Plenary 12: Hamsa Thota
NPD practices of small and large Asian companies: PDMA 2012 CPA Survey Results
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Hamsa Thota, Ph.D. President, Innovation Business Development, Inc. |
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Profile
Hamsa Thota is the Founder and President of Innovation Business Development Inc., (IBD) a product innovation management performance consulting and training company in the USA. He was the past president and chairman of the Product Development and Management Association (2005–2006).
In 2005–2010, Dr. Thota consulted with more than 50 Chinese companies as an international expert on innovation at the invitation of Science & Technology Agencies of local Chinese governments. In 2011, Dr. Thota was a visiting Professor at the Management School of the Zhejiang University in China and co-authored “Key Concepts in Innovation” published by Palgrave Macmillan (London and New York). He is an honorary professor at the Geely Automobile Engineering Institute, China. Dr. Thota was a Senior Fellow at the Kellogg Innovation Network, Northwestern University (2004–2011) and a member of the US National Innovation Initiative Strategy Council of the US Council on Competitiveness (2006–2007). He is an advisor to the Art of Learning, a NSF funded research project to improve STEM education with Arts based curriculum (2012–2016). Dr. Thota has 25 years of R&D management experience including vice president, Research, Development and Commercialization (RD&C) in the US Food Industry (Rich Products Corporation, 1976–2000). At Rich Products, he commercialized more than 200 new products (in Consumer and Business to Business channels), transferred technologies into manufacturing and obtained 10 US patents.
Dr. Thota is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (1971). He holds a Ph.D. in Food Science and Dairy Manufacturing from the University of Georgia (1976). In 1975, The American Oil Chemists Society recognized him with “Honored Student Award” for outstanding Ph.D. dissertation. During the 80’s, he studied technology management at the MIT, new product introduction at the Wharton Business School, and negotiation at Harvard. In addition, and alumni of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Abstract
Hamsa will present the first part about PDMA 2012 CPAS results with focus on NPD practices of small and large Asian companies. He will also make a comment that submission of completed PDMA 2012 research surveys by NPD/innovation practitioners who attended his NPD workshops in Pune and Bangalore in 2011 was blocked by their bosses in many large Indian companies. So representation of Indian companies in the PDMA 2012 CPAS (a benchmarking study) was low. This lack of support for participation in the NPD best practices benchmarking study by senior managers in several large Indian companies, located in Pune and Bangalore, illustrates very low awareness about product development/innovation management as an established discipline as well as a lack of appreciation of the value of benchmarking NPD/innovation performance of their companies against the best practice companies as recognized by the PDMA. He will suggest a new study of senior management engagement in NPD in the Indian companies as a new research topic for Indian NPD/innovation researchers. Dr. Hamsa will then follow up with summary of PDMA 2012 CPAS global results and offer specific comments about NPD practices of small and large Asian companies.
