Book Reviews

The first review discusses a provocative book about innovation and the impact of technological change. Although the book also provides all readers with an invaluable historical perspective, the reviewer believes that it lacks predictive utility for practitioners. The second review covers a book devoted to strategic breakthroughs. The reviewer finds that the focus on the customer and the role of top management can be valuable for practitioners. The third review describes a book covering competitive advantage. Our reviewer praises the book highly, finding it of particular value for practitioners, both seasoned and novice. The fourth review is of a book devoted to improving new product development. The reviewer recommends the book as providing detailed practical guidance.
This issue also reviews two new books of special interest to professors. The first, by Robert Dolan, is a short text-and-cases book dealing with new product development and commercialization, primarily from the standpoint of strategic needs, data sources, and decision analytic methodologies. The second, by Richard Nelson, is a compendium of thoughtful essays dealing with the national innovation systems of fifteen different countries.     

Book Reviews

Our coverage opens with a review of the fourth edition of C. Merle Crawford's book, which continues the comprehensive coverage of previous editions while adding important topics. The next review discusses the second edition of Robert Cooper's book. This new book updates his exposition of success and failure determinants, and reemphasizes the utility of a stage-gate development process. The third review comments on a long-term study of five innovative high technology firms. The review identifies five critical lessons for other similar firms. This is followed by the positive review of a recent book co-authored by one of the book review editors. Appropriately, this review was managed by Thomas Hustad, without any contact with its authors. The fifth review examines a book that combines two modern, popular management tools. The reviewer finds that these can be useful for product developers. Next, another reviewer comments favorably on a recent textbook that emphasizes the value creation process associated with effective product development and management practices. The seventh describes a book that examines and contrasts international practices. Although the material comes from a 1990 conference, our reviewer concludes that it still provides important lessons. The eighth review covers a strategy book. The book has some useful information but will be of limited help to most practitioners. The ninth review discusses a book about change and the need for organizational modification. Our reviewer feels it is of limited value to practitioners but will be of interest to academics. The reviews conclude with brief notes about three other books.     

Book Reviews

The first review describes a book devoted to the value and conduct of customer visits. The reviewer recommends it as especially valuable for practitioners in firms producing goods and services for business-to-business markets. The second review covers a book devoted to the integration of process design and development. Our reviewer finds that the book provides valuable coverage of an important but frequently overlooked aspect of product development. The third review covers a book of particular value to manufacturers. Although lacking in specific examples, the authors' experience is persuasive in addressing key issues that overlap points covered in the book discussed in the preceding review. The fourth review examines a book about competitive positioning. The book has value for those needing an introduction to this important topic. This issue also reviews two books of special interest to academics teaching and conducting research in the area of product innovation. The first offering is essentially a comprehensive review of the growing literature on how technology can improve collaborative work among individuals or groups. It covers theoretical foundations, conceptual paradigms, empirical research to date, and an agenda for future research. The next book is an advanced but relatively user-friendly text covering all facets of the new product development process. It is loaded with examples and cases and draws on a wide range of concepts and methodologies from the marketing and general management literature.     

Book Reviews

The first review is of a book that probably should be required reading for most personnel who participate in new product development—both academics and practitioners. It focuses on product innovation, primarily from an engineering perspective. Special emphasis is given to product design and development issues ranging from attribute specification and design for manufacturing to the economics and management of product development projects. Although the book has limitations, it provides highly relevant insights, especially for those involved with engineered products. The second review covers a book devoted to software development, which is becoming a ubiquitous ingredient in many products. Our reviewer reports that the book offers much practical wisdom. The third and fourth reviews discuss books for practitioners that are focused on specialized areas: biomedical and clinical instrumentation and food products. Although specialized, the first of these books offers some broader, more general lessons. The other will be of greatest value to those developing food products who have statistical training. The next three reviews cover other books of greatest interest to practitioners. The first is also most useful for those developing engineered products. The second will be of most use to less experienced personnel. The third book is about teamwork—now regarded by most practitioners as essential—but with only a few examples pertinent to product development. The last two reviews report on books that will be primarily of interest to academics and of limited interest to practitioners. The first of these two reviews describes a conference proceedings book, which is a compendium of unusually thoughtful presentations on the impact of changes in information technology on the design and execution of marketing actions. The articles in this collection are at once balanced in terms of level and style and comprehensive in terms of their overall coverage. The second covers a product management textbook with special emphasis on opportunity identification and the alignment of effort and resources with such opportunities.     

