Customer Reviews

Simplifying Innovation: Doubling speed to market and new product profits - with your existing resources

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mike Dalton does an excellent job of showing new product development managers how to avoid stagnation and successfully navigate between the time and resource killing traps of over-enthusiasm for every new opportunity and overly-complicated reviews. Mike captures the frustration that comes with spreading people across too many projects and never seeing anything make it to market and then details a way to work out of that situation using techniques that will generate faster returns. Everyone who feels resource constrained should read this book and then re-evaluate their situation from a TOC perspective.

If all the Theory of Constraints ever gave the world was the creation of the "business novel," that would have been a great gift. In fact, TOC provides foundational concepts that serve to focus and guide improvement in every aspect of business. The latest topic, new product design and launch, is treated in business novel form, by Michael Dalton. As a novel, it's about as good as The Goal, Chritical Chain, and it's other cousins. As an introduction to TOC approaches to non-product systems, it is excellent. Simplifying Innovation does double duty, first by introducing the theory of constraints to those for whom it is a new way of thinking, and second by teasing out the potential bottlenecks in the new product development process. While the book is review for those well schooled in TOC, the extension of the ideas into the crucial world of growth through innovation is worth the effort.

Mike Dalton's Simplifying Innovation is an ingenious application of Goldrat's Theory of Constraints beyond manufacturing or project management and directly into new product innovation. I always knew that you should be able to apply TOC to almost any process, but this is the first time I've seen anyone address new products.

Using the story of a company that is struggling on a number of levels, Dalton's main character finds new product teams trying as he puts it to just "run faster on the same treadmill." When she bumps into The Professor he sets her on the path of discovering how TOC's five focusing steps can change that by de-bottlenecking the innovation process and using TOC metrics to quantify customer value...but not without a few interesting bumps along the way.

The end result is a book that's enjoyable to read yet still thought provoking and packed with insightful information. Additionally, the fact that it includes a thorough summary of the TOC principles at the end was a big plus for me. That is something missing from many of the business novels out there and I hope other authors take notice.

A must read for anybody who thinks their new product innovation process is too slow, too late, does not deliver products demonstrably better than the competition or fails to generate the forecasted profit.

Simplifying Innovation was a great one-two punch. The story revealed the principles slowly in a real-world setting and the following step-by-step portion provided easy access to the ideas and a simpler way to relate the principles to your own company's situation.

These aren't new ideas, I recognize them from other readings, but the combination was new to me and non-obvious. You also don't need to be familiar with them to pick up Simplifying Innovation. The story wasn't as good as The Goal, but it was considerably shorter and good enough to keep my attention while I learned. The whole process is a promising lens through which to view and improve your product development funnel and procedures.

I recommend this book to anyone involved in trying to push multiple projects through a development funnel, especially one requiring multiple people and divisions. It really doesn't matter what industry those projects are in. Simplifying Innovation should help you look at your possibilities in a new way.

I recently read Simplifying Innovation, a 5-step system for doubling speed to market and new product profits with your existing resources by Michael Dalton.

He calls it a theory of constraints business model.

"Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein

This is one of those books that is written in storybook style. I'm not a big advocate of this type of writing, following fictitious people around and figuring out how they like their steak is not particularly interesting to me.

That said, the book is interesting and has a number of valid points. If you just wanted the business points of the book, you could quickly read through it and find the summaries which are italicized.

The theory of the book is that there are always bottlenecks in any innovation. The key is to identify those bottlenecks and figure out how to get through them more quickly.

One other part of the thesis is high focus pays and having less people on a project, spending more of their time on it, is likely to get better results than having more people spend less of their time.

As I'm reading the book, I'm thinking of how this plays with my Fail Often. Fail Fast. Fail Cheap. mantra that I often repeat. Where I think it's used slightly differently is the innovation the book is talking about is primarily development, not necessarily the pure research, or alternatively it's the execution or the implementation which is often a shortcoming in companies.

Fail Often. Fail Fast, Fail Cheap is one way to generate a lot of ideas, then figure out which ones are working and put more resources into the ones that are working.

The book did talk about DADS (Device Attention Deficit Syndrome), caused by Blackberries and cell phones. Ironically, even though I am a huge Blackberry user and a big advocate (and I sit on the board of RIM), I do see some validity to DADS. If DADS is a problem, it means the device is not being used as it should be used - as a productivity device.

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."-Frederic Chopin

It's a good book, appropriate for anyone involved in the development of products.

Mike Dalton's "Simplifying Innovation" brings Eli Goldratt's "The Goal" and the Theory of Constraints model into the 21st Century! Mike's writing style moves the reader through each concept, helps connect the dots, and then ties it all back together with at least one "real world" example. It is a solid, well-written book.

"Simplifying Innovation" is to product development what "The Goal" is to manufacturing. A great and easy read, and you don't realize how much you are learning until you finish the book. Highly recommended.

This book has a way about it. It reads like a novel - it's unconventional presentation provides a framework through which the concepts of Theory of Constraints can be understood without effort.

The concept of Theory of Constraints applied to Product Development actually works. A great takeaway is not to eliminate all bottle-necks whenever they appear, but to manage them to your advantage.

This is a very quick read, but is packed with the right amount of information to convey the concepts effectively.

Mike Dalton's book is an excellent work continuing in the popular Goldratt teaching-novel style that clearly shows how to use Theory Of Constraints in real-world business issues. It is easy to read, thought provoking and hard to put down. This book does a great job of showing how to use several of the various 'thinking tools' of TOC as well as some of the proven business applications like Critical Chain and Buffer Management, which nearly every business leader can benefit from. He also gives very good detail, textbook-style, on the 'how-to' steps for those who don't care for the business-novel style of writing. This book, once again proves that TOC might be called a 'theory', but it is rock-solid. It is easily one of the most thorough books for TOC novices and practitioners alike, and deserves a top spot on your reading list.

Simplifying Innovation tells the story of the Theory of Constraints in a situational setting allowing the reader to understand the practical application of the principles quickly. As the story unravels, so do the solutions. There is a handy reference guide at the end to refer to while you read or for future use. This is an exceptional book for someone with little understanding of the theory and learns best through story telling.