The New Product Process in Financial Services: Strategy for Success

How companies orchestrate the activities surrounding the development and launch of a new product or service has been shown to have a critical impact on new service performance. Most service companies, including those in the industrial financial sector, have little in the way of a highly developed new service programme. Reports the results of a major empirical investigation of 106 new industrial financial services where the factors which define the new service development process were the primary focus of study. The findings indicate that six basic factors, comprising the technical activities required for design and launch and the type of corporate environments that nurture success, define the service development function for new industrial financial services. Four factors, including the quality of execution of the up‐front activities and of the launch programme, an expert‐driven process and, in particular, a supportive and high‐involvement corporate culture, were shown to have a critical impact on new service success.