Factors Influencing New Product Development at Yahoo!: A Report

This report provides an analysis of Yahoo!'s new product development (NPD) process. It begins with a background of the company and its market position, highlighting key products and services. The report then delves into factors crucial for NPD success, including firm-related, project-related, product-related, and market-related factors. It examines Yahoo!'s NPD practices, including design development methodologies and open innovation strategies. The report also identifies areas for improvement, such as the need for clear strategic direction and a focus on innovation. The author reflects on the learning experience, including challenges faced during data collection and team collaboration, and discusses the impact of these learnings on personal and professional development. The report concludes with a list of references used in the analysis.

Slide 2
Background on the company/market
Yahoo! is a web service provider that is established in the year of 1995 by David Filo. Headquarter of this
company is located in California, USA. In the year of 1990s, Yahoo was the revolution the internet. In
the year of 2017, Verizon communication has acquired Yahoo. Along with this, the business does not
include the stakes at the Alibaba group as well as Yahoo Japan. It is presently headed through CEO
Marissa Mayer (Alexa, 2019).
Slide 3
Yahoo! facilitates the search engine and portal associated services. In current times, Yahoo facilitates
over 20 products and services like Yahoo entertainment, Yahoo mail, online mapping, Yahoo Answers,
Tumblr, Yahoo News, advertising, Flickr, and Yahoo Finance (Chris Wofford, 2013).
Slide 4
As per the web analytics facilitator SimilarWeb as well as, Alexa, Yahoo site has over 7 billion opinions
per month. It creates a wider range of news as well as media site. Though, it was primarily renowned for
search engine channel. It is presently considered as a media corporation. According to rating of Alexa,
Yahoo domain the websites and are ranked 8th internationally in the year of 2019,. Yahoo provides multi-
lingual boundary. This report analyses the new product development processes as well as practices. It
also recommends the strategy on the basis of analysis (Floren, Frishammar, Parida 2018).
Slide 5
Factors that are important for their NPD/NPDS
The stage demonstrates that new product strategy links the process of new product development with
the objectives of the company as well as directs the guidelines and idea generation. In this way, the
generation of the idea is seeking towards products that obey the objectives. Along with this, screening is
an initial assessment for determining which ideas can be pertinent in depth. The business assessment
further assesses the chosen ideas as per the return on investment, sales volume and profits. Under
development phase, ideas could be turned into a product that can be producible and demonstrable.
Along with this, developed products can be tested as well as it is based on the verification regarding
potential results and commercialized products (Gabrielle, 2014).
Slide 6
Firm-related factors:
Innovation experience, a culture of the firm, organizational structure, Research & Development (R&D)
unit/team as well as the strategy of a firm with respect to innovation is a primary factor in this section.
Project related factors:

A project can be complementary with the present resources and management style has an impact on
the viability of the technology in the context of innovative projects. Along with this, resources like sales,
research & development unit, market research competencies as well as, production services are
contributed to the compatibility of projects.
Product-related factors:
An effective innovation attains the need of customers on several characteristics at the same time. For
example, quality, the convenience of use, relative price, after sales cost as well as backward
compatibility. Eventually, the product quality is a key criterion for achievement (Gary, 2015).
Market-related factors:
There is different sub-factor that contributes toward market factor for effective innovation, timing to
market as well as awareness about the target market. There is synergy among research and
development as well as marketing strengths is also significant (Nadia, 2011).
Slide 7
There are different factor that may influence the effectiveness of the company in terms of innovation
and offering of a new product. There are some factors that play a vital role in the company. This section
facilitates the study on different factors that can impact on new product development at Yahoo!
In Yahoo! design development procedure is explained as given below:
It should use product development methodologies as well as tightly integrated development teams,
along with this, continuous prototyping with development and short design rehearsals. Similar business
techniques are required for relating the design practices to financial products in the context of project
team members and designers. The company can encourage consistency as well as avoids the repetition
across the products as well as teams via techniques and blueprint libraries (Gary, 2015).
Slide 8 How can they improve
According to the existing policy of CEO, open innovation should be considered for encouraging
the workforces to better creativity as well as innovation can be a least concerned strategy by
management. As one of ex-workforce Michelle Sollicito, there is lack of Yahoo’s innovation
because it never had higher CTO. For too long, they saw themselves as a media firm and not a
technology corporation (Gabrielle, 2014).
There is a need for clear direction in Yahoo. It can be considered as a strategic level and by a
top authority that is visionary as well as stubborn. Leadership that creates right calls as well as
emphasizes on what issues deliberately. According to CEO Mayer, open innovation is been
injected and it can be a major factor that aids in avoiding the struggle of the company. As Yahoo
has product knowledge team, dedicated R&D as well as stable management, the company
should practice the resources strategically by instructing to the right path as compared to

