Driving Cost-Effective Innovation with Concurrent Systems

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(TM) 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 have 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.