void being resource-hogs that stifle development elsewhere. Get it right, and you’ve got a Sony Walkman on your hands, Get it wrong, and you’ve got a Ford Edsel – a 1950s vehicular turkey that has gone down in automobile history as an example of how not to design, build and launch a new car.

“The most basic piece of best practice is to build something that the market wants and needs, can afford and can find a compelling reason to buy at a specific price point,” says Glyn Radcliffe-Brine, a Guildford U.K.-based engineer who has worked on projects as diverse as the Concorde airliner and industrial process control systems.

Successfully developing a winning new product involves navigating around some particularly troublesome danger spots. “When you look at successful product launches and compare them to unsuccessful product lunches, a lot of the difference between the two boils down to answering four basic questions right at the start,” says Greg Githens, managing partner of Catalyst Management Consulting of Columbus, Ohio, USA. “Why are we doing this project? Who are the right people to have involved in it? What exactly are we going to do? And when are we going to do it?

What’s more, just figuring out the answers isn’t enough: The sequence in which the questions are addressed matters, too. “The best project teams will answer these questions in this order,” Githens says. “The least effective ones tend to start in the reverse order, beginning with fixed dates.”

3, 2, 1, Launch?
In theory, of course, working out the motivation for new products shouldn’t be too difficult. Companies are always launching new items, and marketers and engineers are always coming up with smart ideas. Combine the two, and it’s a no-brainer, right? Wrong, You’re not going to develop a worl

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