Complex and visually stimulating; a serious blueprint for serious strategists.
Drotar and Morrissey present a product development strategy centered on revamping core methods in this business guide.
In these pages, the authors (co-founders of product development firm Strategy 2 Market) describe their original Exploratory Product Development, or ExPD, concept to help companies improve their processes and practices when approaching everything from interacting with (and learning from) customers to streamlining the delivery of products and services. Considering the complex state into which these enterprises have developed, Drotar and Morrissey assert that institutional adaptability is more important than ever and that “successful projects have competent managers who are involved but not too involved.” The “exploratory learning” the authors advocate is outwardly focused and premised on being adaptable enough to develop new competencies and create new models as complex situations evolve. The authors use a series of case studies to illustrate their core principles for developing a flexible, adaptable “strategy-to-launch” process for delivering products and adjusting to all kinds of factors, from external pressures to personnel complications. Drotar and Morrissey repeatedly stress both the value of detailed knowledge and the importance of having the flexibility to alter course when some of that knowledge turns out to be wrong or irrelevant. A primary goal of their ExPD approach, they write, is “to reduce the product uncertainty that derives from unknowns.” They proceed methodically through every stage of product development and delivery, breaking down every step into its component parts and analyzing each in turn. This compartmentalized approach is maintained throughout: “We recommend breaking the activities into small increments,” they write, “which helps the team to be focused, fast, and budget-conscious.”
The first thing that will strike readers is the effort the authors have put in to making the text of their book inviting. Key concepts are bullet-pointed, key lines are delivered in pull quotes, and a variety of graphics are employed throughout to keep the reading experience from bogging down or becoming visually tedious (and to help readers more readily find the specific things they’re looking for). These kinds of easy-access features will be all the more appreciated by readers, as the actual text, when laying out the concepts and strategies, is often dauntingly technical—in many ways, the book very much feels like a guide for business graduate students who already know concepts like fuzzy gates and overlapping phases. In a typical passage, Drotar and Morrissey write, “Despite easing some process rigidity, the structure of the process is maintained. The nature and order of activities and deliverables are still prescribed, and decisions are deferred to the gates.” Readers already familiar with such terms will find the authors to be bracingly forthright and readable guides; those requiring a more introductory approach may find themselves scrambling to keep up as the text proceeds full steam ahead while discussing cross-functional teams. Some of the guidance in these pages is almost comically simple—listen to your customers, carefully plan each of your development stages—but the great majority of the book’s advice is formidably technical.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2022
ISBN: 9781732749221
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Strategy 2 Market, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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