Stuart Jackson led L.E.K. Consulting as Global Managing Partner and now serves as Vice Chair. He has worked with hundreds of clients who have enjoyed higher growth, increased their profit margins in existing businesses, added scores of new services and products, and completed more than 100 merger and acquisition transactions. He is a past recipient of Consulting Magazine's Top 25 Consultants award. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Where Value Hides: A New Way to Uncover Profitable Growth for Your Business (Wiley, 2006) and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The Journal of Business Strategy and Harvard Business Review.Ilya Trakhtenberg is a Managing Director with L.E.K. Consulting and a leading partner in its healthcare practice. In his 15 years with L.E.K., he has led hundreds of engagements with a wide range of corporate and private equity clients to develop and launch innovative new products, accelerate business growth, and deliver superior investment returns. He has published more than a dozen journal articles, serves as a regular speaker at industry conferences, and founded L.E.K.'s MedTech Launch Center of Excellence. Ilya is also a past recipient of M&A Advisor's Emerging Leaders Award and a board member of L.E.K.'s global Sustainability Centre of Excellence.

Acknowledgments

Part I: Configuring for Success

1. Use a Systematic Approach to Beat the Odds Why Investing in New Products Is so Difficult and so Important

How Risk and Uncertainty Can Be Systematically Managed

The Benefits of a Systematic Approach

Who This Book Is For and What You'll Find Inside

How Did We Come to Be Leading This Tour?

2. Manage Risks by Evaluating Multiple Indicators of Success Benefits and Challenges of Fast Fail Innovation

Barriers to Change for Established Companies

Lack of Resources for Entrepreneurs and Emerging Businesses

The Catch-22 of New Product Investing

3. Avoid the Seven Behaviors that Reduce the Odds for Many Innovators Overrelying on Intuition, Rather Than Objective Evidence

Rushing into New Areas Where You Have No Right to Win

Fearing Failure If Products Are Not "Absolutely Perfect"

Prioritizing Product Features over Customer Needs and Solutions

Focusing Only on the Short Term or the Long Term

Trying to Own It All

Failing to Flex

Part II: Developing Product and Service Concepts

4. Look for What's Broken, Who's Not Being Served, and How to Leverage Your Strengths What's Broken?

Who's Not Being Served?

How Is Your Company Special?

The "Edge Strategy": Leveraging Unique Capabilities

5. Take Advantage of Direct Market Feedback and Rapid Prototypes The Value of Early Market Feedback

Benefit from Lean Development and Low-Cost Prototyping

Leverage a Variety of Early Signals to Assess Potential

6. Embrace Continuous Upgrades and Lean Development for Digital-Led Businesses Design Sprint for New Concept Development

Trialing the User Experience

Proof of Concept for AI Products

Use Platform Customers for B2B Solutions

Manage Risks for B2B Customers

Network Benefits for Digital Businesses

A Special Context for Innovation: Leaner, Faster, and Networked

7. Move Up the Detect-Analyze-Act Pyramid to Enrich Products Using Digital Applying the Framework: Collins Aerospace

Detect, Analyze, and Act

Create Effective Digital Customer Connections

8. Use a Start-Up Mindset for Breakthrough Innovation in Large Companies Build a Dedicated Team

Balance Risks and Rewards for Team Members

Allow Accelerated Decision-Making with Guardrails

Define Clear Milestones and Tie Budgets to Achieving Them

Example of Breakthrough Innovation Challenges at a Large Corporation

Be Aware of the Challenges of Corporate Venture Capital

Alignment and Investment

Part III: Forecasting Revenue

9. Build a Business Case to Avoid the Product Graveyard The Five Elements of a Robust Business Case

Avoid the Product Graveyard

10. Size the Prize and Identify the Customers You Will Win Define a "Big Enough" Market Opportunity

Identify Growth Tailwinds

Segment the Universe of Potential Customers

Build a Customer Runway

11. Gather Customer Insights, Not "Voice of Customer" Know Your Tools for Market Insights

Get Full Value from Market Interviews

Know How and When to Use Surveys

Derive Insights, Not Data

12. Never Take Market Research at Face Value Getting Adoption Estimates Right

Pressure Test with Analogs and Triangulations

13. Assume Your Competitors Are at Least as Smart as You Are Define Your Current and Future Competitive Set

Understand Your Competitors and Their Advantages and Disadvantages

Use Wargaming to Predict and Prepare for Competitive Responses

14. Price to Unlock the Full Value of Your Innovation Price to Win the War, Not the Battle

Always Start with Value

Select the Right Pricing Model

Determine Your Pricing Strategy

15. Build a High-Confidence Revenue Forecast The Fundamentals of Building Revenue Forecasts

Develop Your Model Methodology

Defining Adoption Curves

Adjusting for Competitive Impacts

Assessing Risk with the 3S's: Sensitivities, Scenarios, and Simulation

The "What You Have to Believe" Sense Check

16. Create a Bulletproof Business Case Put the Case Together with a Strong Narrative

Define Your Ask

Framing Your Ask for Your Audience

Part IV: Ensuring Commercial Success

17. Identify and Lower the Biggest Barriers to Adoption Understand How Customers Buy and Which Stakeholders Will Matter

Proactively Overcome Expected Adoption Barriers

Learning from Uber

18. Plan Enough but Not Too Much The Importance of a Goldilocks Launch Plan

Creating a "Living" Launch Plan

19. Take the Shortest Path to Value, Not to Market "Go Big or Go Home" Launches

Limited Launches and the Art of the Lean Launch

Tradeoffs of Direct vs. Distributor Channels

Manage Channels, Don't Let Them Manage You

20. Prime the Organization for a Successful Launch Organizational Priorities for Start-Ups

Organizational Priorities for Established Companies

Importance of Building Internal Alliances

Organizational Best Practices for Launch

Part V: Creating Long-Term Value

21. Turn a Single Success into an Enduring Franchise Five Areas Where Many Companies Fall Short

The Challenge of Going Beyond the First Product

The Value of a Multi-Platform Product Plan

22. Make Use of Acquisitions and Partnerships to Accelerate Innovation Value The Five-Point Framework

The Power of Partnerships

Breaking New Ground: A Nonprofit Enterprise Bets on a New Subsidiary

23. Embrace Proven Pathways for Long Lead-Time Innovation Managing Your Business as a Series of Inflection Points

A Different Pathway: Aviation

Balancing High-Risk, Long-Term Innovation with Near-Term Wins

24. Use Incremental Developments to Complement Breakthrough Innovation Incremental Innovation: What's Required?

Incremental and Breakthrough: Conflicting Imperatives?

The Role of Execution in Determining Whether a Product Becomes a Breakthrough

Incentives in Large Organizations

Innovation Challenges for Large Organizations

25. Turn Gaps into Strengths for Start-Ups and Entrepreneurs How Entrepreneurs Can Turn Weaknesses into Strengths

Configure to Maximize Advantages

Knowing When to Exit or Find a Partner

Appendix 1: Tools for Market Research

Appendix 2: Real-World Data Resources to Complement Market Research

Appendix 3: Estimating Purchase Intent

Appendix 4: Revenue Modeling Best Practices

Notes

Index