Book Reviews

This issue provides reviews of four books and brief notes for two others. The first book that is reviewed covers services comprehensively. It traces the growth from the industrial era and attempts to project future trends. The second review is of a book written by a practitioner with the company that is frequently judged to be the new product development "gold standard." Although the book can be somewhat unfocused at times, six key lessons are enunciated. The third book covered here is about compressing time-to-market for engineered or technology-based products. Our reviewer suggests that it is most useful for experienced practitioners in larger companies. The last book is about teams. The reviewer finds it overly long but useful in its treatment of teaming among organizations.     

Book Reviews

The first review is of a business novel that contains important lessons about teams and teamwork. The enjoyable story is based on the product development activities of a fictitious Fungible Company, and is an absorbing book to read. The second review covers a book on Total Quality Management (TQM). As our reviewer points out, this book deals with both the philosophy and tools, covering all aspects of TQM.
Finally, we inaugurate a new feature, Brief Notes. From time to time, we will provide short comments about books that may have a specialized or some limited value to practitioners.     

Book Reviews

In light of the changes occurring in the European Common Market in 1992, it is particularly timely to review two books that contrast new product development practices in the United States with those in Europe and other countries. Both books are based on academics' research but are intended to provide practical insights for practitioners. The first review is of a book that summarizes an extensive study of the world auto industry. This book, which does offer many practical lessons, compares industry practices in the United States, Europe and Japan. The second review, by Chris Panton, examines a book that contrasts product development practices in American and British firms. Our reviewer finds that this book primarily offers an effective summary of conventional wisdom but fewer practical insights.     

Book Reviews

Our three reviews describe widely varied books of interest to practitioners. The first book contains chapters by several authors dealing with numerous aspects of the crucial topic of integrating product design and manufacturing. While it contains many case studies, practitioners have contributed to it, and our reviewer finds much that will benefit both experienced and inexperienced practitioners. The second book deals with the entire product development process and is found to be intermittently insightful and superficial. The review suggests that less experienced practitioners may have trouble distinguishing what is truly important but an experienced practitioner may find that the book provides a helpful reminder of many key lessons. The third book is narrowly specialized, covering direct marketing for business-to-business products and services. Our reviewer believes that it is both thorough and practical, almost a do-it-yourself guide.     

Book Reviews

We have reviews of five books that deserve practitioners' attention. The first review discusses the sixth book about accelerating new product development that we have recently reviewed. The McGrath et al. book will be of particular value to those readers who work in large firms on large new product development projects. The second and third reviews cover second editions of significant books. Randy Englund's review of Russ Archibald's book on project management emphasizes how this discipline has value to all new product development project teams. James Scheu reports that George Gruenwald's useful book is of special value to those working in the package goods industry.
The last two reviews stress aspects of teamwork. George Castellion notes that the book by Katzenbach and Smith helpfully illuminates the difference between teamwork and teams. Randy Englund's review of the book by Jeffrey Pfeffer draws our attention to the role and potential abuse of a manager's power in product development.     

Kellogg on Branding: By the Marketing Faculty of the Kellogg School of Management by Alice M. Tybout and Tim Calkins (eds.)

