Arkaro Insights
Arkaro Insights is a podcast series produced by Arkaro, where we help B2B executives deliver better results with the latest ideas in change and innovation for your organisation.
About Arkaro
Arkaro is a B2B consultancy specialising in Strategy, Innovation Process, Product Management, Commercial Excellence & Business Development, and Integrated Business Management. With industry expertise across Agriculture, Food, and Chemicals, Arkaro's team combines practical business experience with formal consultancy training to deliver impactful solutions.
You may have the ability to lead these transformations with your team, but time constraints can often be a challenge. Arkaro takes a collaborative 'do it with you' approach, working closely with clients to leave behind sustainable, value-generating solutions—not just a slide deck.
"We don't just coach - we get on the pitch with you"
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💬 We'd love to hear from you! What topics would you like us to explore in future podcast episodes? Drop us a message or connect with us to learn more about Arkaro's approach.
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Arkaro Insights
Why Most Product Launches Fail Before They Start
Welcome to the Arkaro Insights podcast. We've utilised AI technology to transform our written expertise into this conversational format for your convenience, making our insights on product launch failures more accessible and engaging.
When faced with product launch disappointments, executives instinctively look for immediate causes. All too often, they point to the commercial launch phase as the culprit—questioning marketing materials, sales training, or launch event execution. This is a crucial insight: leaders tend to blame the phase they are currently experiencing, forgetting everything that has happened before in the innovation journey.
But is the commercial launch really where most product failures originate? After working with dozens of companies across Agriculture, Food, and Chemicals industries, we've found that while execution of the commercial launch certainly matters, the seeds of failure are typically planted much earlier in the innovation process.
The 7 Hidden Root Causes
In this episode, we explore the seven critical failure points that typically emerge early in the innovation journey—long before the launch phase that executives tend to blame:
1. Lack of Collaborative Culture
2. Absence of Clear Innovation Strategy
3. Weak Value Proposition
4. Flawed Business Models
5. Inadequate Prototyping
6. Problematic Scale-Up
7. Poor Governance
The Arkaro Approach
At Arkaro, our "do it with you" approach helps clients build innovation capabilities by addressing these core failure points holistically. We focus on aligning innovation with business strategy, applying Jobs to be Done methodology to understand customer needs, generating ideas targeted at validated problems, implementing agile stage-gated processes that validate assumptions early, building sustainable innovation governance, and fostering cross-functional collaboration.
Why consider an external partner like Arkaro?
Even if you suspect your product launch challenges extend beyond the commercial phase, addressing these fundamental issues can be difficult from within.
Changing organisational fundamentals is hard work. Transforming collaborative culture, innovation strategy, or governance requires both expertise and persistence. While you may recognise the problems, implementing solutions demands significant time and focus that your team may not have alongside their day-to-day responsibilities.
Internal teams often struggle to see, accept, or challenge embedded practices. Organisational blind spots, existing power dynamics, and the challenge of speaking truth to leadership can make it difficult for insiders to drive fundamental change. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to ask the uncomfortable questions and highlight what internal teams already suspect but haven't been able to address.
This is why an outside partner who truly understands the challenges and will work alongside you makes all the difference. At Arkaro, we don't deliver theoretical frameworks and walk away. We bring both the external perspective needed to identify root causes and the practical, collaborative approach required to implement lasting solutions. We get on the pitch with you—working side by side to transform your innovation system while building your team's capabilities.
Are you experiencing challenges with product launches in your organisation? Do you suspect the issues lie deeper than commercial execution but need help addressing them effectively?
Contact us at mark@arkaro.com or visit www.arkaro.com to discuss how our "do it with you" approach can you.
Welcome to the Arkaro Insights Podcast. We're here to help B2B executives like you get better results, really digging into the latest ideas around change and innovation in your organization.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And today, well, we're diving deep into something I think probably hits close to home for quite a few listening. That's the, let's say, frustratingly high failure rate of new product launches. It's just such a persistent thing in B2B.
Speaker 2:It really is. And when a launch doesn't quite meet expectations, the natural thing is to look right at the end, isn't?
Speaker 1:it. Yeah, the go-to-market bit.
Speaker 2:Exactly the marketing plan, the sales training, maybe the launch event itself.
Speaker 1:All that final push stuff.
Speaker 2:But what's really interesting and what our experience at Ocaro consistently shows you'll see this in our piece the hidden root causes of product launch failure is that the real problems. They often started much, much earlier.
Speaker 1:Ah, okay, so we're looking at the symptoms, maybe not the actual disease.
Speaker 2:That's a great way to put it. The seeds of failure are often sown way before that final commercial push.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if the problems aren't usually in that final act, where are we talking about? Where are these fundamental weaknesses creeping in earlier on, the things that undermine even a really polished launch?
