The new new product development game. Hirotaka Takeuchi & Ikujiro Nonaka.
This paper, originally published in 1986 and that HBR offers in its digital version has an incredible significance, since in it Takeuchi and Nonaka laid the foundations of Scrum, one of the key elements of the agile philosophy.
Using the world of rugby as an example of a holistic approach, the two experts baptized as Scrum (using the sport’s own terminology) a new guideline that allowed product development in a faster, more flexible and efficient way. Instead of approaching the process as a sequential flow where different areas pass the baton to each other, in a Scrum environment the development team (as in rugby) moves together from start to finish in an integrated approach that challenges the status quo and allows different phases of development to be happening at the same time and iteratively. It is impressive to see how something born 35 years ago can still be so innovative. And even more impressive to see that the model can be used to develop software, an airplane part or an onboarding programme. Good ideas are timeless, no doubt.
