemical over a 10 year time span. Positive correlations
were found between profits resulting from NPD project analysis and the degree of
creativity of the analysts evaluating those projects. Creativity can be reliably measured
with standard psychological instruments, such as the MBTI Creativity Index. Analysts with
MBTI Creativity Indexes above the median for the group studied identified opportunities
providing 12-13 times more profit that those with MBTI Creativity Indices below the
median, when both groups were rigorously trained in "stage-gate" business
analysis methods.
New product development (NPD) requires breakthrough creativity because the first ideas
for commercialization are almost never commercial until they have been substantially
revised through a thought process involving branching. It is therefore most productive to
pre-select innovative, creative people for the early stages of NPD, and then teach this
group the business discipline required in stage-gate NPD processes. The results show that
by utilizing these principles, both the overall speed and productivity of typical NPD
processes can be increased approximately nine fold, or nearly an order of magnitude.
*MBTI is a registered trademark of the Consulting Psychologists Press,
Palo Alto, CA
Note: This article was originally published in the 1997 International
Research Conference Proceedings of the Product Development and Management Association
(PDMA), pps. 127-149, by Greg Stevens, James Burley and Richard Divine, where it was voted
"Outstanding Research Paper" for 1997.
The above paper in is entirety is to be published in an upcoming edition of the PDMA's
Journal of Product Innovation Managment.
A few key figures and tables follow from this paper:
Figure 2. Non-Linear View and Traditional Linear
View of Stage-Gate Processes
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