Speaker 2:Well, think of it, maybe like building a house. The commercial launch, that's the grand opening party.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But if the foundations you laid months ago are cracked or the walls aren't straight, well, no amount of fancy decorations at the party is going to stop the underlying issues.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes sense. The structure itself is weak.
Speaker 2:Precisely Our research, our experience. It just keeps pointing back to these hidden root causes, embedded way, way before the product actually hits the market.
Speaker 1:Right, so let's dig into those then, these foundational flaws. Where do things typically start to well go off track in that early innovation process?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, one of the first and, honestly, the most critical missteps we see, it's the lack of a really clear innovation strategy.
Speaker 1:No clear strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so many organizations. They kind of jump into generating ideas, brainstorming, without first really nailing down why they're innovating in the first place.
Speaker 1:Or where they should be focusing.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's like setting off on a big road trip, but you haven't actually decided on the destination. Just driving, Just driving, and you know a surprising number of companies admit this is a major hurdle. Having that clear strategy, think of it like your innovation North Star.
Speaker 1:Guiding everything it guides everything.
Speaker 2:Without it, every new exciting idea can actually just be a distraction. It drains resources, pulls focus and, ultimately, you fail to make a real impact.
Speaker 1:So without that why and that, where even really clever ideas can just sort of drift right, they don't connect to the bigger business goals. Is that the zombie innovation idea the research mentions? Like going through the motions without real purpose.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it Zombie innovation. Lots of activity maybe, but no strategic direction, and this often shows up as like a scattergun approach.
Speaker 1:Trying to do everything at once, yeah.
Speaker 2:Pursuing too many different ideas, spreading people and money way too thin, you know. Think about the chemicals industry, for example. A company might try exploring dozens of tiny niche applications all at the same time.
Speaker 1:Instead of focusing.
Speaker 2:Instead of focusing. Yeah, compare that scattergut approach to the impact you see from companies like, say, novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly with their really sustained, focused efforts in specific areas. Big difference.
Speaker 1:Right. So a really tight focus driven by that clear strategy, that's vital right from the very beginning. Okay, so, strategy first. What's the next potential stumbling block?
Speaker 2:Well billing right on that strategy point. We very often see weak value propositions coming out of those early stages.
Speaker 1:The value proposition, so what the product actually offers the customer.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It boils down to answering that really basic question. Your customer asks themselves why should I choose this specific thing?
Speaker 1:Makes sense.
Speaker 2:And far too often new products get built on well internal assumptions, what we think the customer needs, rather than a really deep understanding of their actual needs, their actual pains.
Speaker 1:So guesswork instead of evidence.
Speaker 2:Pretty much, and our research suggests this might actually be the single most critical failure point. Wow, I mean, the deadliest assumption in innovation is probably believing you already know what your customer truly values until you really rigorously test that, validate it.
Speaker 1:You're just guessing.
Speaker 2:You're essentially building a solution for a problem that, well, maybe doesn't exist for them, or maybe it exists, but it's just not painful enough for them to bother changing or paying for a fix.
Speaker 1:Relying on what we think customers want, not what they actually do want. It sounds so obvious when you say it that customer interaction is crucial, but clearly it's a gap for a lot of B2B firms. It is the research kind of pushes you to ask, doesn't it? Did we really base this on direct market feedback or did our own internal biases creep in and shape it? Those are well tough questions to ask sometimes.
Speaker 2:They are tough but absolutely essential, and the consequences of not asking them, not validating rigorously they can be huge.
Speaker 1:Like what.
Speaker 2:Well, we see products launch that are trying to solve problems. Customers just don't rank as a high priority. Or maybe the product is technically clever, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it just doesn't offer a compelling enough reason to switch from what they're already using. It lacks real differentiation, so it really struggles to gain any traction, especially in competitive B2B markets.
Speaker 1:Right. It needs to be significantly better, not just marginally.
Speaker 2:Exactly, there's that example in the agricultural sector right Crop enhancements that offered improvements that were statistically significant in trials. But practically Practically the farmer. They were kind of negligible, yeah, not worth the hassle or the cost. It's just not enough to be slightly better. You need a really clear, compelling advantage.
Speaker 1:Give them a real, tangible reason to switch. And the research talks about that utopian illusion too. Right Getting so excited about a new technology, a new material.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That you kind of lose sight of the practical side, how it actually fits into the customer's real world.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, you get captivated by the potential. Think about the early days of, say, high density polyethylene or even the long adoption curve for carbon fiber in aerospace. Took a while. It took a while. The initial focus was on these really exciting properties, but that sometimes blinded people to the real world hurdles, the integration challenges, the risks perceived by the customers who actually had to use it.
