During the past several years, product development organizations have attempted to shift their strategic priorities from lowering product development costs and reducing cycle time (e.g. improving time-to-market), to finding ways to infuse greater innovation and differentiated features/capabilities into their products. The PLM technology vendors have likewise followed this trend by introducing products and services that support the desire for greater product innovation. But are companies really succeeding in delivering on the new "PLM Imperative" of innovation? Is top-line revenue growth accelerating for companies who purport to be following an innovation-centric PLM strategy? The evidence, while still anecdotal, suggests that very few companies are successfully using PLM as an initiative to drive product innovation. One only has to look at the anemic top-line revenue growth rates, and the limited numbers of successful user testimonial cases to understand that innovation-centric PLM is little more than an ephemeral wisp for most companies. This begs the question, "Can PLM truly deliver on the promise of greater product innovation or is this simply a marketing slogan"? At Collaborative Visions, we believe that PLM can indeed deliver on the promise of greater product innovation, but it requires two fundamental changes:
1. Recasting the PLM mission to place greater focus on the innovation process versus the productization process by raising the Product Innovation Trajectory
2. Extending PLM technologies to include innovation-centric tools and capabilities which help to infuse more innovation and product differentiation
Click here to get the latest Collaborative Visions report on the marriage of PLM and Innovation.