Best Practice is covered in Part 8 of the Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development 10-part October series at the PDMA blog.
The post begins with a review of the PDMA definitions of Best Practice and Benchmarking. Next, the caveat of context is examined.
After contrasting the concepts of correlation and causation, the system types of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic (popularized by Dave Snowden at Cognitive-Edge) are defined in terms of cause and effect relationships in NPD.
The detrimental connotations in this post include:
- Mistaking correlation for causation
- Assuming that best practices (which are derived from past practices) can be applied to future development
The post concludes by contrasting past practices and future capabilities in New Product Development.