8.2 SYSTEMS AND SUCCESS IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

New food products have always been developed and this will continue.

Certain basic principles occur often, some almost universally, in this process when the products are successful. These principles transcend particular products and circumstances, and their adoption helps all companies to move towards the methodology of the best.

As food enterprises grow from the small company with a few entrepreneurial individuals running or indeed comprising it, the need for a more technology-based organisation increases and with that the need for explicit frameworks to maintain and expand the activity. Increasingly activities in the company, including product development, need new organisation and management methods.

Systems emerge, are tested, and the best become widely accepted and formalised. Thus in product development, methods that succeed are noted and copied. This copying leads towards a tried and tested Product Development Process.

Adapted to circumstances and improved, it evolves continually. A logical pattern emerges which is efficient and workable and which can be implemented by industry with a high probability of market success.