Why Most Product Launches Fail

Note than when HBR says "fail", they really mean (direct quote) "fail to earn even $7.5 million during their first year".

If you're an established business sinking millions into product development, earning $5 million in the first year of a new product is a disaster. From the startup perspective, earning $5 million in the first year is not a bad outcome. So some of the advice in this (especially the part about launching late) is a lot less applicable.

Other pieces of advice, like making sure the product is actually usable and communicating to your customers what it does and why they want it, and even scaling to meet demand are classic startup issues.

HBR has some other great new articles in its "Failure Issue" http://hbr.org/special-collections/spotlights/2011/apr

All pages link: http://hbr.org/2011/04/why-most-product-launches-fail/ar/pr (for Instapaper users)

I really would like to know more! There are over 1 million patents waiting to go through the U.S. Patent office and into production.... What does this mean for all the inventors out there? Especially those really making revolutionary products... if you know it is guaranteed to reach a certain standard deviation of sales, then you can watch your expenses and costs and try to allocate them more properly to reach other parts of the sales spectrum...