From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed: How to Identify and Develop Profitable Opportunities

Rating:
Summary: Awesome! Another indispensable opportunity management guide!
Review: Following my personal review of the latest opportunity management book, Harnessing the Unicorn, by Pat O'Reilly, I came across this wonderful book, actually by accident, while surfing through the www.amazon.com website for other books in the same genre. Again, I was very happy to have obtained - and perused - the book.

This book is for any business professional who is involved in conceptualising, developing and/or launching new product ideas. The entire new product development cycle is well-captured. It is based on the author's personal/professional experiences and also her interviews with 20 other professionals.

This book contains a potent, streamlined, idea screening process, with six most important criteria: strategic fit, customer, competition, market, resources and profit. Each criterum is illustrated extensively, with examples, guidelines and discrete steps, by a separate chapter of the book. These chapters are worth the cover price of the book. To me, these areas are the most critical part of the new product development cycle.

The author also shares her many business models, which give you a refreshing look at strategy and planning for new products.

In the remaining chapters, the author touches on launching your new products and maintaining the momentum in the marketplace.

The accompanying CD contains many customisable templates, checklists and other tools. The author also has a website.

Throughout the book, the author emphasises two strategic parameters: agility (in the decision-making processes) and profitability, without which new product ideas are simply useless! All her evaluation frameworks and screening tools in the book are designed for this purpose in mind.

My only complaint about this book: it has a very scanty bibliography. To others, this may seem trivial but to me, it is important as I often like to know more about what or who has influenced the author's thinking processes.

Nevertheless, I like this book very much, particularly for all the realistic process frameworks. The author's writing style is crisp and succinct. I will rank this book in the same genre with all my other books on opportunity management.

Rating:
Summary: Good writing and broad overview, but lacks some depth
Review: In general, both the writing style and areas covered are fairly comprehensive. Unlike many business planning / startup books, this gives a much more complete coverage of marketing and sales strategy. The most valuable content, in my mind, was around when to re-evaluate your strategies based on the results you're seeing.

The biggest thing I had an issue with was the narrow example space being drawn from. Where there was a need for justification or further explanation, it seemed to always either come from the limited TRW-ESL space or a quote from one of the twenty or so folks she interviewed. Where were the industry case studies? Or examples tracking several projects over time, both successes and failures? It was difficult for me to buy into all the details of the book because it was hard to see what was based on economics and math, what was based on experience, and what was just her opinion.

A minor nit is that the book talked about business planning a lot and making investment decisions, but never even mentioned cost of capital -- even in the financial section of the business plan. Maybe her company didn't do that, but I'd assume many companies are making decisions on investments with limited capital to pursue them.