Product development

In today’s fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new product development, speed and flexibility are essential. Companies are increasingly realizing that the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won’t get the job done. Instead, companies in Japan and the United States are using a holistic method—as in rugby, the ball gets passed within […]

The product life cycle measures the likelihood, character, and timing of competitive and market events. A product strategy that includes some sort of...

In this article, co-authors B. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore, founders of the management consulting firm Strategic Horizons, preview the likely characteristics...

Disruption isn't the only approach.

You don’t need a time line; you need a time cone.

In many companies, sales forces and marketers feud like Capulets and Montagues—with disastrous results. Here’s how to get them to lay down their swords.

Design is a team effort, but how do marketing and engineering talk to each other?

Test marketing should be conducted to provide a dress rehearsal for launching of a new product by a company. Test marketing gives information to improve...

Covid-19 has shown how companies can work together to solve problems.

Financial incentives don’t reduce errors. Employees must be passionate about eliminating mistakes.

It takes more than good tools. It takes a complete change of attitude.

Information technology is revolutionizing products. Once composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts, products have become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity in myriad ways. These “smart, connected products”—made possible by vast improvements in processing power and device miniaturization and by the network benefits of ubiquitous wireless connectivity—have unleashed […]

When a customer buys a product he or she goes through a complex process of balancing the price of the product against the perceived benefits, costs, risks, and value in use of the product. If the customer thinks this way when analyzing a purchase, say these authors, it makes great sense for marketers to set […]

Just look at what Google and Groupon have done to boost productivity.

Why is it that we can get into a rental car and know what 43 out of the 45 buttons do, but we can’t figure out how to use call forwarding on the 12-button phone that has been sitting on our desk for 10 years? This wonderful question was raised many years ago by Donald […]

The author of this article says he would be the last one to argue that the approach described here is a complete view of marketing. Then again, he is convinced that the approach enables marketers to achieve three important objectives. First, it enables them to identify the markets in which their companies have the best […]

It’s fashionable today to enthuse over globalized markets and cite glowing examples of standardized marketing winners around the world. True, some markets are globalizing, and more companies are taking advantage of them with signal success. But the rosy reports of these triumphs usually neglect to mention the complexities and risks involved; for every victory in […]

The mission of industrial design has traditionally been to support engineering and marketing by improving the look and feel of a product. But a handful...

It’s an old and familiar way of doing business, especially in new product development and manufacturing. People rush from one crisis to the next, never really fixing problems, just stopping them from getting worse. But a set of principles can actually prevent most fires.

Ever since it became clear that smart design led to the success of many products, companies have been employing it in other areas, from customer experiences,...