These reviews are intended to help you reach a decision about purchasing or reading a book. But more importantly, they are meant to bring to your attention notable contemporary topics related to product innovation. The review here of The Change Function illustrates this point well. According to Amazon.com sales rankings (on August 23, 2006), this book is more popular than any we have reviewed in the past year—including Geoffrey A. Moore's Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution (Penguin, 2005). Yet the reviewer points out some critical weaknesses in The Change Function's treatment of truly innovative products. Just because a book is popular with a general business audience does not mean that it is adequate for new product professionals. Should you decide to read it, we hope that our review helps you, as a product developer, to get more out of it.
Books reviewed in this issue:

• ▪

  Kellogg on Branding: By the Marketing Faculty of the Kellogg School of Management

       
  
  

Book Reviews

The first review discusses a book on major innovative breakthroughs. The book educationally summarizes fourteen histories of important new products and services, draws general conclusions from these cases, but seems to lack predictive lessons that can assure future dramatic new products. The second and third reviews cover books devoted to cross-functional teams and teamwork. Both books provide helpful guidance in dealing with the practical aspects of making such teams function well in new product development projects. The fourth book describes a rather mechanical lock-step approach to concurrent engineering or total quality development, which is considered its synonym. Specific components are discussed in detail. These include technological development, concept phase, design phase, and production preparation. Although the book ignores the role of marketing, it should prove useful to those interested in the detailed reviews of mechanical engineering procedures such as "The House of Q uality," engineering concept selection, and Taguchi methods of process design analysis. The reviews conclude with brief notes about three other books.     

Book Reviews

These reviews remind us that although they are aimed at helping you reach a purchase decision on the book, perhaps more importantly, they are intended to enlighten you in emerging areas of product and service development. New books are perfect for learning about new trends or extensions of the knowledge base, and they allow you to delve into allied areas that are likely to affect your career in product innovation.
Thus, Ruediger Klein reviews our first non-English book, which will expose non-German readers to a German view of software management and product management. Carla Kuesten gives us an in-depth view of a single industry—the food industry—with lessons that readers can probably translate to their field. For future issues, we have a lawyer reviewing books on intellectual property protection, and another review will cover current topics in China regarding product development.
Please let us know of other tangents we should be covering.
Books reviewed in this issue:

• ▪

  The PDMA ToolBook 2 for New Product Development

       
  
  

Analyses of U.S. and Japanese Management Processes Associated with New Product Success and Failure in High and Low Familiarity Markets

As detailed in the pages of JPIM and other publications, considerable research effort has been devoted to identifying the preconditions for new product success. Studies of Japanese and U.S. new product development (NPD) practices have shown that such factors as sales and marketing expertise, technical expertise, decentralized decision making, R&D/marketing integration, project manager competency, and support from senior management can play key roles in influencing new product success. As William Souder and X. Michael Song point out, however, previous studies have not examined Japanese management practices across a range of environments. They also suggest that the similarities and differences between U.S. and Japanese NPD practices require more in-depth exploration. To help address these issues, they describe the results of a study involving 15 U.S. firms and 15 Japanese firms. Each participating firm provided information about two successful products and two unsuccessful products. Their conceptual model groups the various factors that influence new product success into three general classes: NPD climate, expertise, and management functions. In this model, a firm's level of familiarity with its target market moderates these influences. For example, greater expertise may be necessary to succeed in an unfamiliar market. Each participating firm in the study provided information about one successful product and one failure targeted for high familiarity markets; the other two products from each firm were targeted for low familiarity markets. The U.S. and Japanese models developed in this study exhibit some marked differences from one another. In a familiar market, the U.S. model emphasizes sales and marketing expertise and competent project managers. Under conditions of low market familiarity, this basic model is supplemented with high degrees of R&D/marketing integration, senior management involvement, and decentralization. In this way, the U.S. models reflect a degree of flexibility in adapting the approach to match the prevailing market conditions. In contrast, the two Japanese models of new product success (under low and high familiarity) point to a more invariant system. In other words, the findings from this study reinforce the notion that successful management of NPD requires careful consideration of the firm's environment. Practices that have been proven successful in a particular culture and market environment may not be directly transferable to another setting.     

Book Reviews

The three books we review this month deal with important practical aspects of the new product development process. John Moran's review of a book by Robert Haavind emphasizes the importance of quality and provides many pointers on how this can be enhanced. Although the book is primarily of value for manufacturing firms, it also deals with quality for services, emphasizing, for example, the importance of including the customer in the firm's development activity. Vic Prushan reviews a book by Michael Spendolini on benchmarking, a practice that is important to the improvement of quality. This practice is applicable to any firm developing any new good or service. Finally, John Cushman reviews a book by Donald Carter and Barbara Baker on concurrent engineering, finding the book to be of greatest interest to technical people working in the development of technology-based products.     

