The "fuzzy front end" of innovation?
Neil McIntosh, the innovation guy (or one of a few, from what I can see) at the Guardian and all around good egg, writes about the concept of the “fuzzy front end” of innovation and product development, which he’s encountered during the tail end stages of his MBA.
Put simply, it’s the theory that, during development of a new product, the time to rush is not at the end (during “crunch mode") but right at the start. Yep - the time to really put the foot down, the time when hurrying up is going to have maximum impact and save the most money, is right at the point you’re sucking on your pipe, metaphorical or otherwise, and saying: “maybe we should do.... this”.
Smith and Reinersten, the two guys who came up with the theory, have this to say:
“In fact, the true cost of this phase is usually many times higher than managers suspect. In this phase the most important influence on cost is the cost of delay, not of the manpower assigned to the project. The calculated cost is often 500 to 5000 times higher than the visible costs of the assigned personnel. Managers unaware of these costs will tend to ignore the ‘fuzzy front end’. Those who understand these costs will instead focus a great deal of attention on this phase.
[...]
The front end offers some of the cheapest opportunities to cut development time that are to be found anywhere in the cycle."
And now, as I am with anyone who says they’ve got the metrics all figured out, I am desperate to see how Smith and Reinersten calculated this.