Topic

new products

A collection of 262 issues

Backstory

With the best ever, “happy and glorious” Olympics dutifully provided by London, this Monday saw the triumphant parade of the home athletes. Mention was often made by the covering commentators of ‘backstory’. Especially when lauding the paralympians. I first came across the concept of backstories when as a kid I

Creating Breakthrough Products

Here’s an interesting textbook from 2002 aimed at those tasked with coming up with new product ideas. The authors are professor of mechanical engineering and industrial design no less. Their main thrust was that, to use their marketing-speak, i) form and function must fulfil fantasy, and ii) you must

BT Salesteam Refresh

A division of global telco, BT, decided on a major overhaul of their sales team. It took two years and by the account of the person who shared this with me, the results were spectacular. Although painful to reach. They secretly deployed just three criteria; > last year’s performance against

Hot Seller Qualities

[http://www.tvgoodsinc.com/kevin_harrington.cfm] Here’s a shopping tv infomercial pioneer. According to the above-linked bio, > “Since [1984] he has been involved with over 500 product launches that resulted in sales of over $4 billion worldwide with 20 products that reached individual sales of over $100 million”

Why 90% Of New Products Fail?

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/15/happiness-is-being-a-loser-burkeman] There’s many a captivating line in this 20-min coffee break piece. Glossing over some of the more lefty nonsense about seeking “tranquillity”, the scene is set by evoking the secret, shamed shelves of the “museum of failed products”. Despite

Skeuomorphism

Here’s something I came across through a Telegraph [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9283706/Jonathan-Ive-interview-simplicity-isnt-simple.html] interview with Apple’s English design superstar, Jonathan Ive. The word is pronounced ‘skew-o-morf’, and in this context means; > a tendency for new designs to retain ornamental features of the old

Expected Customer Demand

A survey of most damaging projects that a salesteam leader could undertake would create an interesting list. Crm implementation and territory realignment seem obvious table-topping minefields. Yet there’s a more silent sinister activity that also derails sales careers. Consider this quote from a 1997 academic paper; Adoption of new

Where History Begins

[/content/images/wordpress/2012/05/where-history-begins-loughborough-wallslogans.jpg] Here’s world-leading sentiments from Team GB’s main training camp [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9222204/London-2012-Olympics-Inside-the-medal-factory-of-Team-GB-at-Loughborough-University.html] ahead of the Olympics. (Remember, the country came a record beating fourth in Beijing through this thinking). > What we have tried to

Rhetological Fallacies

[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/] As you may know, I’m a big fan of the infographics movement. There isn’t a solution sales campaign that cannot be distinguished by use of their approach. Top of the tree is David McCandless. One of his recent posts attempted to draw

Do Their Bad Way Better

Here’s a Harvard Business Review blogger that got me nodding along in empathetic acknowledgement. Umair Haque riffs about Strategy’s Golden Rule [http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/04/strategys_golden_rule.html]. He feels that > The single most common competitive mistake [is] striving to do slightly better what