Execution isn’t the problem. Blind spots are.
40% of new products miss the mark–costing millions.
Don’t gamble with innovation. We reveal hidden risks before they lead to product development failures.
The Three Most Critical Blind Spots
While my research identifies over a dozen hidden risks, these three stand out as primary drivers of the 40% failure rate:
Missing the Market Target: Companies often view customer needs through product features and technologies rather than the desired results customers seek.
Unjustified Optimism: Teams often don’t realize that their forecasts, schedules, and budgets are overly optimistic, even when they try to be conservative.
Execution Anchors: Incentives, cognitive biases, and competition lock in aggressive plans up front, making them difficult to change even when new information becomes available, virtually guaranteeing market failures and overruns before projects even start.
As featured in the book Blind Spots: Why Product Development Projects Miss Their Targets, you’re gambling with your R&D budget if you don’t identify and mitigate these risks before projects start. Let’s ensure your product development projects hit their targets. Reach out to discuss a strategy briefing, workshop, or keynote presentation.
The framework that sees what traditional plans miss.
Introducing Targemetrics
Most project plans look perfect on paper–until they don’t. Targemetrics exposes the hidden risks and unrealistic assumptions that drive an average 40% failure rate in new product development. We help you identify these threats early, validate your data, and pivot with absolute confidence.
Services
The Three Pillars of Risk-Proof Product Development
We eliminate the friction between your vision and what you execute from market needs through market launch.
Solve the Right Problems
Stop building solutions that miss the mark with customers.
Targemetrics moves you beyond gut feel and assumptions, providing the hard evidence that aligns new products with critical customer needs.
Predict the “Unpredictable”
Most overruns are predictable—they just aren't predicted.
We identify where resource bottlenecks and hidden risks are quietly draining your budget, so you can stabilize your plan before it unravels.
Secure the Payoff
Innovation is only successful if it scales profitably after launch.
We help you align customer value with business outcomes, eliminating missed market targets and reduced growth, and driving sustainable margins.
Book
Amazon
Description
Blind Spots explains why many product launches fail due to hidden assumptions and optimism bias, and shows how to avoid these traps.
Reviews
About the Author
Paul Streit is a product development expert who helps organizations understand why and how decision blind spots cause product development projects to miss market, schedule, and cost targets – and what to do about them. He has led new product initiatives across four high-tech industries, ranging from early-stage startups to billion-dollar enterprises and teams of more than 1,000 people. His work spans both one-of-a-kind innovations and high-volume, mass-market products.
He holds degrees in biomedical and electronics engineering from Duke University and an MBA from the University of Miami. Paul is the author of Blind Spots: Why Product Development Projects Miss Their Targets.
Paul spends his free time traveling, skiing, sailing, reading, and occasionally relearning how to land a small plane. He and his wife live in Denver, Colorado, with their adorable dog, who rules the house.
Speaking
A clip of Paul Streit discussing decision blind spots and how they cause chronic product development failures and overruns.
Paul Streit explains why new products often miss their market, schedule, and cost targets—and what leaders can do to improve outcomes with clear insights.
Targemetrics keynotes are designed for audiences that want practical, analytical frameworks, not buzzwords. Whether addressing a boardroom of 10 or a conference of 1,000, Paul delivers the roadmap to navigate high-stakes product development with confidence.
FAQs
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Agile and Lean tell you how fast the car is moving; Targemetrics tells you if the road ahead is actually there and clear to travel.
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Most metrics show outcomes after they happen. Targemetrics focuses on early risk signals that reveal trouble before projects miss their market, schedule, or cost targets.
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Some uncertainty is inevitable. Unnecessary surprises are not. Targemetrics helps teams identify where uncertainty matters most, earlier, so decisions prevent market failures and overruns rather than reacting to them.
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It’s not for organizations that believe product and project management can prevent development projects from missing their targets. They can’t—because most development plans falsely assume a level of determinism that rarely exists. Targemetrics is best for leaders who want clear insights in the presence of uncertainty, not unjustified optimism and false assumptions.
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No, not at all. The metrics and analytical techniques are designed for real-time use by development teams and leaders as they complete work and make decisions. Targemetrics accelerates better outcomes by focusing attention on hidden risks based on false assumptions and unjustified optimism, and prevents rework and late changes that consume far more time than early analysis.
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Identifying a blind spot often provides immediate clarity on a pending decision. While long-term cultural shifts take time, the analytical framework is designed to provide 'day-one' insights into project risks that were previously invisible.
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We partner with your leadership and development teams to apply the Targemetrics framework directly to your highest-stakes projects. This identifies the hidden blind spots—market, schedule, and cost—before they become crises.
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Whether you are managing one-of-a-kind innovations or high-volume mass-market products, we tailor the application to your specific complexity.