“Would the Apple iPod have ever gotten through your new product development process? If the answer is “no,” the process is probably too risk adverse and cumbersome; it should be scrapped and reinvented, “zero-based” style. If the answer is “yes,” then your process has the...

Ask almost anyone in a new product development function and they’ll tell you they’ve had experience with what I call a “staged approval system” model. For those who haven’t dealt withstaged approval systems, they are, as the name implies, models that break up the...