Resources

 

 


Recommended resources organized by type and topic. For some we provide our own summary and review. If you'd like to recommend one please contact us. We'd love to hear about it.

We add material to these pages periodically so it may be worth bookmarking or checking back here on occasion to see what's new.

 

Topics

Branding
Design
Innovation
Management
Marketing
Product Development
Strategy
VOC / Primary Market Research

 

BRANDING

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market
Gerald Zaltman
Harvard Business School Press, 2003

COMMENT: An outstanding look at how people really think and make decisions. Instead of using psychological or sociological inference this is the first time I have seen truly direct evidence. That is, results based on MRI scans of the braing. After a condeming indictment of traditional market research he talks about how to communicate with the subconscious where decisions are made. -- Alan

Recommend a Branding reference.

 

DESIGN

The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman
Basic Books, 2002

COMMENT: An update of the 1988 classic written by this cognitive scientist who became the VP of Advanced Technology at Apple. It's a must read for user-centered design. -- Alan

Emotional Design
Donald A. Norman
Basic Books, 2004

COMMENT: Norman's prior work was focused on rational usability. He updates his thinking here to include emotion which is now known to be an inseparable part of cognition. -- Alan

Recommend a Design reference.

 

INNOVATION

Democratizing Innovation
Eric Von Hippel
The MIT Press, 2005

COMMENT: Eric has been studying lead-user innovation for years. That is users whose needs are not met by existing products adapting them or inventing new. Going beyond explanation he shows how user-centered innovation is a growing trend that will have widespread impacts. -- Alan

They Made America
Harold Evans
Little, Brown and Co., 2004

COMMENT: Innovators are those who bring inventions to reality. This is a fascinating compendium of stories of those who brought change to the world from the steam engine to the search engine. Each vignet is a great read alone but Evans weaves them together into a rich history that shows how these people influenced each other. It's well illustrated, full of lessons and hard to put down. -- Alan

The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen
Harvard Business School Press, 1997

COMMENT: The now classic study of how industries are disrupted. This book defines the problem well but is a little weak on the solution. -- Alan

The Innovator's Solution
Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor
Harvard Business School Press, 2003

COMMENT: After pondering the problem a few more years Christensen realizes that the disruption is as much or more from a new business model rather than technology. He shows how to disrupt a market by enabling a lower skill level of user or addressing a need of people who do not now buy your type of product. -- Alan

Managing the Risks of Product Innovation
Alan Chachich
Cutter IT Journal, Vol. 17, No. 11, Nov. 2004
Retrieve paper.

COMMENT: My view of a wide range of technical and managerial risks that impact innovation and how to handle them. -- Alan

Recommend an Innovation reference.

 

MANAGEMENT

Engineering and Product Development Management
Stephen C. Armstrong
Cambridge University Press, 2001

COMMENT: This book focuses on managing engineering and development processes. The author combines information from several bodies of knowledge to present an integrated approach with overlapping processes that is faster and more efficient than the traditional serial engineering approach. -- Alan

Next Generation Product Development
Michael E. McGrath
McGraw-Hill, 2004

COMMENT: The creator of the PACE (Product and Cycle-time Excellence) process presents a new process for a world redefined by ubiquitous information technology. -- Alan

The Board of Directors: Vital Partner for a VOC Culture
Ralph E. Grabowski
Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) 9th Annual Voice of the Customer (VoC) Conference, San Diego CA, December 4-6, 2006.
Retrieve presentation.

COMMENT: Case studies and data to convince the Board of Directors of the need to spend on front-end marketing. Questions the board should ask to create a more customer centered organization. A practical resource for both management and those working to get management buy-in. -- Alan

Recommend a Management reference.

 

MARKETING

Who Is Going To Buy The Darn Thing?
Ralph E. Grabowski
Boston, June 21, 1995, IEEE Electro International Conference Proceedings: 69-96.
Retrieve paper.

COMMENT: Ralph presents unique data correlating commercial success with the balance between spending on marketing versus engineering. He shows that spending as much or more on marketing than engineering produces spectacular success. Conversely that spending less than a tenth as much on marketing as engineering yields catastrophic failure. -- Alan

Recommend a Marketing reference.

