A second major issue is the management of the technology portfolio, and particularly the sourcing of new technologies. For many companies, the in-sourcing of new technologies is at least as important as internal developments, so technology road-mapping and scouting activities have gained in importance.

Of course, successful innovation is not about developing or accessing new technologies – it is about their timely and effective deployment in new products, to create benefits for the products’ stakeholders. We help our clients do this more effectively by enabling them to access appropriate technologies and rapidly turn them into new products.

Examples of recent projects include:

• realising substantial cost savings for a building products company by better international integration of the development groups, without reducing the new product pipeline.
• developing a breakthrough low-cost water meter register, with automatic meter reading capability for Sensus, including transfer to volume manufacture in the Far East.
• using scenario planning to identify three new product categories for an office products company.
• achieving a cost reduction of 40% on an industrial printer by a combination of design for assembly and transfer of the electronics manufacture to China.

Senior industrial managers increasingly recognise the value of a strategic outsourced technology partner with complementary perspectives and capabilities. We work together with our clients’ in-house resources to accelerate the pace of business change and product innovation and help them lead in their chosen fields