Driving Cost-Effective Innovation With Concurrent Systems: Strategy, Process, Organization, & Tools/Technologies

This book quantifies best practices for developing innovative products cost-effectively. Analyses of dozens of studies show how managing the work of people collaborating in parallel creates products faster, cheaper, and better in any organization. Concurrent systems deploy four kinds of practice simultaneously to synergistically achieve high performance: Strategy, Process, Organization, and Tools/Technologies (SPOT).

 

Appendices in every chapter enable stakeholders to benchmark their practices against Best-in-Class standards and identify gaps. A "Big Bang" index prioritizes best practices for improvement. A Composite Model™ algorithm enables designers of product development systems to further boost performance capabilities by combining complementary practices additively and synergistically. Managers and stakeholders collaborate in using these unique methods to build a "should be" vision of value development by closing gaps in their "as is" system to achieve diverse competitive advantages.

 

Case studies highlight how dozens of enterprises successfully implemented SPOT practices to improve their performance. A transformation assurance process (TAP) provides tactics for champions to co-lead a five-step change journey: (1) Envisioning, (2) Diagnosing, (3) Assessing, (4) Implementing, and (5) Improving.

Frank M. Hull's PhD is from Columbia University. He is the author of 70 articles and three books. He has taught at several universities including Columbia University, Fordham University, Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania/Wharton, University of Maryland, Cass Business School London, and Arizona State University. He has served as principal investigator for numerous research projects funded by the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Commerce, US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, Center for Innovation Management, Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, and other agencies of the Japanese government. His research has also been supported by user group subscriptions from over 100 world renown corporations in America, Europe, and Asia.