Accelerating Innovation: Improving the Process of Product Development - Hardcover

Patterson, Marvin L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471285463 ISBN 13: 9780471285465

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 1992

Synopsis

Top experts agree…Accelerating Innovation is essential ammunition for winning today’s market wars! "For those who want to make time an ally instead of an enemy, this book is an invaluable guide to the innovation process, systematically applying continuous–improvement techniques." —John Young, President and CEO, Hewlett–Packard Company "Marv Patterson has done a superb job of providing thought–provoking insight into one of the most significant issues facing corporate global competitors: the time it takes from idea to product realization and ultimate customer satisfication…he creates a point of view which truly makes us think, engineers and managers alike, about the product development process in a way that should truly make us all more competitive." —George Fisher, Chairman and CEO, Motorola, Inc., and Chairman, U.S. Council on Competitiveness "Both engineers and managers will find in Marvin Patterson’s book, Accelerating Innovation, sound suggestions for improving their role in product development and, particularly, in accelerating innovation. This timely book is easily understandable by the non–technical reader, and can help make you a winner." —Donald E. Petersen, Retired Chairman and CEO, Ford Motor Company "…a valuable primer for senior executives who seek faster and more effective new product development processes. This book is filled with useful templates and discussions that can help management identify and realize faster time to market." —George Stalk, Jr., Co–Author of Competing Against Time, and Vice–President of The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. "…Marv Patterson’s very extensive knowledge and experience of product development management shines through and adds a pragmatic flavor to the specifics of reducing the time to bring new products to market. The book adds a needed dimension to the current literature available on cycle time, addressing the areas where it is currently least effectively applied." —Philip R. Thomas, Chairman and CEO, Thomas Group, Inc.

About this title

About the Author

MARVIN L. PATTERSON is Director of Corporate Engineering for Hewlett–Packard Company, a leading product innovator. He has been extensively involved in product development in the fields of Telemetry Drone Command and Control, Microwave Antennae Systems, and Digital Plotters. He is on the Board of Directors of the American National Standards Institute, and the Board of Trustees of the National Technological University. He is well known as a speaker on all areas of product development, and holds three U.S. patents. His papers have been published in technical journals such as IEEE Proceedings and the National Productivity Review.

From the Inside Flap

Accelerating Innovation Improving the Process of Product Development Marvin L. Patterson The time for rehashing America s lost battles on the world market has passed. Now it s time to address a critical component of the economic battle plan: the product development process that creates the products that satisfy customer needs. How quickly these weapons of economic war are developed, how competitive they are, how timely they are deployed, and how supportable they are will determine the failure or success of American business in the 1990s. Here is the right book at the right time a concise blueprint to transform product development from a collection of ad hoc activities into an integrated, smoothly operating process. Written by the Director of Corporate Engineering for Hewlett–Packard, one of the most successfully innovative companies in America today, Accelerating Innovation shows how successful, well–tested concepts from the manufacturing domain can be readily transformed into the needy world of new product innovation. Filled with clear–sighted analysis and practical explanations, this book will help management unleash innovation and creativity in development processes to meet the urgent need for bringing new technology to customers faster and more effectively than the competition. Discover how to cope with the limited life span of today s products anticipate changing consumer needs and desires close the gap between new technology and products that apply it bring leading–edge products to market fast eliminate profit–threatening gaps between the "death" of obsolete products and the introduction of new ones and enjoy higher returns on investment. Accelerating Innovation provides a results–oriented model for transferring to product development the strategies that are moving manufacturers from the old era to the new one. Numerous real–life examples give you powerful insights into the time–based factoring and total quality management principles used so successfully in manufacturing and shows how to implement them in the product development cycle. Key chapters address how to:

• shorten the innovation cycle time, applying the principle that success springs from focusing on the right issues
• manage organization change so that change goes where you want it to go and quickly
• transfer quality principles used on the assembly line to the process of developing raw information and adding value to it
• reduce innovation time by implementing the cost of quality principle (cost as a function of when an error is detected)
• manage information flow and bottlenecks
• minimize changeover time
• and much, much more

Does your organization really have a handle on new product development? Are goals, objectives, processes, metrics, and controls in place? Are you equipped to create new products rationally and systematically, while continuously reducing innovation cycle times? Accelerating Innovation presents new thinking that will help you answer these questions with a resounding "yes." In product development, doing business the same old way is a formula for disaster. The time to act is long before the livelihood of the product development function is ever threatened. And if a company is trying to catch up, then it has to improve faster than its toughest competition if it ever expects to win. Finally, here is a guide that can give you the critical advantage you need for success in product development success that is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for survival.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471285463
• ISBN 13: 9780471285465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160