Selling Blue Elephants: How to make great products that people want BEFORE they even know they want them (Hardcover)

by Howard R. Moskowitz (Author), Alex Gofman (Author)
Key Phrases: mind genomics, staring time, winning elements, Maxwell House, New York, World Cup (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Can you remember the world before the iPod? How about the world before chunky tomato sauce or brown mustard? Many of these products came about not through focus groups and polling, but rather through research and development labs and marketers developing the products they knew customers would want, before customers knew they wanted them. Today your customers can actually help you create your next product. Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) is a solution-oriented learning experience. RDE is the systematized process of designing, testing and modifying alternative ideas, packages, products, or services in a disciplined way so that the developer and marketer discover what appeals to the customer, even if the customer can't articulate the need, much less the solution. The book begins by presenting best practices in the RDE from some of today's top companies: HP, Prego, Vlasic, and Mastercard. It then goes on to examine RDEs use in innovation and design, and goes on to examine its possible uses in the international, political, bioinformatics, and finance areas.Filled with real-life stories, this book will change the way people think about selling to their present and future customers. "Everyone thinks they need to break rules, but Moskowitz and Gofman skillfully show us how to develop and use the rules to define new perspectives and make better business decisions in virtually any field. An absolute must-read for any businessperson facing fierce competition!" --Sean Bauld, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Marketing, Sales & Trading, Reuters "Over the last 15 years significant shareholder value has been destroyed by 'insightful and creative' marketers resulting in the shocking statistic that more than 90% of launches and re-launches do fail. Moskowitz and Gofman are serious geniuses who have dedicated their work to help all of us increase our chances of success significantly. RDE is a new tool that all marketers should acquire if they love their profession and are serious about creating shareholder value out of every launch."--Tex Gunning, Group Vice President, Unilever Asia "In a series of well-written and engaging examples, Moskowitz and Gofman vividly illustrate the value of a truly scientific approach to understanding what consumers really want. But more than that, they show how experimentation is not only the spice of life, but can spice up all of our lives. This book is as much fun to read as it is informative, and it is as deeply rooted in psychology as it is in the science of marketing. They really deliver the goods!" --Professor Stephen Kosslyn, Chair, Psychology Department, Harvard University "We've been teaching business students how to understand the 'mind of their customers' for a long time. Finally, the ordinary reader, as well as business people, social scientists, and politicians, can share in these tools. Moskowitz and Gofman have flattened the playing field with their book Selling Blue Elephants. I applaud you both. Two thumbs up." --Professor Subrata Sen, Professor of Marketing, Yale University "We are in an age of the next killer application and it is elusive. Selling Blue Elephants is an absolute must read for any business moving from strategy to execution.Howard and Alex have built a process driven engine (RDE) that delivers actionable results that have a direct tie back to business directives. Bringing reality from concept is the key ingredient to a successful business idea--Selling Blue Elephants is the cookbook." --Peter Tripp, Vice President, Strategic Programs Office Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services, UNISYS "This book is a must read for anyone challenged with showing that systematic experimental design does not start and end in R&D but should be ingrained in the corporate mindset." --Dulce Paredes, PhD., Director, Consumer Sciences, Avon Products, Inc. Really great products and really huge successes don't come from focus groups! And if you simply rely on trial and error, or guesswork, you'll lose far more often than you'll win. Now, there's a solution: Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE), the first systematized, disciplined, solution-oriented business process of experimentation. In Selling Blue Elephants, RDE's creators reveal how to systematically design, test, and modify alternative ideas, packages, products, and services, to discover offerings your customers will be passionate about...even if they can't articulate the need, much less the solution!Discover the seven easy steps that take you from cluelessness to clarity in just days. ..sometimes even hours. Watch RDE succeeding in companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Campbell's, MasterCard to Maxwell House...and learn how to get the same outstanding results yourself, one step at a time, every time! *Discover "how the world works" in your market *Reveal the hidden rules that define your next breakthrough product *Create prototypes that answer the right questions, fast *Get at the truths your customers don't know how to tell you *Use automated tools to streamline the entire process *Streamline your research, and get actionable answers in just days *Extend RDE value throughout the enterprise *From messaging to corporate communications to investor behavior About the Authors Howard Moskowitz is President and CEO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. He is a well-known experimental psychologist in the field of psychophysics and an inventor of world-class market research technology. Widely published in the scientific press, Dr. Moskowitz is known worldwide as the leading thinker and creator of advanced research technology in the area of new product and concept development.His background includes a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University and seven years as a Senior Scientist at the U. S. Army Natick Laboratories. In July 2004, he was elected as an IFT Fellow for his contributions in the field of food science and technology. He was also awarded the American Marketing Association's 2005 Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award, regarded as the "Nobel Prize" of the market research industry. Dr. Moskowitz has spoken widely at both scientific and market research conferences, and guest-lectured at leading business schools including Wharton, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Texas at Austin. He also appeared weekly from 2004-2006 on ABC News Now as The Food Doctor, highlighting the food industry's most exciting innovations. Alex Gofman, VP and CTO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc., is the architect of several globally-recognized market research technologies and holds multiple patents.Widely published in the scientific press on the topics of technology-oriented experimental psychology, he has led new methodologies and algorithms development as well as other aspects of MJI operations since joining the firm in 1992, and is lead developer and architect of its IdeaMap(R) family of products. He holds a BS and a MS in Computer Science from Donetsk National Technical University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1981. Contents FOREWORD xi ABOUT THE AUTHORS xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv INTRODUCTION 1 PART 1 MAKING MONEY 17 CHAPTER 1 HEWLETT-PACKARD SHIFTS GEARS 19 CHAPTER 2 MAXWELL HOUSE'S CALCULUS OF COFFEE 27 CHAPTER 3 DIALING UP DELICIOUS: MAJOR DISCOVERIES FROM VLASIC AND PREGO 47 CHAPTER 4 HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD EVEN WHEN THEY PAY MORE 65 CHAPTER 5 DISCOVER MORE ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS THAN THEY THEMSELVES KNOW--LEGALLY!87 PART 2 MAKING THE FUTURE 105 CHAPTER 6 RUBIK'S CUBE OF CONSUMER ELECTRONICS INNOVATION 107 CHAPTER 7 BRIDGING COOL DESIGN WITH HOT SCIENCE 125 PART 3 FLYING TO VENUS 153 CHAPTER 8 MIND GENOMICS: CONSUMER MIND "ON THE SHELF" 155 CHAPTER 9 MAKING THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS INTO "PRODUCTS" 183 CHAPTER 10 RDE DEFEATS MURPHY'S LAW AND "BARES" THE STOCK MARKETS 205 CHAPTER 11 ASIA CALLING, LTD.: THE CHINA ANGLE 225 CHAPTER 12 RDE'S "BRAVE NEW WORLD!" 235 EPILOGUE 239 INDEX 241

