Customer Reviews

Creativity in Product Innovation

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This book does an excellent job of showing how to systematize the process of creating new product ideas. I would consider it a derivative of the TRIZ process started by a Russian engineer, Altshuller. In effect, this book summarizes up several of the techniques proposed by Altshuller, and later by others. The authors present these systematic techniques in a very understandable format... something that Altshuller and others have often failed to do.

The authors also demonstrate that you can get better results by looking inward to the product itself, rather than listening outward to the customer ("the voice of the customer"). The Sony Walkman is probably the best example of that. I was skeptical of this sweeping generalization, but the authors provide lots of research to back up their statements.

The book thus presents 4 methods (called "Templates") to generate ideas for an existing product. Let me give you an example by using an illustration from the book using perhaps the simplest method: the Displacement Template. Here you first diagram all the components of a chair (for example). It is composed of the Back, the Seat, the Legs, and Person sitting on it. You then remove one of the important components (the Legs). You are now faced with a product that just has the Back and the Seat. You now try to derive a marketable product from this idea. This is called "solution spotting", when you identify the form of the product first, and then search for a need for this product. In this example, the new product without legs, could be sold as a beach chair.

Although this simplistic example may seem trivial it illustrates the concept that the product came from WITHIN the product itself and not from the market. It also can be seen to be systematic... in that you identify the components of the existing product and then you systematically drop important components one by one. In comparision, listening to the market would take you perhaps to corporate customers who would not be thinking of lounge chairs for the beach.

But more importantly, this book attacks the whole concept of brainstorming sessions. They call this "random" generation of ideas. This has what we have largely been doing for thousands of years. They propose, and then demonstrate with their research results, that a systematic approach (using their Templates) produces ideas that have a higher probability of success.

The authors offer a GREAT bibiliography for each chapter. That alone will keep me busy for at least 2 months. The book is easy to read, but it tends to be a little too "researchy" in spots.

The book presents a systematic method to create ideas for advertisements. I couldn't see where their methodology did better than mimicry of good ads. However, they did offer a way to analyze the components of good ads. One other criticism in this section on ads... the people that rated the ads were largely advertising professionals... and not the marketplace itself. Therefore, the ads tended to be trivial... at least compared to the results you could get using the techniques for products.

I am convinced that this systematic method is very good for developing new products. I have tried it on services and it did trigger some great ideas, although I found services to be more difficult to analyze.

Its a deep book for people serious about inventing things. Its not a rah-rah book that presents motivational messages.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The authors have contributed largely to this field of inventiveness.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

Creativity in Product Development is a welcome and necessary addition to the body of literature providing tactics, strategies and methods for marketing and product development professionals. This book is a must buy for any professional or student of business who needs or wants to stay on the cutting edge of business thought and processes. Simple stated, Goldenberg and Mazursky, through their presentation, evaluation and paradigms of Systematic Innovative Thinking, shake up the traditional approaches to product development and marketing and challenge us to look at ourselves and our world from an entirely new perspective.

As our society has become more consumer driven, advertisers, marketing professionals, and leading manufacturers have presented an abundance of new products. Most of these products are doomed for failure as they fail to offer any genuine innovation, meet any real consumer need, or appear to be me-too products with a few additional bells and whistles. Add to this the ever growing cynicism of today's consumers, as marketers try ever trick in the book to gain even a nano-second of consumer attention, and our need for new methodologies becomes abundantly clear.

Thankfully, here's a book that instead of tricks, pop wisdom and pep talks, provides us with a systematic methodology for the development of new products. Moreover, it provides us with an entirely new way of approaching product development - through the product itself. Whereas up until now we have been focused on the perceived needs of the consumer, and the feedback consumers give, we have been limiting our imaginations to adding lemon to Diet Coke and Frosting our Cheerios.

Jacob Goldenberg and David Mazursky challenge us to view the process from a new perspective, to look at the core product and explore - through their systematic paradigms - the possibilities, leading us to product options that simply would not have occurred to us had we engaged in the standard product innovation routines of brainstorming and products add-ons. The Goldenberg and Mazursky system opens new combinations of variables that allow for some highly practical new product ideas. The process of discovery, aside from being extremely productive, also becomes dynamic, drawing in the creativity and business instincts of those involved.

The result is a higher level of creativity. With good business practice, this can be translated to more appealing products and greater profits. Companies should rejoice at an engaging new system for product development. Marketing professionals should be excited about the new products with real innovations that they will be able to start selling without having to create smoke screens. Consumers should be thrilled at the new products that will soon be offered.

