Anthony W. Ulwick

Frost & Sullivan reported (i) that only one in 300 new products significantly impacts a company’s growth and (ii) that only 1% of new products recoup their product development costs.

The Corporate Strategy Board reported that over the past four decades, of the 172 companies that spent time in the Fortune 50, only 5% sustained a growth rate greater than the growth rate of the gross domestic product.

PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that only 11% of all venture investments get to any capital liquidity.

R.G. Cooper reported that new products succeed

25% of the time.

• 
  The Product Development Management Association (PDMA) claims that new products succeed 59% of the time.
  

The 12 sources studied and the innovation success rates they cited are summarized in the table:

Source	Rate
Frost & Sullivan, “Growth Process Toolkit: New Product Development,” 2008.	0.3%
Frost & Sullivan, “Growth Process Toolkit: New Product Development,” 2008.	1%
Andrew Campbell and Robert Park, ‘Stop Kissing Frogs,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 2004.	1%
Dr. John Sviokla, “The Calculus of Commerce,” Diamond Cluster International, Inc. 2004.	3%
Corporate Strategy Board, “Stall Points,” 1998. Cited in Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor, “The Innovator’s Solution,” page 5, Harvard Business School Press, 2003.	5%
Andrew Campbell and Robert Park, ‘Stop Kissing Frogs,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 2004.	10%
Kevin J. Clancy and Randy L. Stone, “Don’t Blame the Metrics,” Harvard Business Review, June 2005.	10%
Corporate Strategy Board, “Overcoming Stall Pints,” 2006.	10%
PriceWaterHouseCoopers, “Shaking the Money-Tree,” slide 33, U.S. Venture Liquidity 2001-2007, Q3 2008.	11%
Average	17%
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, “Doing it Right,” Product Development Institute Inc., 2006.	25%
Abbie Griffin, “Drivers of New Products Success,” Product Development & Management Association, 1997.	59%
Dr. Robert G. Cooper, “Doing it Right,” Product Development Institute Inc., 2006.	67%
Strategyn	86%

In order to study the success rate of our Outcome-Driven Innovation methodology, the researcher conducted interviews with representatives of 43 Strategyn clients that had used ODI to launch a product or service or to engage in an operational or marketing innovation initiative. No

incentives were offered to those who participated, and to encourage candor, anonymity was assured.

The researcher asked companies to judge the success of the ODI initiative they undertook based on their choice of one of four success metrics: revenue, market share, customer satisfaction, or return on investment. The company representative was re-contacted to confirm agreement with the categorizations (i.e., successful or unsuccessful, the success metrics used, etc.).

Of 21 projects that made use of the ODI methodology and resulted in product launches, 18 were rated successes by the sponsoring company—an 86% success rate. Five of these product launches received industry awards. I’ll describe some of these projects as case studies for success later in this book.

Strategyn clients interviewed	43
ODI-based products entered into development	49
Pending launch	28
Launched	21
Declared a success after launch	18