From the Back Cover

Can you remember the world before the iPod? How about the world before chunky tomato sauce or brown mustard? Many of these products came about not through focus groups and polling, but rather through research and development labs and marketers developing the products they knew customers would want, before customers knew they wanted them. Today your customers can actually help you create your next product. Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) is a solution-oriented learning experience. RDE is the systematized process of designing, testing and modifying alternative ideas, packages, products, or services in a disciplined way so that the developer and marketer discover what appeals to the customer, even if the customer can't articulate the need, much less the solution. The book begins by presenting best practices in the RDE from some of today's top companies: HP, Prego, Vlasic, and Mastercard. It then goes on to examine RDEs use in innovation and design, and goes on to examine its possible uses in the international, political, bioinformatics, and finance areas. Filled with real-life stories, this book will change the way people think about selling to their present and future customers.

 

“Everyone thinks they need to break rules, but Moskowitz and Gofman skillfully show us how to develop and use the rules to define new perspectives and make better business decisions in virtually any field. An absolute must-read for any businessperson facing fierce competition!”

—Sean Bauld, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Marketing, Sales & Trading, Reuters

 

“Over the last 15 years significant shareholder value has been destroyed by ‘insightful and creative’ marketers resulting in the shocking statistic that more than 90% of launches and re-launches do fail. Moskowitz and Gofman are serious geniuses who have dedicated their work to help all of us increase our chances of success significantly. RDE is a new tool that all marketers should acquire if they love their profession and are serious about creating shareholder value out of every launch.”

—Tex Gunning, Group Vice President, Unilever Asia

 

“In a series of well-written and engaging examples, Moskowitz and Gofman vividly illustrate the value of a truly scientific approach to understanding what consumers really want. But more than that, they show how experimentation is not only the spice of life, but can spice up all of our lives.
This book is as much fun to read as it is informative, and it is as deeply rooted in psychology as it is in the science of marketing. They really deliver the goods!”

—Professor Stephen Kosslyn, Chair, Psychology Department, Harvard University

 

“We’ve been teaching business students how to understand the ‘mind of their customers’ for a long time. Finally, the ordinary reader, as well as business people, social scientists, and politicians, can share in these tools. Moskowitz and Gofman have flattened the playing field with their book Selling Blue Elephants. I applaud you both. Two thumbs up.”

—Professor Subrata Sen, Professor of Marketing, Yale University

 

“We are in an age of the next killer application and it is elusive. Selling Blue Elephants is an absolute must read for any business moving from strategy to execution. Howard and Alex have built a process driven engine (RDE) that delivers actionable results that have a direct tie back to business directives. Bringing reality from concept is the key ingredient to a successful business idea—Selling Blue Elephants is the cookbook.”

