About the Authors

Robin Karol is CEO of the Product Development and Management Associa- tion (PDMA), a professional society that creates and nurtures a global community in which people and businesses learn to grow and prosper through innovation and the introduction of new products. Robin is an adjunct full professor at the University of Delaware Lerner School of Business Administration, where she teaches courses on the Management of Creativity and Innovation. Robin worked at DuPont for 23 years in various aspects of innovation and new product development, achieving the role of Director of Innovation Processes. A certified new product development professional (NPDP), she received her PhD in Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has numerous publications and has presented at many conferences and workshops. The Industrial Research Institute (IRI) presented Robin with its Maurice Holland Award for the best paper in its journal Research-Technology Management in 2003.

Beebe Nelson is Co-Director of the International Association for Product Development (IAPD), a consortium of leading product developers who come together to improve their ability to execute new product development. She has organized, chaired, presented at, and facilitated conferences and workshops in product development, and has contributed chapters and articles in a number of venues. From 1998 to 2003, she was Book Review Editor of the Journal of Product Innovation Management, a publication of the PDMA. Beebe is a certified new product development professional (NPDP) and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Beebe has taught Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and most recently in the College of Management at UMass-Lowell. She chairs the Advisory Council of Partners in Ending Hunger, a not-for-profit organization located in Maine.

Dedication

We dedicate this book to the members of the PDMA and the IAPD with whom we have worked and learned, and to George Castellion and his Frontier Dialogues. He was willing not to have the answers so that we could all learn together.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

Our number one acknowledgement goes to the hundreds of new product development professionals who have made the practice into a field that we could write this book about. Thank you George Castellion for PDMA’s Frontier Dialogues, where we asked each other dumb questions until the answers began to emerge.

Thank you Kemp Dwenger and Dan Dimancescu (yes, those really are their names!) for researching Japanese product development practices and bringing them to the IAPD for us to learn from.

Thank you Merle Crawford, Robert Cooper, Abbie Griffin, and countless other academics for doing the research that enabled us to regularize the practices of new product development. Thank you Clayton Christiansen, Stefan Thomke, Henry Chesbrough, and many others for continually pushing the limits of NPD from your professorial offices.

Thank you Peter Senge for bringing home the systemic nature of new product development, both in your writings and in your association with the IAPD and the PDMA. And thank you Tom Bigda-Peyton, with whom Beebe applied the lessons of “the learning organization” at a number of client companies, including UTC, Corning, Fairchild, and Becton-Dickinson.

Thank you to the product developers and the leadership at DuPont, where Robin learned almost everything she knows about product development with the DuPont Consulting Solutions team. Thank you to the New Product Delivery Support Center at Polaroid, where Beebe worked with one of the most inspiring teams she has ever known.

Robin gives a special thank you to the original PACE(r) team members who struggled with her to understand how all this worked: Eric Schuler, Ken Pausell, Bob Gentlzer, Richard Tait, Greg Ajamian, Edmund Ziegler, and Ed Artz. I would also like to thank Michael McGrath of PRTM (Pittiglio, Rabin, Todd, and McGrath) for the creation of the PACE(r) process, for writing his books, and for being a mentor as I was learning new product development. I also thank Amram Shapiro and Mark Deck for working with the original team at DuPont and training us all.

Beebe’s special thanks go to Polaroid colleagues Julie Manga, Karen Anne Zien, Dick Collette, Christina Hepner Brodie, the late Pat McGurty, Carolyn Walker, Catherine Seo, Jim Fesler, and Mark Durrenberger. We were all beginners — none more than I — and working with you was a distinct pleasure. My clients at Polaroid, including Walter Byron and Wendy Watson, provided lots of OJT, and I hope they learned as much from me as I did from them.

I also have some very particular thank you’s. Thank you to Bob Gill for our first glimpse of an NPD territory — one that went far beyond the “river of development” — and to the late Bill Ausura for extending that view into the product lifecycle. Thank you to Christina Hepner Brodie, who taught me almost everything I know about customer visits when we worked together at Polaroid and later at the Center for Quality of Management.

Beebe and Robin reached out to many colleagues as they wrote the chapters of this book. The following people talked over content and structure, read drafts, and generally improved what we had to say: Thank you Don Ross of Innovare who helped us with Chapter 5 and with whom Beebe has done many exciting early stage NPD projects, and Rich Albright of Albright Technology Group, with whom Beebe co-wrote the chapter on technology mapping for the PDMA ToolBook2. Thanks to Mike Compeau of Compeau-Faulkes for his help with the chapter on new product launch. Thanks to Scott Elliott of TechZecs for help with Chapter 14 and to Don Hardenbrook of Intel for help with Chapter 11. Thanks to Mike Ransom and Dave Vondle of Eli Lilly for their input into Chapter 16.

Many, many thanks to our Technical Editor, Steve Somermeyer, a PDMA Board Member, a long time member of the IAPD’s Steering Committee, and the president of Somermeyer and Associates. Because of Steve’s hard work, we don’t have to say “the errors that remain are ours.” Now they belong to Steve as well.

Beebe particularly wants to acknowledge the IAPD and the IAPD members for an ongoing, high-level course in new product development. This group of companies has, for the past 15 years, been willing to set aside what they know to explore what they don’t yet understand, and it has been a fascinating and rewarding experience to work with and for them. I also know that without my clients — David Deems of Becton-Dickinson, Shriti Halberg of Cerner, all the folks at Praxair, Dick Tyler of Bose, Jacques LeMoine of Corning, Jennifer Lee of Globe Union, and, well, I wish I could mention every single one by name — I wouldn’t have understood what actually makes NPD work. Thank you all.

The success of the PDMA’s effort to codify the knowledge of thought leaders in the field of new product development was crucial to writing this book. Robin wants to thank the PDMA for supporting her with the time to work on this book and for being a resource of information. I want to specifically thank the Board Chair, Hamsa Thota, for his encouragement; Ken Kahn, VP of Publications, for getting me started on this; Gerry Katz, who heads up the PDMA’s Body of Knowledge; and all the directors, VPs, and members for being there to talk to throughout this project.

Mike Lewis, Acquisitions Editor at Wiley, held our hands through the contracting process, and Chrissy Guthrie, Senior Project Editor at Wiley, has been unfailingly supportive as we’ve worked toward the final product. We thank them both.

Steven Haines of Sequent Learning Networks held our hands as we worked through a number of thorny issues. His contribution to our understanding of product lifecycles enlivens many parts of the book. Phillip Clark jumped in to rescue us when we were overwhelmed by Wiley’s editing process. Thanks to you both.

We’re indebted to April Klimley, Editor of the PDMA’s Visions, who was always there to lend her mind and heart, as well as a hand, an eye, or an ear. If we couldn’t figure out how to do something, or to whom we could delegate it, April always sprang to our sides and pressed through. The book, our readers, and we owe her a great deal.

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