The Four Steps to the Epiphany

 

The Difference between the Winners and Losers 

Every company has some methodology for product development, launch and life-cycle management.  

These processes provide detailed plans, checkpoints and goals for every step in getting a product out 

the door; sizing markets, estimating sales, developing marketing requirements documents, 

prioritizing product features.  Yet at the end of the day even with all these procedures the 

embarrassing fact is that 9 out of 10 of new products are failures.   

The difference between the winners and losers is simple.   Products developed with senior 

management out in front of customers early and often - win.  Products handed off to a sales and 

marketing organization that has only been tangentially involved in the new product development 

process lose.  It’s that simple.  

The reality for most companies today is that existing product introduction methodologies are 

focused on activities that go on inside a company own building. While customer input may be a 

checkpoint or “gate” in the process it doesn’t drive it.   

This book is not another set of product development processes that are simple extensions of what 

already exists.  New product mortality rates tell us that doesn’t work; the emperor simply has no 

clothes.  Existing new product launch processes don’t offer prediction and guidance of customer 

behavior, therefore we need to build a new set of product development processes that will.  

What this book offers is a radical reexamination of the entire new product introduction process.  

It makes clear that companies need a parallel process to product development; one dedicated to 

bringing customers and their needs head first into the new product introduction process – before the 

product is ever launched or shipped. 

The lesson is clear:  by listening to potential future customers’, by going out into the field and 

investigating potential customers needs and markets before being inexorably committed to a specific 

path and precise product specs – the difference between the winners and losers – and that’s the 

Customer Development Process described in this book.