Fast fail strategies of research and development seek to clear the
development pipeline of marginal products as quickly as possible,
releasing development resources to focus on more promising products
(Lendrem, 1995).
In particular, Quick Win, Fast Fail strategies
bring forward development resources earlier in the development life
cycle.
The Quick-KillTM model of research and development demonstrates that this strategy will:
- Shorten the expected time to market even though the cycle time of successful products might increase – the Development Speed Paradox
- Increase R&D throughput even as the cycle time of successful products increases – the M25 Effect
- Reduce R&D costs while increasing the burn rate in early development - see R&D Savings.
Moreover, the Quick-KillTM
model demonstrates that fast fail strategies will do all this even in
the face of significant increases in the rate of false negatives – the
probability of actively killing products that could have been successful
- Quick-Kill Rides Again.
So what’s the catch?
Well, there isn’t one.
All
it requires is a fundamental re-think of the way the organization goes
about research and development, a complete shift in organizational
culture and a whole range of new organizational behaviors. In particular
it requires senior managers change their behavior to assist project
teams in changing the way they think about research.
And the biggest obstacle?
The sunk costs dilemma
represents the single biggest obtacle to the successful implementation
of fast fail strategies. Teams prefer the uncertainty of future
potential revenues no matter how unlikely, to the certainty of lost
revenues resulting from a decision to terminate a project. Estimates of
project risk are inversely proportional to the sums already invested -
the sunk costs.
Looking for a needle in a haystack? Torch the haystack.
- Richard Peck, Eli Lilly
Current
implementations of fast fail have been relatively modest. Restricted
principally to groups in support of Proof Of Concept or Early to Man
models of the clinical development process. But even these limited
applications have been able to demonstrate significant R&D savings
and increased throughput (Clarke, 2010; Paul et al, 2010).
There's a lot more.
References:
Clarke, C. 2010 Quick Win, Fast Fail, International Clinical Trials, Autumn 2010
Lendrem, D. 1995 More Haste, Less Development Speed, Scrip Magazine, December pp 22-23.
Paul, S. et al 2010 How to improve R&D Productivity, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 9, 203-214
Note: Originally published at BestThinking
Note: Originally published at BestThinking
