Invent Like Thomas Edison: A Planview White Paper

A Structured Argument for Dr. Brian Glassman

Managing the Idea Process Ph.D. in Innovation Management

This white paper sets point by exploring three major trends which underscore reasons why
improved ideation is a requirement for future competitiveness. Further, this paper shows
how ideation fits into the product pipeline and that it is not just limited to ideas for new
products and services. Finally, this paper highlights research showing the common problems
with idea management, so that organizations can avoid them. This discussion is intended to
motivate smart managers and employees to improve their company’s ideation processes.

Introduction
As a full-time researcher and Ph.D. in Innovation, I have uncovered some horribly
mismanaged parts of the product development process. Unfortunately, major activities like
idea generation and idea management are systemically mishandled across a majority of
industries. This may be due to the complicated nature of today’s development process,
making us lose sight of these vital activities. Or perhaps it is due to the 20th century’s
predominate financial paradigm, pushing our focus toward the expensive back end of the
development process, while ignoring the low cost front-end processes. Nonetheless, I will
show in this white paper that these activities need to be brought back into the limelight. As
well, I will show that a well-run ideation process will be required for competitiveness today.

A SHORT STORY
Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric, was the first true inventor of the R&D lab.
So, I figured he was a worthy place to start my research on ideation. I dove into
references about his company and saw how he invented and marketed his products
(Stross, 2007; Hardagon, 2000). In order to produce a steady stream of inventions he
systematically managed ideation. To do this, he hired a diverse set of people (from
engineers, to watchmakers, to repairmen), conducted idea campaigns, and zealously
managed idea generation activities where tasks like detailed competitor reviews,
tinkering, prototyping, and rapid experimentation were required. To ensure ideas were
managed properly he kept tidy records of new ideas and had individuals assigned to
reviewing, screening, and categorizing ideas. Finally, he promoted rigorous discussion
of ideas and to help this he placed his engineers in several small and cramped rooms
to assure their quick propagation.

After this review of Edison’s methods, I marched forwards in time toward the current
days’ practices in ideation. One would imagine that we have evolved much since
Edison’s humble beginnings, but the statistics tell a different tale. My survey sample of
mid- to large-cap companies showed that the majority placed very little management
attention on their ideation process, resulting in the haphazard generation of ideas,
poor ideas, and a poor ability to utilize ideas. Somewhere in the mix, Thomas Edison’s
lessons were lost, and if alive today he would have laughed at the poor state of these
processes. I could imagine him zestfully saying, “If something is important to you,
manage it!” So, are you managing your ideation process?
INVENT LIKE THOMAS EDISON: A STRUCTURED ARGUMENT FOR MANAGING THE IDEA PROCESS

CONTENTS

I. A Multi-Industry Wide Problem ............................................................................. 3

II. Trends Pointing to the Importance of Ideation ...................................................... 3

A. The Need for More and Better Ideas................................................................ 3

1. The Pace of Competition ............................................................................ 4
2. Growth Targets ......................................................................................... 4
3. The Fight Against Commoditization ............................................................. 4
4. The Need for Disruptive Products ............................................................... 4

B. The Need to Convert Ideas at Higher Rates and More Efficiently ........................ 5
Type I Errors: False Positives ......................................................................... 5
Type II Errors: False Negatives ...................................................................... 5

C. The Need to be Customer-Driven .................................................................... 5

Customer-Driven Thinking as Applied to the Manufacturing Processes ............... 5
Customer-Driven Thinking Applies to All Industries .......................................... 6

III. Moving Towards a Set of Solutions ..................................................................... 6

IV. How Ideation Fits into the Development Process .................................................. 8

V. Common Problems with the Idea Management Process .......................................... 9

1. Capturing Ideas ........................................................................................ 9
2. Screening Ideas ...................................................................................... 10
3. Storing Ideas .......................................................................................... 10
4. Categorizing Ideas .................................................................................. 10
5. and 6. Diffusing and Routing Ideas ........................................................... 10

VI. A Balanced View of Idea Management ............................................................... 10

VII. Conclusions ................................................................................................... 11

VIII. Planview Enterprise for Product Development .................................................. 12

About the Author .................................................................................................. 13

References ........................................................................................................... 13

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I. A Multi-Industry Wide Problem

My research on idea generation and idea management, in combination referred to as
“ideation,” uncovered a systemic error, that of the under-management of these important
activities. Table 1 below shows a small sample from my 65-question survey, which was
answered by 40 companies across 25 industries. Looking at this chart, one can see that
many of these vital activities are “always” managed by a paltry 15% of the companies; how
abysmal! This is a staggering error; my research shows that companies that “always”
manage these processes are much more satisfied with their ideation’s process outcomes,
such as the quality of ideas, number of ideas, time to generate ideas, ideas’ fit with
strategy, their ability to capture ideas from employees or outside sources, and the
development outcomes of ideas entering the pipeline. Interestingly, the activities of
“capturing” and “screening of ideas” were the most managed by companies in my sample;
yet sadly they were still greatly underperformed, with only 25% of the companies “always”
managing them. (Glassman, 2009).

Most of   Don’t Know 
To what degree does your company:  Never  Rarely  Sometimes  Always 
the time  or NA 
Hold events to generate ideas?  18% 28% 33% 10% 10%  3%
Actively manage these events?  15% 28% 18% 15% 20%  5%
Actively manage idea generation activities?  10% 30% 30% 15% 13%  3%
Actively manage the capturing of ideas from  8% 23% 31% 13% 18%  8%
outside sources? 
Actively manage the capturing of ideas from  10% 13% 23% 26% 23%  6%
employees? 

