Experience with Development Methods at Three Innovative Hidden Champions

Innovative industrial companies are lead successfully by CEOs directly responsible also for product development. The strategic plan of those companies includes product development directions, which can be efficiently worked out using a lean scenario technique. It helped that all new product ideas were collected centrally in an idea pool and evaluated together with top management giving definite priorities but not cancelling too “digital” ideas with a good chance of benefit. A roadmap should visualise all finally planned projects including feasibility studies and it should contain all relevant economical and technical features. The roadmap is the essential basis for efficient multiproject management. It must be actualized regularly accompanied by priority setting and consequent decisions. Head of each project is a project leader who must be mandated with formal authority supported by top management. The distinction was extremely purposeful between a market specification product profile and derived from that a technical specification document; both product specifications have to be signed by sales and development top management. Methods were success promoting when pragmatically improving communication in the project, finding technical solutions or optimising quality and costs. Methodically educated employers supported obviously the development success, this is often underestimated also during the embodiment phase. Teaching those development methods must be intensified in university and professional education. Intensive research is necessary in real industrial environment investigating how to improve the practical use of academically well-known methods and how to optimise the product development processes on management and on project level.