Spilling the beans...

... on 25 years of trial & error in product development. Or: How to gain respect and rekindle the joy of developing new products.

I figured it’s time I’d spill the beans of what I’ve learned in those 25 years of helping companies to fast track product development.

25 years. (I know!)

25 years of working in new product development (NPD). 

25 years of trying to make product development flow faster, better, more profitable. 

25 years of making mistakes, solving problems, coming up with better solutions. Lots of trial and error. (And luckily also finding some solutions that work and last!)

Also, 25 years of seeing people wrangle with the same problem of how to make new product development flow smoothly and seeing many make the same mistakes I already made.

What will I tell you? What works, what doesn’t. So that you can take the shortcuts and have the benefit of my experience. Save yourself reinventing the wheel and falling into the same traps.

Why would I share? 3 Reasons: One, I love to see people smile. Two, we need a lot of good innovation to sort our planet. Three, I hate waste, esp. wasted time (reinventing the wheel!) So keen to help you save some and bring back the fun of developing new products. Coz it should be fun. It shouldn’t be so hard and stressful.

And four, I like to make a difference. And one way I can make a difference is by teaching what I know to as many people as I can. 

This book is for you if you’re tasked with somehow ‘sorting PD’. It’s full of pragmatic, straightforward tips you can implement in the next few days.

Have I made mistakes, hell yeah, but between all the falling over and getting back up I have learned that there are 9 things that you definitely do need to have in place to get NPD flowing. I now know that with these 9 ‘pillars’ in place you have drastically improved your chances of becoming award winning and leading your market category. 

The problem sounds straightforward - make NPD flow faster, better, more profitable, make it predictable. Ideally, it's a beautiful predictable consistent stream of new products launching each quarter. How hard can it be?

What I noticed is that most people look for a quick, simple solution. The silver bullet. To solve it once and for all. Like: We need a process (let’s implement Stage-Gate). Or: let’s use the latest greatest tool (Design Thinking! Lean! Agile!) Or, my favorite: Let’s hire someone from Apple / Tesla / Dyson - they’ll sort it out! (They won’t.)

That will get us to our goal: to be leading our markets, to be award winning. 

The problem is, one bullet doesn’t solve it. Like so many problems in business, it’s not a quick one simple fix (like pulling the weed out cleanly, roots and all). To fix this one, you need to have several building blocks in place. 

Over the past 25 years, I discovered there are 9 building blocks. 

Together they form the base, the foundation pillars if you like, and once they’re in place you can start to speed up. (And the results then start to compound!)

The 9 foundation pillars are roughly organised around 3 themes: set up, systems, and skills.

In the book I’ll share each of the pillars with practical tips on how to get each pillar in place. This book is NOT about theory. All the tips & tricks have been tried, tested in lots of different organisations and proven to work. 

And the book is short, punchy with each chapter explaining one pillar and how to put it in place. You can pick a chapter, read a few pages, implement, then read another bit. The tips are pragmatic, easy to understand and to put in place.

This is a preview of what I’m thinking about writing.

Your help please?

Rather than writing the whole thing, publishing it and then finding out it’s not quite right for you, I thought I’d test the idea with you first, because I really value your opinion.

Two questions:

1. Is this a book you’d want to buy? Please be honest. You might be saving me months of life! (and a bit of an explanation would be great - what works / doesn’t for you?)

2. Are you interested to help me? I’m looking for people who are willing to read early versions of my writing and give me feedback. What works, what doesn’t? Get in touch if you’re interested. By being an early reader, you’ll get my latest thinking first, and you’ll be in my innercircle, where I’m going to be listening to your ideas and feedback and include them as part of the book process. You’ll be a key part of the book. 

   Interested? Hit Subscribe - that way you’ll get the latest bits of my writing first, fresh of the ‘press’, the newest chapters.

Thank you so much for your help in advance!

Cheers,

Saskia

---