Toyota introduced the lean manufacturing system over 40 years ago. Lean is a quality management philosophy that eliminates waste to increase predictability and reliability of the final product. This, in… Read More
NPD Teams
4 Roles of Psychological Safety in Innovation
Amy Edmundson of Harvard Business School introduced the concept of psychological safety about twenty years ago. Psychological safety is a shared belief that a team is safe to take interpersonal… Read More
Leadership Lessons from Green Tea
Recently, my husband and I enjoyed a late weekend lunch at one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. He usually orders a bento box with shrimp tempura while I prefer the… Read More
An Idea Life Cycle for Innovation Success
Most of us have lots of ideas. Some of them are good, while others don’t pan out. Our idea span from improving technology and devices to better health care. Ideas… Read More
“Wagile” in New Product Development
New product introductions fail at an amazingly high rate – about half of all new products commercialized fail to meet sales targets. In some cases, customers like the product features,… Read More
Matrix Organizational Structure
Business today is complex. Companies must grow profits and constantly innovate to outpace aggressive competitors. Work is more challenging from a technological perspective, yet workers are being asked to do… Read More
Project-Oriented Organizational Structure
Management functions are often described in four categories: Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling While planning involves a strategic vision for the firm, organizing describes how the company intends to allocate… Read More
Functional Organizational Structure
Project and product managers must motivate and inspire team members to accomplish the goals of a project. Yet, we still must work within the organizational structure and culture of the… Read More
Control Theory and NPD
I live in Houston, Texas. It gets pretty hot in the summer and air conditioning is a blessing. Of course, there is a trade-off between comfortable temperatures and the electric… Read More
Conflict Management
Earlier this spring, I was presenting a brief overview of project management to a group of chemical and electrical engineers. The seminar was about one hour and so we barely… Read More