Shibumi and BrightFire Launch Application to Help Companies Transform Their Product Innovation Lifecycles

Built for CPG and Process Manufacturers, the BrightFire App for Innovation and Product Management Facilitates Prioritization, Resource Planning and More

NORWALK, CT and SAINT PAUL, MN, May 17, 2022—Shibumi, the leading Strategic Portfolio Management platform, and BrightFire, an innovation consultancy and application developer, today announced the launch of a new application to help companies transform their product innovation lifecycle.

Built on the Shibumi platform, the BrightFire App for Innovation and Product Management provides a single source of truth for managing and measuring the impact of innovation initiatives and new product development, supplanting inefficient manual processes that rely on Excel and PowerPoint. The application helps senior leaders improve cross-functional collaboration among R&D, marketing, packaging, product management, production, and other business units so growth targets are more consistently achieved. Crucially, the application also facilitates prioritization based on modeled outcomes and more effective resource planning.

The launch of the BrightFire App for Innovation and Product Management deepens the value of the Shibumi platform for product management and innovation use cases, especially for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, food and beverage companies, chemical manufacturers and other organizations with high volumes of new products. Research shows that such companies regularly struggle to achieve their financial growth targets, as defined in their strategic innovation plans, due to failure rates that approach 50% both for new strategic initiatives and new product introductions.

The BrightFire App enables these companies to achieve their growth targets for revenue, profit, and volume on a more consistent basis by:

  • Improving innovation investment decision-making amongst cross-functional executives in both portfolio and phase-gate meetings.
  • Enabling product managers and cross-functional teams to plan and execute on all types of innovation and product management initiatives, such as new-to-the-world products, line extensions, cost-savings, quality improvements, packaging or sourcing changes, and promotional projects.
  • Streamlining the creation and management of cross-functional business data across the innovation lifecycle, including product definitions, feasibility assessments, financial models and resource capacity plans.

The BrightFire App enables these new capabilities to be implemented very quickly, in fewer than 30 days for many clients.

“Shibumi has been seeking to accelerate our growth in the innovation and product management market, and we’re excited about the value this new offering will bring to clients,” said Bob Nahmias, co-founder and CEO of Shibumi. “We are thrilled to partner with BrightFire to enable these new ways of working with our platform. This new solution will enable companies to innovate more successfully, reduce time to market, focus their resources on their highest-value product initiatives, and achieve faster and more consistent growth.”

“Leading analyst firms have recognized Shibumi as among the best enterprise solutions for Strategic Portfolio Management, and, as such, they are the ideal platform for companies to use to transform their innovation lifecycles,” said Bryan Seyfarth, CEO of BrightFire. “Our years of experience led us to seek a partner to build out this new way of working for clients that seek to move quickly and efficiently with their transformation efforts. This is especially true for small and medium-sized companies that can’t invest time in lengthy implementations.”

The BrightFire App for Innovation and Product Management is available immediately for purchase and implementation.

About Shibumi:
Founded in 2012, Shibumi is a leader in Strategic Portfolio Management, built for the needs of CIOs, CFOs, EPMOs and operations executives in complex organizations. Our platform provides a single source of truth to optimize decision-making and align the execution of program initiatives at every level of the company with corporate business strategy, unlocking billions of dollars in value. Learn more at https://shibumi.com/.

About BrightFire:
BrightFire offers software and new business practices to help clients transform their innovation lifecycles, from strategy to prioritization to execution. This enables their consistent achievement of strategic objectives and financial growth goals. Our solutions are based on nearly 25 years of working with the world’s leading innovators. This expertise is embodied in our BrightFire App™ for Innovation and Product Management, which drives all our client work, built on the Shibumi® software platform. For more information, call +1.651.301.8125 or visit www.brightfire.co.

1  Bridges 20 Year Results from Surveying Strategy Implementation (2020)

2 Cooper, R.G. (2017). Winning at New Products: Creating Value Through Innovation. Basic Books.