Speaker 1:And then there's that other challenge, the drop-in solution idea.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, the drop-in myth.
Speaker 1:The mistaken belief that you can just swap out an old material or component for a new one, nice and easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, without really thinking through the ripple effects, the broader implications across the whole value chain. It's rarely that simple.
Speaker 1:Which I guess leads us neatly into the next potential problem area in these early stages Flawed business models. Spot on, because even if you have a brilliant value proposition, it's kind of useless if you haven't figured out how to actually deliver it effectively and well profitably.
Speaker 2:Precisely, and the business model covers a lot, doesn't it? It's everything from figuring the right channels to actually reach your customers.
Speaker 1:How you get it to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to setting up pricing strategies that work long term and properly forecasting what resources you're actually going to need.
Speaker 1:Okay, what goes wrong there typically?
Speaker 2:Well, a really frequent issue is getting the distribution wrong, inadequate distribution.
Speaker 1:So the route to market.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You could have a genuinely game-changing product, but if your target customers can't easily find it, buy it, get support for it it's likely going to fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just sits on a shelf somewhere, metaphorically.
Speaker 2:Right, the agricultural industry. Again it provides some really vivid examples. There you see innovative solutions really struggling because they couldn't break into or work with the established dealer networks.
Speaker 1:Ah, the existing channels were a barrier.
Speaker 2:They were a barrier. So it's not just about having a channel, it's about having the right channel. One that's actually motivated and equipped to sell and support your specific new offering.
Speaker 1:And the research also mentions value chain obstacles, right Situations where maybe your new product is great for the end customer, but it creates problems or disadvantages for other key players along the way, like distributors or installers, and they resist it.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a really insightful point. How often do companies fail to anticipate who in the value chain might actually see their innovation as a threat and therefore actively, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly work against its adoption. There's that example of a chemical company that tried to move into providing plant construction services and they ran into huge skepticism and resistance from the established engineering firms who saw them as encroaching on their turf. You have to think about the whole ecosystem.
Speaker 1:Right, understand all the players and their motivations. Okay, so we've got strategy, value proposition, business model all critical early foundation stones. What's next in the journey where a potential launch can get derailed?
Speaker 2:Okay, next up stage three in the typical process Prototyping and testing. Rigorous testing.
Speaker 1:Getting something tangible out there.
Speaker 2:Exactly. This is such a pivotal point, because now you can get invaluable customer feedback. They're not just reacting to an idea or a concept, they can actually touch, feel, interact with a version of the product.
Speaker 1:So the feedback becomes much more real.
Speaker 2:Much more real, and a major root cause of failure here is actually poor integration of that feedback.
Speaker 1:Meaning not listening or not acting on it.
Speaker 2:Both. Often it's more than just collecting comments. You need a robust process to actually analyze that feedback, understand it and then genuinely use it to refine the product, maybe even pivot if necessary.
Speaker 1:So it's not just a box ticking exercise asking for feedback. You need a mechanism to use it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the research also really emphasizes testing in diverse real world conditions.
Speaker 1:Not just in the lab.
Speaker 2:Not just in the controlled lab environment, which makes total sense, doesn't it? Especially in B2B, where products often have to perform reliably across a huge range of operating conditions, different climates, different user skill levels.
Speaker 1:Right, the real world is messy, it is.
Speaker 2:And limited testing that doesn't account for that variability that can lead to some really unwelcome surprises after the launch.
Speaker 1:Like the example of the specialty coating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly the coating manufacturer whose product performed beautifully in standard lab tests.
Speaker 1:Looked great on paper.
Speaker 2:Looked great, but then out in the real world, under specific combinations of humidity and temperature that customers actually experienced, it started degrading unexpectedly.
Speaker 1:Ouch, Not what you want after launch day. So thorough, realistic testing with actual customers, vital for validating claims. Okay, then we move to stage four scale up.
Speaker 2:Ah, scale up.
Speaker 1:Taking that successful prototype and making it ready for full-scale production. I imagine that transition brings its own whole set of challenges.
Speaker 2:It absolutely does that leap from making a few prototypes, maybe by hand or in a pilot plant, to full-scale manufacturing. It often throws up completely unforeseen challenges.
Speaker 1:Like what kind of things?
Speaker 2:Well, maintaining consistent quality control at high volume that's a big one. Managing potential cost overruns that didn't show up at smaller scale, Avoiding production delays.
Speaker 1:So planning for that scale up is key.
Speaker 2:Insufficient planning for that critical phase is definitely a common root cause, as is maybe not having the right technical expertise or the right manufacturing infrastructure in place before you need it.