—Peter Tripp, Vice President, Strategic Programs Office Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services, UNISYS

 

“This book is a must read for anyone challenged with showing that systematic experimental design does not start and end in R&D but should be ingrained in the corporate mindset.”

—Dulce Paredes, PhD., Director, Consumer Sciences, Avon Products, Inc.

 

Really great products and really huge successes don’t come from focus groups! And if you simply rely on trial and error, or guesswork, you’ll lose far more often than you’ll win. Now, there’s a solution: Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE), the first systematized, disciplined, solution-oriented business process of experimentation.

 

In Selling Blue Elephants, RDE’s creators reveal how to systematically design, test, and modify alternative ideas, packages, products, and services, to discover offerings your customers will be passionate about...even if they can’t articulate the need, much less the solution!

 

Discover the seven easy steps that take you from cluelessness to clarity in just days... sometimes even hours. Watch RDE succeeding in companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Campbell’s, MasterCard to Maxwell House... and learn how to get the same outstanding results yourself, one step at a time, every time!

• Discover “how the world works” in your market
• Reveal the hidden rules that define your next breakthrough product
• Create prototypes that answer the right questions, fast
• Get at the truths your customers don’t know how to tell you
• Use automated tools to streamline the entire process
• Streamline your research, and get actionable answers in just days
• Extend RDE value throughout the enterprise
• From messaging to corporate communications to investor behavior

About the Authors

Howard Moskowitz is President and CEO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. He is a well-known experimental psychologist in the field of psychophysics and an inventor of world-class market research technology. Widely published in the scientific press, Dr. Moskowitz is known worldwide as the leading thinker and creator of advanced research technology in the area of new product and concept development.

 

His background includes a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University and seven years as a Senior Scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories. In July 2004, he was elected as an IFT Fellow for his contributions in the field of food science and technology. He was also awarded the American Marketing Association’s 2005 Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award, regarded as the “Nobel Prize” of the market research industry.

 

Dr. Moskowitz has spoken widely at both scientific and market research conferences, and guest-lectured at leading business schools including Wharton, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Texas at Austin. He also appeared weekly from 2004-2006 on ABC News Now as The Food Doctor, highlighting the food industry’s most exciting innovations.

 

Alex Gofman, VP and CTO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc., is the architect of several globally-recognized market research technologies and holds multiple patents. Widely published in the scientific press on the topics of technology-oriented experimental psychology, he has led new methodologies and algorithms development as well as other aspects of MJI operations since joining the firm in 1992, and is lead developer and architect of its IdeaMap® family of products. He holds a BS and a MS in Computer Science from Donetsk National Technical University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1981.

 

Contents

FOREWORD     xi

ABOUT THE AUTHORS    xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS     xv

INTRODUCTION     1

PART 1     MAKING MONEY     17

CHAPTER 1     HEWLETT-PACKARD SHIFTS GEARS     19

CHAPTER 2    MAXWELL HOUSE’S CALCULUS OF COFFEE     27

CHAPTER 3     DIALING UP DELICIOUS: MAJOR DISCOVERIES FROM VLASIC AND PREGO    47

CHAPTER 4     HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD EVEN WHEN THEY PAY MORE    65

CHAPTER 5    DISCOVER MORE ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS THAN THEY THEMSELVES KNOW—LEGALLY!     87

PART 2    MAKING THE FUTURE     105

CHAPTER 6     RUBIK’S CUBE OF CONSUMER ELECTRONICS INNOVATION     107

CHAPTER 7     BRIDGING COOL DESIGN WITH HOT SCIENCE     125

PART 3     FLYING TO VENUS    153
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wharton School Publishing; 1 edition (April 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0136136680
• ISBN-13: 978-0136136682
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #143,176 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quantifying Blue Oceans and Long Tails in Stepwise Fashion, December 28, 2007

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The concept of Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) should prove intriguing enough for any marketing manager looking to dive into the "blue ocean" of unstructured demand and untapped market space. The varying definitions of that ocean have led to RDE, the subject of this illuminating though somewhat presumptive book by market research mavens Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman. The source area of study will be familiar to anyone who has read W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant and Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, both works reflecting authors who feel that any venture into the great unknown requires some discipline. Using experimental psychology and adaptive management as their basis of argument, Moskowitz and Gofman offer seven steps toward successful produce launches:

(1) Identify groups or classes of features that constitute the target product.
(2) Mix and match the elements according to an experimental design to create a set of prototypes.
(3) Show the prototypes to consumers and collect their responses on a rating question.
(4) Analyze results using a regression module.
(5) Uncover the optimal product by finding the best combination that has the highest sum of utilities.
(6) Identify naturally occurring attitudinal segments of the population that show similar patterns of the utilities.
(7) Apply the generated rules to create new products and services.