Innovation is the engine that drives progress. We are fortunate to be living during the time of the greatest surge in innovation in human history. Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, along come Goldenberg and Mazursky and show us how we can do it even better. Creativity in Product Development outlines the innovation science of the next 100 years. Personally, I can't wait to see what it yields.

This book was wonderful....I really didn't expect much given one reviewer who said the book was "dry" but the book greatly exceeded my expectations and offered me a revolutionary way to think and to run my life. I found the book to be OVERFLOWING with insites which not only make sense but can be easily applied in business. In fact, I have already applied them! So in sum the book has already had an impact on my life.... READ IT AND USE IT.

Don't let the slightly academic style of the book put you off; it is nothing short of a revolution in creative thinking.

If you're ever so slightly fed up of brainstorming, pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box and sitting on beanbags waiting for creative inspiration, then this is the book for you.

It turns out that creative solutions are not just the inspired, almost mystical outpourings of a few talented creatives but universal patterns that can be accurately reproduced once you know the recipe.

Amazing as it sounds, Goldenberg and Mazursky have discovered the science underneath the art of creative thinking. This is a science not based on the psychology of creative genius but on discovering the 'DNA' of existing creative solutions and turning it into a simple recipe card of repeatable steps to producing a specific type of creative solution.

It seems, there are a number of surprises in this new science of creativity. Contrary to popular perception; truly creative solutions are to be found 'inside the box' of the problem; listening to the 'voice of the product' not the 'voice of the consumer' leads to the most successful new products and mental constraints not untrammelled freedom is the best route to creative solutions.

Not only is this book a major contribution to those involved with innovation but by discovering the science within creativity, the authors open up the exciting possibility of being able to teach creative thinking to researchers, business people and children alike.

Maybe one day, it will become a rudimentary part of the national curriculum?

In a situation where a company is looking for alternatives to a new product or service, is the consumer a rich source of creative alternatives?

According to the authors, the answer is NO. They maintain that ideas can be generated in two ways: based on creative thinking or based on market information (or the consumers). They believe that the consumers may provide information concerning the improvement of existing products but they cannot help in creating truly original products, since consumers may be a reliable source of information for present needs, but they are not able to predict future needs.

In the book you will find the Creativity Templates approach, in which they trace the common characteristics behind known creative ideas or products and based on them create new products or ideas. According to this approach: "Over time, market needs and desires are 'mapped' or 'encoded' into a product, the configuration of which becomes a physical representation of past selection of the market or an 'echo' of past customers' preferences. (p.23)

Therefore, the Templates approach places the product itself as a tool to predict the market trends and the characteristics a new product should have to answer future needs of customers. While the approach applies familiar characteristics to new products, it also has a surprise element, since the characteristics are new concerning the specific product; this produces an effect of "unrecognized familiarity".

Concluding, the book is a good reading and has very good ideas, or directions, in order to create original and interesting products, but I would not focus too much on it. I still believe that consumers are the most expert innovators.

Here is the first sentence in the book "Creativity Templates dipict discernable, measureable, and learnable regularities or patterns in innovations and novelties emergence." Huh?

This is followed by sentence after paragraph after page of double-speak that makes this book a real pain to get through. It does contain novel and interesting concepts, but why not make it readable? There are many other books out there on this subject that are a pleasure to read. I'd pass this one by unless your professor gives it to you as an assignment.

I use Goldenberg and Mazursky's "creativity templates" in teaching my MBA classes good habits for coming up with new product ideas. They like the idea of templates - a few concrete and specific ways of coming up with new product ideas by thinking about the product attributes in a novel way. For example, "replacement" - the replacement template removes one attribute of a product but has the same function served by something other feature. I illustrate this concept with a high chair with no legs - it sits directly on an adult-sized dining chair, which provides a different way to keep the baby off the ground, so to speak.

Although the ideas behind the book are excellent, the authors' writing style is wordy and complex, not at all easy to follow. It's a shame, because business students could really benefit from the template idea. I roll my eyes at the thought of actually asking students to buy it, but I think the ideas the authors have are otherwise worth the price of the book.

Forget all you know about creativity! This book realy amazed me with clear-cut method to improve creatvity skills in my job. Most recommended!

A little creativity by the authors would have been helpful in trying to plow through the pages. This book is just bland! After the first two chapters I simply skimmed the rest of the book. Any meaningful information was lost in a poor execution. Save your money and buy something else.