Entries by Richard Walton

Room For Error

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Lee De Forest was the inventor of the first amplifying vacuum tube. In a digital world it is hard to fathom that it all started with the development of this device. This led to radio, television, and the first computers. When De Forest created his first version, a two filament vacuum tube, his theory on why […]

Good Books (Part 1)

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There are very few decent business books in general, and a rare one indeed relevant to product development. If I read one business-related book every few years it is remarkable. Time would be better spent re-reading Shakespeare, history or the Bible. Think about it: If Don Quixote is still in print after hundreds of years, might this […]

The Chairman Wants Options

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While the odds of any particular product being a commercial success are low, commercial success may not be the only measure of accomplishment. Next year will consumers want little cars or big cars? Are heating costs going up or down? A good product development manager provides a portfolio of options to management. By definition, if […]

Odds Of Success (Part 1)

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We were taught in business school that only 1 in 20 new products succeeded. There was not a lot of definition around “new” or “success”, but it was a daunting enough metric by itself. As an adult it seems more like 1 in 50. Of course, it depends on what is meant by success and failure […]

Methodology Gives Those With No Ideas Something to Do

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The title above was taken from Mason Cooley’s “City Aphorisms”. You have got to love it. In brief – here is how large corporations approach product development. It begins with idea generation. This is the brain storming – the hard-to-define process aptly called “The Fuzzy Front End”. While there are scholarly works dedicated to just […]