Abbie Griffin

Bruce Vojak

Raymond Price

Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms zeros in on the cutting-edge thinkers who repeatedly create and deliver breakthrough innovations and new products in large, mature organizations. These employees are organizational powerhouses who solve consumer problems and substantially contribute to the financial value to their firms. In this pioneering study, authors Abbie Griffin, Raymond L. Price, and Bruce A. Vojak detail who these serial innovators are and how they develop novel products, ranging from salt-free seasonings to improved electronics in companies such as Alberto Culver, Hewlett-Packard, and Procter & Gamble. Based on interviews with over 50 serial innovators and an even larger pool of their co-workers, managers and human resources teams, the authors reveal key insights about how to better understand, emulate, enable, support, and manage these unique and important individuals for long-term corporate success. Interestingly, the book finds that serial innovators are instrumental both in cases where firms are aware of clear market demands, and in scenarios when companies take risks on new investments, creating a consumer need. For over 25 years, research on innovation has taken the perspective that new product development can be managed like any other (complex) process of the firm. While a highly structured and closely supervised approach is helpful in creating incremental innovations, this book finds that it is not conducive to creating breakthrough innovations. The text argues that the drive to routinize innovation has gone too far; in fact, so far as to limit many mature firms' ability to create breakthrough innovations. In today's economy, with the future of so many large firms on the line, this book is a clarion call to businesses to rethink how to nurture and thrive on their innovative workforce.

How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms

Serial Innovators

Sebastian Gurtner

Jelena Spanjol

Provides managers with actionable insight into a select set of innovation constraints and how to best deal with them This PDMA Essentials Book, the third in this series, provides a framework of individual, organizational, and market and societal constraints that guides managers in identifying specific constraints related to their innovation activities and provides them with corresponding tools and practices to overcome and leverage those constraints. Written by a team of international innovation experts, Leveraging Constraints for Innovation: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA is presented in three parts. The first part, Individual Constraints, provides insights into how to: simultaneously solve social and commercial needs for greater creativity; apply a multi-stage approach to overcome knowledge sharing in teams; and anticipate and account for psychographic differences among customers during product launch. In the second part, Organizational Constraints, insights emerge that provide guidance on how to: identify and solve for sources of innovation constraints within the company; implement and manage virtual NPD teams; and effectively organize new service development in professional services. The last part, Market Constraints, examines how to: adapt firm capabilities to overcome constraints preventing consumers in low-end and under-resourced markets from purchasing new products; implement inclusive innovation strategies to address markets constrained by underdeveloped infrastructures; develop solutions for women and other disadvantaged market traders in emerging markets. This book: Is a single comprehensive volume that covers the full spectrum of constraint-related strategies and techniques in a coherent, integrated fashion Provides a set of frameworks, techniques, and tools that can be immediately implemented by individuals across firms Offers how-to knowledge on specific tools and methods as applied to innovating products and services when facing constraints as well as for the development of new business models Integrates problem- and solution-based knowledge to enable companies to develop sustainable growth strategies by leveraging constraints and restrictions toward innovation strategies, processes and offerings Leveraging Constraints for Innovation: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA is an ideal book for all product development professionals, including marketers, engineers, project managers, and business managers in both startups and well-established firms, and from a broad range of industries from heavy manufacturing to the service sector.

New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA

Leveraging Constraints for Innovation

Debra Zahay

results from B2B services

Are customer information systems worth it?

Raymond L. Price

Serdar S. Durmusoglu

Charles H. Noble

Develop a more systematic, human-centered, results-oriented thought process Design Thinking is the Product Development and Management Association's (PDMA) guide to better problem solving and decision-making in product development and beyond. The second in the New Product Development Essentials series, this book shows you how to bridge the gap between the strategic importance of design and the tactical approach of design thinking. You'll learn how to approach new product development from a fresh perspective, with a focus on systematic, targeted thinking that results in a repeatable, human-centered problem-solving process. Integrating high-level discussion with practical, actionable strategy, this book helps you re-tool your thought processes in a way that translates well beyond product development, giving you a new way to approach business strategy and more. Design is a process of systematic creativity that yields the most appropriate solution to a properly identified problem. Design thinking disrupts stalemates and brings logic to the forefront of the conversation. This book shows you how to adopt these techniques and train your brain to see the answer to any question, at any level, in any stage of the development process. Become a better problem-solver in every aspect of business Connect strategy with practice in the context of product development Systematically map out your new product, service, or business Experiment with new thought processes and decision making strategies You can't rely on old ways of thinking to produce the newest, most cutting-edge solutions. Product development is the bedrock of business —whether your "product" is a tangible object, a service, or the business itself — and your approach must be consistently and reliably productive. Design Thinking helps you internalize this essential process so you can bring value to innovation and merge strategy with reality.

Design and Design Thinking

PDMA Essentials

Abbie Griffin

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