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serves on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge and is the founder and CEO of Business Topology, providing software tools that maximize the ROI of a company's investment in engineering.There are many factors to take into account when launching a new product. This article explores just some of them.Every company wants to launch the``right'' products in the market quickly and retain loyal customers for a long time. So why is this so dif®cult for most companies? Often, product launch failures are due to such ®xable factors as: J poor understanding of user needs; J lack of competitive analysis; J lack of understanding of regulatory or channel issues; J lack of up-front planning; and J poor cross-functional communication.Instead, launching products that meet customer requirements and are competitive in the marketplace requires opposite actions and preparations: J A keen understanding of customer needs and competition.J A robust product development and launch process. J Effective internal preparations for a successful external launch.Successful companies achieve such requirements by learning as much as possible from each product development and launch activity, enabling them to eventually build a portfolio of offerings, with a high ratio of very successful products. In a marketplace in which 75 percent of new products fail, the good news is that such dismal success rates can be measurably improved by carefully focusing on the customer's needs. In this way, success in the marketplace increases as products enjoy higher-thanaverage market acceptance.Speci®cally, launching products that meet customer requirements and that are competitive requires systematic attention to the following areas:

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