Turn Ideas Into Products


Book Description

We've all heard stories of amazing product successes: the brilliant college kid who started a business in his dorm room; the team who built a business from the back of a napkin with just a few friends and sold it for millions. Yet for every amazing success story, there are thousands of stories of products that went nowhere. Most of us aren't looking at billion-dollar valuations; we're not looking for an exit. Instead we have a few ideas -- some innovative, some not -- and we're trying to determine which to pursue. Likely, you're working for a company today and you need a step-by-step approach to turn ideas, regardless of their source, into businesses. In Turn Ideas into Products, author Steve Johnson introduces a nimble idea-to-market process with strong emphasis on personal experience with customers. From business planning to product launch, this approach for managing products empowers your product team to work smarter and collaborate better with colleagues and customers.




How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas into Products That Build Successful Businesses


Book Description

This step-by-step DIY guide shows today’s entrepreneurs how to create and launch new products, package and market them to consumers, and build a thriving business. Thanks to high-speed Internet, game-changing technology, and innovative new platforms, individuals with vision and heart can go from idea to marketplace on a shoestring budget. In How We Make Stuff Now, Jules Pieri—cofounder and CEO of The Grommet, a product launch platform that helps innovative products reach a community of millions—takes readers through the entire consumer product creation process, showing how individual Makers, inventors, and entrepreneurs have utilized technology, the Maker Movement, and perseverance to turn ideas for innovative consumer goods into thriving businesses, breaking the rules of traditional retailing in the process. Jules details what goes into each of the steps they take: ideation, education, research, design and documentation, prototyping, funding, manufacturing, packaging, marketing, distribution, logistics, payments, customer service, financial and inventory management, and growth. Using case studies of successful startups, she reveals how entrepreneurs overcome obstacles, solve challenges, and rise above them to deliver innovations. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, Maker, or inventor, the first crucial step in your journey to turning your ideas into products that build thriving businesses is learning How We Make Stuff Now.




Act Now!


Book Description

Harrington, the infomercial guru who started the infomercial craze with products like the Ginsu Knife, Wally Wok, and the Ab Isolator, brings his experience and know-how to ambitious entrepreneurs, inventors, and businesspeople.




Idea to Invention


Book Description

Discover the tricks of the trade that helps ordinary people learn how to look at their world through the eyes of an inventor. You don’t have to be a mechanical genius to be an inventor. Chances are, you’re already at the all-important starting ground every inventor begins at--wishing you could find a clever solution to an everyday challenge. The far-too-complicated baby swing. Slick-soled running shoes. Computer cords constantly tangled up...there can’t be a solution unless there’s a problem. Author and inventor Patricia Nolan-Brown has turned many common annoyances into ingenious and money-making products, and she believes you can do the same. In Idea to Invention, you will learn the six simple steps it takes to go from idea to invention, and discover: Creativity habits that spark invention The power of tape-and-paper prototypes to refine their vision How to navigate the ins and outs of licensing and patenting their product The pros and cons of finding a licensed manufacturer vs. running a home-based assembly line How to promote their invention Product enhancements that add years to shelf life From the everyday challenge and your initial concept to resolve it, all the way to the explosion of your thriving business, Idea to Invention simplifies the invention process and gives creative thinkers the competitive edge they need to achieve the success their amazing ideas deserve.







From Concept to Consumer


Book Description

In From Concept to Consumer, renowned product developer Phil Baker reveals exactly what it takes to create great products and bring them to market. Baker’s product successes range from Apple’s PowerBook to the Stowaway portable keyboard, the most successful PDA accessory ever created. Here, he walks you through the entire development process, showing how to develop products holistically, reflecting the crucial linkages between product design, engineering, testing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. You’ll discover what makes a winning product, and why great ideas are just 5% of the process...the easiest 5%! You’ll find practical guidance for planning, establishing teams, creating marketing requirements, avoiding “feature creep,” prototyping, protecting intellectual property, market testing and positioning, preparing for customer service, implementing the optimal distribution strategy, and much more. After you’ve delivered your first breakthrough product, Baker shows how to follow up with another winner! Optimize your entire product development process Make everything work together seamlessly: from planning and engineering through distribution and marketing Get breakthrough industrial design without overpaying for it Deliver products that create a powerful emotional bond with your customer Time product delivery for maximum competitive advantage Make sure you don’t reach your market too late—or too early, either Leverage Asian manufacturing without falling victim to its pitfalls Successfully coordinate even the most complex worldwide product delivery programs




Testing Business Ideas


Book Description

A practical guide to effective business model testing 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. Testing Business Ideas explains how systematically testing business ideas dramatically reduces the risk and increases the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds on the internationally popular Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. Testing Business Ideas uses an engaging 4-color format to: Increase the success of any venture and decrease the risk of wasting time, money, and resources on bad ideas Close the knowledge gap between strategy and experimentation/validation Identify and test your key business assumptions with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas A definitive field guide to business model testing, this book features practical tips for making major decisions that are not based on intuition and guesses. Testing Business Ideas shows leaders how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization and make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.




Commercializing Innovation


Book Description

Commercializing Innovation: Turning Technology Breakthroughs into Products shows how to turn ideas from R&D labs, universities, patent offices, and inventors into commercially successful products and services. Commercializing technology has never been easy, and it's getting tougher all the time. All the decisions you need to make are complicated by today's breakneck rates of change in enabling technology and by competitive pressures disseminated globally at the speed of the internet: Where to get ideas? Which to pursue? Whom to hire? Where to manufacture? How to fund? Create a startup or license to another? To answer these questions adequately and bring sophisticated products and services successfully to market, you need to deploy the systematic methods detailed in this book. Jerry Schaufeld--serial technology entrepreneur, angel investor, and distinguished professor of entrepreneurship--presents in detail his proven step-by-step commercialization process, beginning with technology assessment and culminating with the successful launch of viable products into the global market. Using case studies, models, and practical tips culled from his entrepreneurial career, he shows readers of Commercializing Innovation how to Source technology that can be turned into products Recognize an opportunity to create a viable product Perform feasibility analyses before sinking too much money into a project Find the right method and means to introduce the product to market Plan the project down to the last detail Execute the project in ways that improve chances of its success Comply with government regulation without crippling your project Decide whether offshore manufacturing is your best option Compete globally with globally sourced ideas and funding




IDEApreneur


Book Description

Ready to turn your ideas into income? IDEApreneur will show you how to: Increase your flow of ideas, Assess your ideas for uniqueness and money-making potential, Position, package and communicate your ideas so they get noticed, respected and bought, Market, merchandise and monetize your ideas through a variety of strategic business activities.




The Lean Startup


Book Description

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.