 

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Flexible Product Development, Building Agility for Changing Markets
Preston G. Smith
Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, 2007

COMMENT: Someone finally translates lessons learned in the agile software world for generic product development. He shows how to make changes late in the development process to manage risks and react to fast moving markets without disrupting the development or the cost. For more, see my blog entry from Sept. 2007 -- Alan

___________________________________________
The Product Development Management Association provides a great set of resources covering a wide range of essential topics.

The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development
Edited by Kenneth B. Kahn, George Castellion, and Abbie Griffin
John Wiley and Sons, 2nd ed., 2005

COMMENT: Over 600 pages divided on to 6 parts: Before starting, Organizing, Starting, Developing, Finishing, and PDMA research on NPD. -- Alan

The PDMA Toolbook of New Product Development
Edited by Paul Belliveau, Abbie Griffin, and Stephen Somermeyer
John Wiley and Sons, 2002

COMMENT: 16 chapters in 4 basic tool sets: Project leader tools to start, Tools for anytime, Process owner tools, and Portfolio tools. -- Alan

The PDMA Toolbook 2 of New Product Development
Edited by Paul Belliveau, Abbie Griffin, and Stephen Somermeyer
John Wiley and Sons, 2004

COMMENT: 17 chapters in 4 basic tool sets: Organizational tools, Tools for the fuzzy front end, Tools for managing NPD process, and Tools for Portfolio and Pipeline. -- Alan

Recommend a Product Development reference.

 

STRATEGY

Blue Ocean Strategy
W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Harvard Business School Press, 2005

COMMENT: A practical and thought provoking book about how to find or create new markets to escape the competitive rat race. A good read if you don't want to be competing on price. -- Alan

The New Law of Demand and Supply
Rick Kash
Doubleday, 2001

COMMENT: Kash takes a bigger view of which customer focus is just a part. His 6 step approach anticipates your highest margin segments so that you are satisfying demand instead of pumping out supply and hoping it will sell. Information technology is shifting power to the consumer so these concepts are worth thinking about. -- Alan

Recommend a Strategy reference.

 

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER (Primary Market Research)

Hijacking the Voice of the Customer
Gerry Katz
PDMA Visions Magazine, January 2006.
Retrieve paper.

COMMENT: Gerry makes clear what VOC is, and what it isn't. I recommend it if you are getting started or confused by "experts" who don't seem to be using the same vocabulary . -- Alan

How Customers Think
Gerald Zaltman
Harvard Business School Press, 2003

COMMENT: An outstanding look at how people really think and make decisions. Instead of using psychological or sociological inference this is the first time I have seen truly direct evidence. That is, results based on MRI scans of the braing. After a condeming indictment of traditional market research he talks about how to communicate with the subconscious where decisions are made. -- Alan

Customer Visits
Edward F. McQuarrie
Sage Publications, 1998

COMMENT: The classic how-to for planning and conducting customer visits, a key tool of VOC. -- Alan

Voices into Choices
Gary Burchill and Christina Hepner Brodie
Joiner (Center for Quality Management), 1997

COMMENT: A very practical and user-friendly step-by-step workbook you can use to conduct a VOC study. -- Alan

Customer-centric Product Definition
Sheila Mello
PDC Professional Publishing, 2002

COMMENT: Another practical guide that explains key concepts as well as offering several tools for planning, conducting, and analyzing a VOC project. -- Alan

The Voice of the Customer
Chapter 7 of The PDMA Toolbook 2 for New Product Development Gerald M. Katz
John Wiley and Sons, 2004

COMMENT: An excellent summary of VOC concepts as well as practical instruction for the key activities. -- Alan

The Voice of the Customer
Abbie Griffin and John Hauser
Marketing Science 12, 1, Winter: 1-27

COMMENT: The classic paper that defined the term "voice of the customer." Useful data showing the relation between sample size and fraction of customer needs discovered. -- Alan

Recommend a VOC reference.