What should be the role of senior management in developing new products?
To marshal the energy and resources you need to introduce common subsystems and manufacturing processes, leadership has to come from the very top. Senior management has to be directly involved in building the teams that will create the new platforms and products. They have to bring together highly talented, pragmatic experts from a variety of functions — manufacturing, marketing, R&D, finance — and then give them the time, support, and resources they’ll need to aggressively pursue new applications of the company’s technologies. If necessary, senior management should also make adjustments to company culture and work systems to make sure that innovators don’t get shot down, for example, and that new applications have time to build momentum.
