New Product Development Scholars Program

What is New Product Development?

Above are only a few of the latest, greates and hottest new products that PC Magazines considers "The 100 Best Products for 2007."
Can you guess the single thread that links all these innovations? You've guess right.Each name highlighted above identifies a new product or service that literally and figuratively changed the way the world lives, works, or plays. In our unpredictable and rapidly changing economy, one thing is for certain, the taste and preferences of consumers will change, thus successful business are the ones that are constantly innovating their product offerings to fit the preferences of their consumers. It should be of no surprise that the Department of Marketing and Logistics has developed this uniquely positioned and uniquely appealing certificate program: The New Product Development Scholars Program.

The Department of Marketing and Logistics understands that new products and succesful innovations are the life blood of the global economy. And many of our prospective students always have - quite logically, we believe - wanted to be a part of new product development and the successful marketing of innovations.

Experts suggest that the estimated 95% new product failure rate has resulted from too much focus on "product" and "technology," and too little focus on customer and sociological concerns.

Fortunately, the Department of Marketing and Logistics and its generous donor recognized this issue as both a problem and an opportunity. The high failure rate is a problem because no company - big or small, for profit or not-for-profit, privately- or publicly-held - can long succeed without continuous new product development. It is an opportunity because learning and execution gaps exist in how new product development processes are managed and executed.

The NPD Scholars program aims enhance the effectiveness of new product development process by approaching it from a consumer or societal perspective. P&G, Samsung and many others like them put great energy into learning what customers crave - and then re-designing their new product development processes to satisfying them. Success increasingly will go to companies that focus on creating better things with their customers, not for them.

By the way, when the Department describes this new educational product as unique, we mean it. To our knowledge, our NPD Scholars Program is the first of its kind in the world.

Multiple prestigious scholarships are available exclusively to students in the NPD Scholars Program. Visit the Marketing & Logistics scholarships page for more details.