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Title: Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval by Jonathan Cagan, Craig M. Vogel ISBN: 0-13-969694-6 Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 15 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Still, a great book for product development
Comment: Although I agree with several of the concerns by other reviewers, I recommend this book for product developers because it offers usable information that can improve the liklihood of success for a new product.
First my concerns:
- There's too many unrelated topics,
- There's too many acronyms,
- It reads like a textbook, it's a little hard to read as it feels disjointed somewhat.
Now the things that I like and recommend:
- Great reviews of successful product case studies (I particularly liked the OXO product one),
- Although trite, their 2x2 matrix was quite interesting,
- Their emphasis on how to put "style" into your product (this is not really covered in many other books),
- Their concept of Product Opportunity Gaps (POG, whoops there's another acronym).
I think the authors, who are quite astute, should rewrite this book. I recommend that they boil down the material and rewrite the book thinking of it as an instruction book from them to some MBA/Engineer (Hewlitt/Packard) who's working out of his garage on some new product. They should not see this as a college text, or some book that's a supplementary reading for college. They have great material and great ideas, but it needs focused. They can completely drop Chapter 6 on Teams. Their Chapter 7 on Understanding User Needs seemed weak. They should drop the case studies in Chapters 8 and 9 and integrate that great material into the core text -- otherwise it's just too repetitive.
There was an excellent article about the authors in Fast Company magazine, July 2002. page 123. "How to Design the Perfect Product". I recommend reading that article as well.
These smart guys from Carnegie Mellon's design school have a unique approach to "Value is all about fulfilling fantasy" and their methodology for getting that into your product.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX
Rating: 3
Summary: Great topic but too superficial
Comment: Cagan and Vogel are addressing a critically important topic. Isn't that every company and entrepreneur's dream to actually create breakthrough products? Are they going to find the formula in this book? Well, yes and no.
The good news is that there are some interesting insights on what makes breakthrough products, like the importance of providing compelling usefulness, usability, and desirability features, or the key role of style, technology, and branding in the success of new products, or the need for an integrated new product development process.
Can you read this book and start applying these principles? The answer is no. To start with, the authors resort to the universal 2x2 business tool to unveil their magic formula: the combination of style and technology is the way to create breakthroughs because these two attributes create value. It is what they call "moving to the upper right" or to the "value quadrant". This is a very simplistic if not erroneoous view of how value is created. This might be true for consumer items where value is mostly in the psychological and emotional realm but it definitely does not help most industrial and business applications where value is more in the economic, solution, and service realm.
The author presents a list of value opportunities that are supposed to be universal but they are brought without any justification. Why does adventure, independence, or security make the list and not other emotions? Isn't that the key to success to fist find what the potential customers really value before jumping to conclusions instaed of trying to fit a model on reality?
Central to breakthrough products is the importance of user-centered research and product development. The overall process is adequately covered in my opinion and since I am not a product development expert I learned some interesting things in these sections but again the tools do not seem very useful.
Regarding user-centered research, I do not feel it is given the importance nor the depth it deserves. It is the last chapter of the main text like if it were something to do after everything else.
Cagan and Vogel use many examples to illustrate their approach and several case studies at the end. It is a good side of the book. On the other hand, these examples are presented to fit the model, something they do more or less convincingly and in a way that does not generate great insights.
In summary, Cagan and Vogel wrote a good introduction to the topic, something that might be useful to newcomers to the field or to MBA students. The practitioners may learn the importance of integrating all disciplines and gained a few insights here and there. The book might make them think but they will find few practical tools and tips to apply on the job.
Rating: 4
Summary: Useful to anyone in Marketing
Comment: Apple Computers/imac, VW/Beetles, OXO/Good Grips and Herman Miller/Aeron Chair are just a few examples of companies/brands that saw their sales rocket due to introduction of new products with unique packaging or design. This book highlights most of these examples and does a good job of showing that no long term strategic marketing plan can overlook the function of quality design. Great design makes a difference to a company's bottom line. People want to own products that not only function well but also look cool.
Mark H.
Art Director / Ming Diamond Price Consulting
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