New ideas are all around us. They spring to life in the midst of busy days. The collective ingenuity of motivated groups can make anything happen. However, separate agendas, lack of dialogue and competing goals fight against harnessing greatness. A technology evaluation model is about mindshare. It allows a group to focus. It is not about predicting the future, but rather capturing energy. Focus combined with energy drive innovation. A technology evaluation model is a simple way of fueling the innovation pipeline, the engine that builds products customers will love. This book takes you...

The collective way employees, partners, stakeholders and customers behave is what makes companies different. This is what you can call the operational model. The model describes how each of these groups works and interacts with each other. The model governs everything. Manage the model and you manage the company. Change the model and you change the company. The path to transforming a company starts with defining your current model followed by envisioning its future state. Your vision for the company is built upon contrasting these two versions of the model. Effectively leading a company into...

Obtaining insight into the belly of a large, dynamic product development organization is difficult. Rarely do you find a system that captures all the information you need to make good decisions. Therefore, questions asked lead to a hunt for data. This takes time and effort. Eventually the number of questions asked overwhelms an organization's ability to gather sufficient data. As a result, decisions are made using old and incomplete data. Access to complete and current data is critical for making good decisions. And without good decisions, the chances of success are poor. Of all the things...

A large organization is a chaotic place filled with situations that seem unexplainable. Revealing the invisible forces at work will explain why these things happen. The forces become visible by understanding the hidden rules that govern corporate America. Once understood, the great thing about these rules is that you can use them to better predict future outcomes, thereby making it possible to create a winning approach at any level of the organization. Understanding the invisible forces at work is done by applying the perspectives of block-builders, chess, and Monopoly players. Block-building...