What's Your Space's New Product Rate?

Here's some intriguing stats from a major UK retail sector. As reported by Harry Wallop back in Dec 23;

'Mintel ... figures show that ['23YTD] only 16pc of food and drink launches have been genuinely new products (rather than reformulations or new flavours), down from 21pc in 2019 and 40pc in 2009'

In 2009, an astonishingly prolific innovation arena meant two in every five products was completely new.

A decade on, that'd fallen by half to pretty much one in five. Which still strikes me as a (healthily) high rate.

With a month left in 2023 - when you'd think all the year's innovation had been released already to capture Christmas spend - it fell further by roughly a quarter, to 1-in-6.25.

The author's thrust was how a traditionally most fecund of sectors was now becoming 'barren'.

His main culprit being sky-high fuel costs driving production plants elsewhere. Taking the adjacent R&D departments and all the associated super-skilled inventive labour with it. Creativity stifled.

The Enterprise Sales parallel is an intriguing one.

Not least of which, is how your data of this nature compares to your field overall.

Also I do like the deliberate separation out of different types of 'new'.

A distinction between "genuinely new products", as opposed to mere "reformulations or new flavours".

The latter is the classic type of 'extension strategy' in the shorter-term. The former, fiendishly tricky to pull off, yet essential for long-term success.

There's models aplenty to help here.

For instance, we have our own equivalents. In B2B, when I broach this to a Board-level group or similar, I've never told them something they already knew. The framing I use - taken from academic study - similarly distinguish these two broad and wholly different new product categories.

There's huge differences in how you must approach selling each kind.

New product development is crucial. Brand new offerings and existing product add-ons are a mix practically all commercial outfits need to get a serious handle on.

You need Sales plans for each. And they are not the same.