Trailblazer R&D
Accelerated Development
TrailBlazer is an entrepreneurial system of development that leverages the methods small business owners use to achieve a 10-fold greater success rate with innovations than large corporations realize. Ranch Founder Doug Hall, used the TrailBlazer principles to ship a record 9 innovations in a 12 month period while at Procter & Gamble.
TrailBlazer excites and motivates managers as it avoids the known negatives of gated or staged development:
- Instead of “quality by inspection” quality is built into the process
- Instead of fear inducing “gate meetings” – the individual is empowered to drive cycles of fail fast – fail cheap learning till they get it right and
- Instead of “siloed” hand offs that gated systems enable – the team is empowered to do everything – just like a start up.
Key to success with TrailBlazer is a sense of urgency, personal passion for the core idea and an openness to confront Death Threats early in development when there is still time, money and energy to address them.
In two separate studies, Trailblazer was found to successfully develop new ideas with 10 to 20% of the staffing, time and money versus classic research and development methods.
Video Overview
