During the New Product Development process, build a system of metrics to monitor progress. Include input metrics, such as average time in each stage, as well as output metrics that measure the value of launched products, percentage of new product sales and other figures that provide valuable feedback.
Work done by a system decreases the internal energy of the system, as indicated in the First Law of Thermodynamics. System work is a major focus in the discussion of heat engines.
This law is sometimes taken as the definition of internal energy, and introduces an additional state variable, enthalpy. The first law of thermodynamics allows for many possible states of a system to exist. But experience indicates that only certain states occur.