The template is far easier to grasp in theory than in execution, a point validated by the co-authors who assume companies have a clear understanding of their value-add in the marketplace at a most granular level. The most challenging aspect is identifying the right breakdown of product features and then using the appropriate statistical formulas to recognize the response patterns in order to make tangible enhancements. Quantifying the process is an admirable effort by the co-authors, but it seems to apply easier to hard consumer goods than softer services. However, the more constructive argument relates to the shortcomings of the more nebulous findings to be produced from survey questions or focus group discussions, the traditional means of eliciting such customer-generated data. So much qualitative judgment, in particular, by marketing managers constrained by their own thinking, can hamper such findings as to render them next to useless, especially in an established marketplace.

Moskowitz and Gofman point out how established name-brand companies who can afford to invest in RDE analysis (such as Hewlett-Packard and MasterCard) have yielded dividends from the approach. These companies typify markets that have become so saturated that the marketing leadership is forced to come up with new value propositions. This means testing a broad variety of feature combinations, and some may strike you as counterintuitive. It appears that the more combinations tested, the more actionable the findings, all of which makes this a potentially expensive methodology. The co-authors are particularly effective in showing how such thinking extends to design elements, even packaging, in order to assess a product's resonance on the marketplace. At times, I wish the co-authors would have toned down their use of superfluous jargon and their obvious pitch of ideamap.net as the source of their research software, but there is no doubt from this book that the subject of RDE is endlessly fascinating.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be more systematic in how you develop products, marketing programs, and communications and reap the rewards, June 22, 2007

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This book is about using a systematic way to develop experiments, systematically gather the results of those experiments, and to intelligently analyze them to develop rules for use in product development, marketing programs, and even communications. This method they call RDE (Rule Developing Experimentation). The authors do not claim that this is a new idea, but rather that they have a better way of explaining it and demonstrating its power.

They use business stories of developing new products for Maxwell House coffee, Prego spaghetti sauce, Vlassic pickles, and a variety of marketing programs to demonstrate what they are showing us. The authors, Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman, write clearly and with a great deal of conviction. My guess is that you will either find their style infectious or, if you are of a cynical bent, it will trigger a bit of naysayer in you.

The basic steps to their method are:
1) Think about the problem and identify groups of features.
2) Mix and match the elements according to a special experimental design
3) Analyze the results gleaned from the experiments
4) Optimize according to the highest sum of utilities
5) Apply the generated rules to create new products, offerings, marketing programs, etc.

Too often we grope in the dark looking for a bolt of lightening to flash out of the sky and show us the best way to compete in our market space. It rarely happens. Even with this method, most of the experiments will prove something one shouldn't do. However, something will have been learned, one will know more about the boundaries beyond which there be monsters, and one will gain more insight and skill in setting up future experiments.

It seems convincing to me that this method can save time, money, and competitive position over the usually used random guesses that can consume entire companies when they are really wrong. The authors say that this can replace the facilitated focus group because they are a flawed method. While that might well be true, I can tell for sure that one can implement this methodology in a flawed way, as well. So, we should always be careful in how we use our tools and hesitate to blame the tool for using it improperly.

Interesting.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative but blatantly self-serving, October 6, 2007

By	D. Vranicar (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I liked this book and learned a lot about a market-research technique that I had hoped might apply to the needs of a small business-to-business company. The book made me enthusiastic about the potential to test product concepts before we spend a lot of money taking final products to market. The approach the authors advocate appears to be able to dramatically reduce risk for companies that are trying to get their offering right. The focus of the book is primarily on consumer-goods companies and their products, though the technique has also be used for B2B offerings.

As I got into the book, I was disappointed that the only practical advice the authors offer is to contact them about using their on-line research tool. Good as their tool may be, it appears not to be well suited for the needs of my small B2B business.

I now feel I've paid about $20 for the authors' elaborate marketing brochure, and I have no way to apply what I learned unless I choose to work with their company. Use of books to promote the authors' business is a consistent trend in the publication of business books. I don't object to it if the book provides real value the reader can apply even without engaging the services of the authors' company. This book fails that basic test, as do many other such books. If the trend toward self-promotion continues without regard for the lasting value a book provides to the reader, I think the entire market segment will lose credibility.

By the way, in contacting the authors' company I learned that the cost of their services comes to about $10,000 per study. That's very reasonable for companies bigger or more mature than mine, but its well beyond what we can afford at our stage of growth.

I'll be selling this book soon on the Amazon.com marketplace. I only wish I had bought it there.