Speaker 1:You need the capability ready.
Speaker 2:Exactly that specialty chemicals. Example again, the new polymer additive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It worked perfectly in the lab, worked in the pilot batch, yeah, but when they tried to scale up production to the full commercial reactors, it exhibited completely unexpected problematic behavior. Different mixing dynamics, temperature gradients, things you only see at scale see it scale.
Speaker 1:So even if you've got a technically brilliant product in the lab, there's absolutely no guarantee you can actually make it consistently cost effectively at the volume and quality needed for the market.
Speaker 2:Precisely Scale-up is a discipline in itself.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then, finally, the last big category of potential failure points to. The research highlights Poor governance.
Speaker 2:Yes, governance.
Speaker 1:This feels a bit different, like the overarching framework that sits across the whole process.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to think about it. It's the framework that ideally supports and guides the entire innovation process. Or, if it's flawed, it undermines everything. It can undermine even the best technical work or the smartest ideas. Effective governance ensures that resources get allocated strategically, that the big decisions get made objectively based on real data and evidence.
Speaker 1:Not just opinions or politics.
Speaker 2:Exactly Not subjective views, or who shouts loudest or, frankly, internal politics. And what's a key governance failure, you see, One really significant one is the inability, or maybe unwillingness, to kill projects that are clearly not working out.
Speaker 1:Pulling the plug early enough.
Speaker 2:Yes, Stopping projects that just aren't viable. We see the sunk cost fallacy all the time.
Speaker 1:I spent so much already I can't possibly stop now.
Speaker 2:That, combined with often a real emotional attachment people develop to their ideas, means these zombie projects we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1:They keep shuffling along.
Speaker 2:They keep shuffling along, limping on far longer than they ever should, just draining valuable time, money and attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we've probably all seen examples of those projects that just won't die, even when all the signs are bad. The research also flags the CEO's pet project phenomenon.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, that's a classic governance issue where maybe personal interest or enthusiasm from the top overrides objective business assessment.
Speaker 1:Dangerous territory.
Speaker 2:Very, which underlines why you need really robust business cases, proper scrutiny and, crucially, adequate funding committed, not just for the R&D part but for the launch too, but specifically for the commercial launch itself. Sometimes that gets underestimated or underfunded, hobbling the product right at the finish line.
Speaker 1:So these governance failures, they're not just about wasting money directly on a bad project.
Speaker 2:No, it's also the opportunity cost, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Ah right, the better projects you could have funded instead.
Speaker 2:Exactly the more promising ventures that didn't get the resources because they were tied up in a zombie project or something that wasn't strategically aligned. Strong governance gives you that essential framework to make the hard calls, the tough decisions yeah, to stop the projects that aren't going to fly and to make sure the ones with real potential get the backing they truly need to succeed.
Speaker 1:Okay so wrapping this up, then backing they truly need to succeed. Okay so wrapping this up then. As we've explored today, it seems pretty clear the reasons behind a disappointing product launch. They often lie much, much deeper than just that final go-to-market strategy, don't they?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It starts way earlier that absence of a clear innovation strategy we talked about.
Speaker 1:Right at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Weak value propositions built on shaky, unvalidated assumptions.
Speaker 1:Not really knowing what the customer needs.
Speaker 2:Flawed business models. Not thinking through the channels or the value chain, getting the delivery wrong. Then inadequate prototyping and testing. Not listening to feedback. Ignoring the real world Problematic scale up, not being ready for production and underpinning it all Poor governance, letting bad projects continue or not funding good ones.
Speaker 1:Scale up, not being ready for production and, underpinning it all, poor governance, letting bad projects continue or not funding good ones properly. Yeah, all these early stage weaknesses. Any one of them could potentially sabotage even a brilliantly executed commercial launch campaign down the line.
Speaker 2:That's the key takeaway. The launch execution might be flawless, but if the foundations are weak, it's still likely to stumble.
Speaker 1:So maybe a point for reflection for everyone listening. Think back to your own experiences with product launches, maybe successes and failures. Have you seen some of these earlier root causes playing out in your own organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe siloed teams not quite sharing those crucial insights between R&D and marketing, for example. Or perhaps leadership not actively championing a really clear innovation vision from the top, or products getting developed without truly deeply understanding what customers need and value? It happens.
Speaker 1:Well, we really hope this deep dive today has given you maybe a new lens, a different perspective to examine product launch outcomes in your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the idea is that by shifting our focus upstream, looking earlier in that innovation process, you can build much stronger foundations for success next time. Exactly Build it right from the start.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for listening to the Arkaro Insights podcast. Thank everyone. And if you found this exploration useful, please do think about sharing it with your colleagues.
