Dan Adams book, New Product Blueprinting, exists for a simple reason: Companies that supply other businesses not end-consumers generally have product development processes that are seriously out of date.
The author points out that most B2B and B2C companies rely on the same books, conferences and experts to improve their new product development. But if you are a B2B supplier, you have enormous advantages over consumer goods producers: Your customers are more insightful, rational, interested and fewer in number.
When you develop products for other companies rather than end-consumers you can have an intelligent, peer-to-peer dialogue about their needs. If you make hose, for instance, you could have one conversation with a homeowner about his garden hose... but quite a different one with an engineer about his hydraulics hose.
This B2B difference allows you to 1) uncover customers unspoken needs, and 2) engage them so they re primed to buy your new product. Just try engaging a million toothpaste consumers!
New Product Blueprinting (the book) sets forth a thorough and compelling description of New Product Blueprinting (the process). It brings crystal-clarity to the fuzzy front end of B2B product development, with breakthrough methods not found elsewhere. Dan Adams has taught these methods to some of the largest firms around the world, and now brings them to you... with practical steps you can begin implementing when you close this book.
This book is for those delivering business-to-business products and services (B2B), not consumer goods (B2C), Adams writes. It is for those offering specialties, not commodities. It is for practitioners working to move their companies forward, not new product theorists and academicians. And it is for those wishing to transform their business, not apply a short-term patch.
The book is divided into three parts: Part I explains why it is targeted only at B2B suppliers and why it appeals to those with a builder mind-set striving to maximize long-term profits.
Part II leads the reader through the mental journey a professional must complete before adopting New Product Blueprinting a journey that can be summed up in five questions: 1. What s wrong? 2. What should be fixed? 3. Where should we work? 4. How should we work? and 5. How do we make this happen?
Part III moves through the seven steps that make up New Product Blueprinting:
1. Market Research
2. Discovery Interviews
3. Preference Interviews
4. Side-by-Side Testing
5. Product Objectives
6. Technical Brainstorming
7. Business Case
These are tough times, writes Adams. But exciting times. In the last decades of the 20th century, companies discovered they could reach unimagined levels of manufacturing quality and productivity. I believe the next frontier is to dramatically improve the way we develop new products. Future competitive advantage will come from what we design, not how faithfully or efficiently we reproduce it. Why be satisfied with great quality and productivity for making products customers yawn at... especially if competitors have the same quality and productivity.
As Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma were to operational improvement, New Product Blueprinting is to new product success. It requires an investment in people and a commitment to do things differently. But then, that s how we differentiate, isn't it?
For more information, please visit newproductblueprinting.com.
The author points out that most B2B and B2C companies rely on the same books, conferences and experts to improve their new product development. But if you are a B2B supplier, you have enormous advantages over consumer goods producers: Your customers are more insightful, rational, interested and fewer in number.
When you develop products for other companies rather than end-consumers you can have an intelligent, peer-to-peer dialogue about their needs. If you make hose, for instance, you could have one conversation with a homeowner about his garden hose... but quite a different one with an engineer about his hydraulics hose.
This B2B difference allows you to 1) uncover customers unspoken needs, and 2) engage them so they re primed to buy your new product. Just try engaging a million toothpaste consumers!
New Product Blueprinting (the book) sets forth a thorough and compelling description of New Product Blueprinting (the process). It brings crystal-clarity to the fuzzy front end of B2B product development, with breakthrough methods not found elsewhere. Dan Adams has taught these methods to some of the largest firms around the world, and now brings them to you... with practical steps you can begin implementing when you close this book.
This book is for those delivering business-to-business products and services (B2B), not consumer goods (B2C), Adams writes. It is for those offering specialties, not commodities. It is for practitioners working to move their companies forward, not new product theorists and academicians. And it is for those wishing to transform their business, not apply a short-term patch.
The book is divided into three parts: Part I explains why it is targeted only at B2B suppliers and why it appeals to those with a builder mind-set striving to maximize long-term profits.
Part II leads the reader through the mental journey a professional must complete before adopting New Product Blueprinting a journey that can be summed up in five questions: 1. What s wrong? 2. What should be fixed? 3. Where should we work? 4. How should we work? and 5. How do we make this happen?
Part III moves through the seven steps that make up New Product Blueprinting:
1. Market Research
2. Discovery Interviews
3. Preference Interviews
4. Side-by-Side Testing
5. Product Objectives
6. Technical Brainstorming
7. Business Case
These are tough times, writes Adams. But exciting times. In the last decades of the 20th century, companies discovered they could reach unimagined levels of manufacturing quality and productivity. I believe the next frontier is to dramatically improve the way we develop new products. Future competitive advantage will come from what we design, not how faithfully or efficiently we reproduce it. Why be satisfied with great quality and productivity for making products customers yawn at... especially if competitors have the same quality and productivity.
As Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma were to operational improvement, New Product Blueprinting is to new product success. It requires an investment in people and a commitment to do things differently. But then, that s how we differentiate, isn't it?
For more information, please visit newproductblueprinting.com.
