I’m just a New Product Dog. I love innovation – new product development – and the systems and processes that support it. This space is wonderfully interesting – because when companies have lots of good practitioners, the companies (and practitioners) thrive and prosper.

It is a fun and worthwhile field for a curious person to devote their career.

And yet…

The field is dominated by academics and consultants that couldn’t innovate their way out of a paper bag. Maybe the experienced business leaders out there or expensive MBA graduates can help. Don’t count on it. The leaders of large businesses almost always ignore common sense and the most basic tenets of strategy in order to prop up their quarterly numbers. And no matter how expensive or prestigious the school, they can’t learn “how to do business” there; they can only learn “about business.” Can you learn to swim by reading a book? Can you learn to play the piano by attending a lecture. Of course not! Innovation/marketing/new product development are skills that you learn by doing.

Unfortunately, the high volume of nonsense makes us all skeptical. But it doesn’t have to – because there are knowledgeable, experienced folks that we can learn from. You’ll find them in the reading list. They are all New Product Dogs who have contributed to the field for us all to learn from.

My name is Scott Burleson – and I’m not just writing about stuff I’ve read – I’ve been fortunate to have been in positions where I could actually put strategic marketing into practice. I have listed a couple vastly different innovation case studies – one involving a go-to market strategy and the other regarding a major new product development project.

 

I’m currently very fortunate to work with the world’s foremost authority on B2B innovation – Dan Adams at The AIM Institute, at the intersection of B2B growth and innovation excellence. If you’re in B2B, the first reference that you must read is Dan’s book New Product Blueprinting.