repeating the same practice that was followed for longer time (Floren, Frishammar, Parida
2018).
Slide9
There is specific accountability regarding uplifting the goodwill as well as an image of the firm
that came through a constant transformation in top management, fundamental discharge of
workforces, as well as, closing some centers. Moreover, freedom in relation to creativity is strict
policies that are executed by the project as well as time policies. It tried to emphasize higher on
content as well as becoming the media corporation as compared to Tech Corporation (Chris
Wofford, 2013).
Slide 10
Throughout the assessment 3, I have developed my understanding regarding factors and
practices that may impact on new product development. I have learned that Yahoo! is keen
toward business growth under innovation as well as disruptive business models. Moreover, I
have increased my understanding that Yahoo focuses on increasing the effectiveness as well as
the efficiency of its employees by freedom as well as flexibility (Alexa, 2019).
Slide 11
Throughout the investigation, I have faced difficulties in data collection about the company due
to lack of resources. During the research, some of my team members did not cooperate with
me due to lack of communication. Hence, I need to make an improvement in my
communication skills. I have also enhanced my understanding of the failure factors such as
Tapping all possible market, and Constant Changes in Staffing and Hiring. This learning would be
beneficial for me to improve my personal and professional career (Chris Wofford, 2013).
Slide 12: References
• Alexa,(2019). Alexa.com. Retrieved from https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yahoo.com
• Andrew McDermott. (2019, Feb 28). ‘The top 7 management styles: which ones are
most effective?’ [blog post]. Retrieved from
https://www.workzone.com/blog/management-styles/
• Chris Wofford. (2013, Nov 20). ‘5 key strategies for innovation from Yahoo! Ceo Marissa
Mayer’ [blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.ecornell.com/5-key-strategies-for-
innovation-from-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer/
• Floren H, Frishammar J, Parida V, et al, (2018), Critical success factors in early new
product development: a review and a conceptual model, International Entrepreneurship

and management journal 14, (2), pp 411-427 Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-017-0458-3
• Gabrielle Benefield. (2014). Scrum case studies. Retrieved from
http://www.scrumcasestudies.com/yahoo/
• Gary P, Pisano. (2015). You need an innovation strategy. Retrieved from
http://cegllcstrategies.com/pdfs/You_Need_an_%20Innovation_Strategy_5.pdf
• Gerben van der P, Cees van B, Alfred K. (2013). Success and failure of innovation: a
literature review. International journal of innovation management, 7 (3), 1-30.
• Jens Martin Skibsted. (2014 Mar 03). ‘Why open innovation could be Marissa Mayer’s
downfall at yahoo?’ [blog post]. Retrieved from
https://www.fastcompany.com/1670416/why-open-innovation-could-be-marissa-
mayers-downfall-at-yahoo
• Jones and Bartlett Learning LLC. (2015). Booz, Allen and Hamilton’s new product process.
Retrieved from http://samples.jbpub.com/9780763782610/82610_CH02_PASS02.pdf
• Michelle Solicito. (2015, June 13). Why Yahoo not as innovative as Google? [blog
comment]. Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Yahoo-not-as-innovative-
as-Google
• Nadia Bhuiyan. (2011). A framework for successful new product development. Journal
of industrial engineering and management, 4 (4), 746-770. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.334
• Shane Ferro, (2016, Feb 05). ‘Why a man is suing Yahoo for Sexism’ [blog post].
retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mans-suing-yahoo-for-gender-
bias_us_56b25e1ce4b08069c7a5d2ad
• The Economic Times. (2019). The Economic Times. Retrieved from
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/target-market