Increasing numbers of high tech and electronics companies are reexamining product development's traditional linear flow from design through manufacturing and sales. To accelerate the process and ensure demand-driven innovation, a new product development initiative seeks to create a real-time, global, collaborative environment for product development that fully integrates people, processes and systems.

This initiative stresses program and portfolio management that closely aligns current and future market demands with product development. Key dependencies and leverage points are outlined early in the process so they can be acted upon quickly. Process automation drives stakeholder involvement and enables business decisions by providing the right information to the right people at the right time. As part of normal workflow, the best ideas are tested and validated against real-world market opportunities.