Where lean product development experts and practitioners share their stories
Fake It Until You Make It – The Power of Fakevertising
Using fake sales brochures as objectives in new product development means creating realistic, hypothetical marketing material for a product concept before the product is developed. This technique helps teams align on customer value, crystallize the target features,...
Cost Management: Where’s the Love?
Image by ChatGPT Picture this: Your development team unveils a brilliant new product. The features are innovative, the design is elegant, and customers are excited. Launch day arrives, sales begin... and then the financials come in. The gross margin is dismal....
Finding New Directions, When It Feels Like You’re On the Wrong Path
Have you ever felt like standing up and shouting "We're doing it wrong!"? I felt like that early in my career as a manufacturing engineer, reworking and repairing the same parts every day. We were doing it wrong, but lean manufacturing gave us a different path--acting...
Knowledge Building at LPPDE Conferences
Over the years, I have attended multiple Lean Product and Process Development Exchange (LPPDE) Conferences. One of the really unique and valuable aspects which has surfaced in the last couple of years, which differentiate it from other conferences is a series of...
Connecting the Dots: My Journey with Lean Product and Process Development
It was October 13, 2021, when I presented my talk at LPPDE, North America. This was a significant moment for several reasons: It was the moment that I realized that I had been accepted into a community that I had admired for years It was also the moment that I...
Decoding Product Development’s Super Paradigms with First Principles Thinking
Picture this: you’re building a smartphone, and your team’s split between two camps. One’s clutching a Gantt chart–detailed to task level–like it’s the Holy Grail, demanding every resistor be approved before the next phase gate. The other’s writing ideas on napkins,...