Reinventing the Product
Reinventing the Product: How to Transform Your Business and Create Value in the Digital Age, by Eric Schaeffer and David Sovie, Kogan Page 2019
When we think new product development and launch, key elements that keep US industry ahead in pure product innovation, we don't often think about technology issues that can easily derail our success - e.g. out of date IT governing engineering and design, broken linkages between engineering and production, post-sale tech problems for consumers, and of course the impact AI and other supertechs are having on the marketplace - consumers and makers both. But it's all there, and for us to continue to dominate new product design, development and introduction, we need all the help we can get.
Eric Schaeffer and David Sovie, two Accenture consultants, working with global examples like Faurecia, Samsung, Caterpillar, Amazon, Tesla and Google show us how the leaders get ahead. Their emphasis is on how to be digital - how to acquire the right digital tools, stick to a digital strategy, measure success and adjust to move forward. Its a challenge because the hype around digital product development and launch is so thick, obscuring the key elements in this shift.
Readers will want to pay particular attention to the Michelin case study. Not only did Michelin cut its time to market down from seven years to three, the company enlarged its business model beyond selling tires, to encouraging a service business by embedding intelligent sensors in the tires. This allows consumers and repair shops to monitor performance and lifecycle to run the replacement business. This business model was born from a clear recognition that customers value experience higher than the particular product features of a particular tire, and it clarifies the gap between a hardware based business model - selling tires, millions of them - and selling a service, tires enabled with time-saving sensor monitors. The new model speaks to consumers' real needs, one of which is irreplaceable work time.
How Caterpillar shifted its business model to collaborate with "outside" third parties takes us into what the authors label the 13th most disrupted sector, industrial equipment, the heart of manufacturing. Further, how Caterpillar is innovating the road-building , earth moving equipment business illustrates how precision - detailed landscape imaging processed through exacting machine parameters - can save money all over the world.
Filled with case examples illustrating digital product reinvention, Reinventing the Product has big implications for manufacturing businesses looking to gain innovation advantage, especially those struggling to move up from traditional product strategies.
Patricia E. Moody
FORTUNE magazine "Pioneering Woman in Mfg"
IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert
A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,