Book Reviews

This issue's review looks at a recent book written by Milton D. Rosenau, Jr., a two-time contributor to this journal. The review is written by Randy Englund, R&D project development manager for Hewlett-Packard in Cupertino, California. Previously, he served as a computer systems program manager.
Englund's favorable review mentions a number of points that will be of interest to JPIM's readers:

• •

  the book emphasizes speed in development
• •

  it stresses a team-based, phased development approach
• •

  it establishes the need for clear specifications
• •

  useful summaries and implementation guidelines are included throughout the text
• •

  the issues treated are of major importance to new product managers

     

A Survey of New Product Evaluation Models

New product development is a dynamic and lengthy process ranging from idea generation through product launch. It is quite important that product managers evaluate the viability of a new product at every stage of its development. Previous literature provides a large number of models that can be used to evaluate new products at different stages of the new product development process. These models vary with respect to their objectives, applicability to different products, data requirements, suitable environments and time frames, and diagnostics. This article presents a critical review of the models with an emphasis on these factors. The article also outlines other emerging methods that companies are using today. It concludes with managerial and research implications. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

Demystifying the Japanese miracle

In this English translation of a book first published in Japan in 1973 Satoshi Kamata indicts the Toyota Motor company for its inhumane treatment of temporary workers on the assembly line. Kamata is a freelance journalist who records in diary form his six months' experience and observations as a temporary worker for Toyota. For the reviewer, Stephen Wood, the importance of the book lies in its contribution to the demystification of the Japanese employment system, especially in the light of the world-wide concern with Japanese methods. Wood concurs with much of Ronald Dore's introduction to the English edition of Kamata's book but suggests that to draw conclusions about management authority and work organization from it would need more systematic evidence and a sharper set of conceptual distinctions than even those Dore works with.     

Organizational Influences on the New Product Development Process in Financial Services

The last decade has been notable for increasing levels of environmental turbulence brought about by technological advances, deregulation, consumer sophistication, and competition. Consequently a premium has been placed on the ability of managers to differentiate their products and maintain competitive advantages. This may be achieved by developing an organizational climate that is responsive to change and supportive of new product initiatives. In his article, Des Thwaites draws on the established literature and a panel of informed opinion from the financial services sector to identify 12 characteristics of an organization that influence the effectiveness of the new product development process. United Kingdom building societies are examined to determine the emphasis given to these critical aspects of innovation. Three underlying factors, communication, people and mission, explain much of the variance among building societies. Five discrete groupings of firms are identified, and significant differences between their orientations are determined across a range of variables supporting new product development. While the empirical section of the study relates to a specific industrial sector, several issues and the recommendations transcend industry boundaries.     

Ambidextrous marketing capabilities and performance: How and when entrepreneurial orientation makes a difference

There are two marketing capabilities situated at the product-market interface: customer management (CM) and new product development (NPD). Both are ambidextrous given they involve exploitation and exploration, yet important questions remain unanswered. Is it beneficial to have higher combined levels of exploitation and exploration? Or should these be balanced? What internal and external factors might influence these two forms of ambidexterity? This study examines these issues using data from a sample of U.S. manufacturers. We find that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) differentially affects the exploration-exploitation balance within CM and NPD, in dynamic environments. Performance improves when there is higher combined ambidexterity in both CM and NPD; it suffers when NPD ambidexterity is imbalanced by an emphasis towards exploration. CM can be similarly imbalanced yet has no adverse impact. A moderated mediation analysis reveals that EO has both positive and negative associations with performance under different environmental conditions.     

Book Review

This issue's book review addresses the important topic of networking. Despite their informal understanding of the need for networks, new product managers have seldom if ever been able to access a formal treatment of this topic. Nor have conferences or seminars included this topic in their development of critical management skills. Blair Little, a professor in the School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario, reviews a new book that reports some very intersting Swedish thinking about networking. He reports that the book is worth considering by JPIM's readers, even in light of some unique characteristics of the Swedish environment.