Launch lessons from a growing global supplier of industrial equipment

Although the launch phase in New Product Development (NPD) has been recognised as a vital stage affecting the success of new products, it is often poorly managed for various reasons. The purpose of this paper is to understand launch management in its context better by looking at the drivers and bottlenecks of launches inside a young and growing global industrial equipment supplier with the use of a case study method. The findings of the study show that the enforcement of internal marketing, market knowledge use, marketing communications and the organisation of marketing activities and their links to other company functions are the main drivers of a successful launch. The paper presents a la…