Pathway to Profit How a joined-up approach drives profitable innovation

• De-risk innovation • Boost profitability • Increase agility

A weak link in manufacturing? • Some 72 percent of products fall

below their profitability targets1.

• Of the 30,000 new products introduced to market each year, 90 percent fail2.

The link between product development and customer need seems to have weakened.

The fundamentals of the business haven’t changed: you still need to make better products so you sell more, and make processes better so margin improves.

But when it comes to creating things customers want, perhaps ‘better’ needs an update. And with that challenge comes huge opportunity.

Improving better It used to be that the focus of ‘better’ was on productivity to optimize processes. Today, productivity tweaks are not enough; better now has to incorporate the end customer’s ever-changing needs. That means: more durable, more beautiful, more connected, more customized, more sustainable – and ultimately more value.

Achieving any of those is hard. First, you need to get closer to customers (internal and external) to understand what they value most. Then you need a reliable stream of data supporting this, plus a way to interpret that data. Finally, you need the tools to apply what you’ve learned to your products and the way you make and manage them. In other words, you need to enhance your ability to collaborate with speed, effectiveness, and quality.

Lack of collaboration stifles innovation – particularly lack of engagement with the customer early on in the development process. It stops you from linking current preferences to product design, and manual processes harden the inefficiencies that make you less responsive.

So what can you do?

Embrace profitable innovation Innovation can be a risky business and can quickly deplete your coffers if the products you bring to market aren’t profitable. But get it right and it’s a virtuous circle, enabling you to charge a premium for differentiated products and generating funds to invest in future innovation. It’s certainly a much better option than developing new products in isolation and spending marketing budget trying to convince customers to buy something that doesn’t fit their needs.

Collaboration and agility are the keys to profitable innovation. That means collaboration across all stakeholders. Engaging early with customers enables you to gauge willingness to pay and can prevent commercial disasters. You are then able to translate customer feedback into designs that you can produce at the right cost and get to market at the right time. And breaking down the walls internally means that production and maintenance considerations are built upfront into the design, and the cost of creation and servicing is reduced.

Make that collaboration digital and you streamline the process, become agile. You can even go further. Producing more

and generating better ideas – taking some of the risk out of innovation.

Autodesk connects the dots To be better, sell more, be more profitable, beat the competition, you need to innovate – constantly. Autodesk can help you formulate a strategy with digital collaboration at its core. We’ll show you how you can improve the speed, effectiveness and quality of your collaboration, enabling you to develop profitable innovations and create that virtuous circle of innovation that supports ongoing investment and continuous improvement.

Real-world success

By partnering with Autodesk, leading manufacturers are already using data to improve collaboration and give shape to a more customer-driven future.

Schneider Electric has achieved a 50 percent reduction in product time- to-market by better connecting its design and manufacturing processes.

Airbus is using data to adapt its aircraft to customers’ changing requirements and stay in-step with evolving expectations around comfortable air travel.

MJK uses generative design technology to create triple clamps for drag bikes that are 23% lighter without sacrificing safety.

Pathway to Profit How a joined-up approach drives profitable innovation

Source: 1 Simon Kucher + Partners 2 Harvard Business Review