According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, there are over 30,000 new products introduced every year, and 95 percent fail. To develop, launch and gain adoption of a successful product requires the perfect formula of innovation, perspiration, calculation and luck.

So why is product development challenging? To develop successful products requires trial, error, investment and attention to key fundamentals. Below, I’ve identified five tenets to developing new products. 

Solve real problems. At our core, URAC’s innovations solve some of the most fundamental problems facing healthcare leaders today. URAC’s Product Development team canvases issues facing various sectors ranging from pharmacy to providers to identify transformations in their worlds that inform our product development. Understanding sector needs is critical. That is why we use advisory panels, public comment and URAC’s Health Standards Committee (HSC), before finalizing products.

Adopt a product development methodology. There is a lot of debate about which product development methodology works best. The answer varies by industry and organization. Stage-gate approaches are structured and require deliberation before a product moves from one gate to the next. Failure to set expectations by stage-gate can lead to lack of clarity. Product Development has identified several products to pursue and will be encouraged to ‘fail fast’ or move to the next gate.

Identify key assumptions from the beginning. Many product launches are late because decisions are made late in the game. Product Development continues to be intentional about product value, market and business drivers, positioning, pricing and target channels from the onset of design. 

Insist on painstaking coordination with URAC team members. Small companies like URAC, typically have only a few people involved with incubating an idea. To that constraint, there is often a lack of coordination across departments. Product development is a team sport and requires cross functional collaboration with ACS, Finance, GR, Marketing and Sales. We will continue to work on this competency.

Take a long-range view of URAC’s roadmap. Too many companies think of product development as ‘one offs.’ URAC offers a portfolio of products within each product suite. Our challenge will continue to be to define and support our vision. Product Development, in collaboration with the URAC leadership team, will continue to evaluate how our programs support the vision.