Table 1: Sample of statistics from Improving Idea Generation and Idea Management
in Order to Better Manage the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation

This appalling lack of management for these ideation activities may be due to: 1) the limited
but growing literature on conducting and managing these activities, 2) the formerly poor
quality of tools and software to manage these activities, or, what I think is most likely, 3)
the lack of understanding about how essential ideation will be in the near future for the
competitiveness of the company. The arguments presented herein will concentrate on the
third point by showing how important it is to improve and manage the ideation process. This
should motivate smart managers and employees alike to pursue improvements in these
often underappreciated processes.

II. Trends Pointing to the Importance of Ideation

The movement toward ideation as a means of gaining a competitive advantage is starting to
form, and the first adopters of these practices are already demonstrating its payoffs while
their competitors will watch and struggle to catch up (Huston, Sakkab; 2006). The need
to manage ideation for the product development process is backed by three major trends,
which are 1) the need for more ideas and better ideas, 2) the need to convert ideas into
products at higher rates and more efficiently, and 3) the need for companies to be customer
driven.

A. The Need for More and Better Ideas

Frequently, managers yell that they “need more ideas inside their company, and more
importantly, better ideas!” But these voices repeatedly lack the rigorous arguments needed

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to motivate upper management into action; hence a more grounded argument is needed.
The case for more and better ideas revolves around four major points: 1) the increased
pace of competition in many industries, 2) the need to meet or exceed growth targets, 3)
the need to fight against commoditization, and 4) the need to develop more disruptive
products and services.

1. The Pace of Competition

Competition is a constant aspect of every industry, and in an effort to get ahead, many
companies have resorted to fighting a development war. Like a price war, development wars
are a constant acceleration of development efforts in order to come out with the next
products faster and faster (Clark, & Wheelwright; 1995). This acceleration of
development efforts will require more ideas for new products and services, more ideas for
product enhancements, more ideas to increase product quality and reliability; basically all
around more ideas are needed to stoke the fire. New development practices, like product
lifecycle management, agile, open innovation, rapid development, and so on, are further
accelerating the pace of development, and a company’s only hope to stay competitive is to
evolve with the rest. Presently, you may feel your company has an adequate number of
ideas, but this will change as the pace increases. The sad story of Zenith TVs, which was
reluctant to increase the pace of development, illustrates clearly that if you’re not willing to
play the game, you will be left behind.

2. Growth Targets
Further, as a company grows, so does the size of its growth targets. Clayton Christenson
discusses how a company with US$10 million in revenue may need to put on US$1-3 million
to meet growth needs; whereas, a company with US$5 billion may need an astounding
US$250 - $400 million in new revenue (Christensen, 1997; Huston, Sakkab, 2006). It
is fairly straight-forward – as a company grows so must its development capacity – but
something interesting happens to ideas. New product ideas and opportunities which were
once very attractive no longer are, because the possible revenues they would create would
not help in meeting growth needs. Consequently, as a company grows, its previous stock of
ideas becomes inadequate. Unfortunately, these large revenue ideas are much harder to
find or create.

3. The Fight Against Commoditization

Next, there is a constant need to fight commoditization; like the resilient desktop and laptop
companies which finally felt the crushing pain of commoditization. In 2007, leaders like Dell
had to redo their business models in order to deliver a commodity product. This fight
against commoditization can only be countered by differentiation, which is achieved by
producing and developing differentiated incremental or disruptive product ideas; otherwise,
one should prepare to play the commodity game (Porter, 1985).

4. The Need for Disruptive Products

Finally, to develop a disruptive product, one needs lots of ideas, many more ideas than are
needed for an incremental product or service. Experts have tentatively estimated that
disruptive products or services require a 50 to 100 times the number of ideas than do
incremental products, so if on average you need 50 decent ideas to create one incremental
product, you will need 5,000 to develop one disruptive product (Stevens & Burley; 1997).

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B. The Need to Convert Ideas at Higher Rates and More Efficiently

There is an additional trend where the owners of the development process are being
required to convert early-stage product and service concepts into a marketable product or
service at higher rates of success (Clark, & Wheelwright; 1995). Actually, top executives
are asking (and many times forcing) development departments to run more efficiently and
economically. The increased amount of competition, development wars, and fights against
commoditization make this more difficult, yet at the same time they are the reasons for this
request. Upper executives are more cautious after the most recent global financial
downturn, and they want to make the most economical use of their people, time, and
capital. Finally, competitors are building more efficient development processes, and those
who do not keep up and play the game can quickly fall behind.

Type I Errors: False Positives

A big part of this move towards efficiency requires making more of good development
projects, and killing off more poor projects which consume valuable resources and give
moderate or low returns. In an ideal world, you want to select only winning ideas to be
made into new products, but there is a high chance that a manager selects and develops a
poor idea, while actually thinking it is an acceptable one. In statistics this is called a Type I
error being a false positive, which I affectionately term “fool’s gold.” Stage-gate processes
and other mechanisms are meant to catch these errors, but often enough they do not and a
mediocre product launches to market and fails to or barely makes back its investment cost.

Type II Errors: False Negatives

On the other hand, Type II errors, or false negatives, are good products ideas that were
killed off, or put on permanent hold. Think of these as “worthless uncut diamonds” – they
can be big blows to morale, especially when they are released by a competitor. For
example, GM completely developed the minivan concept, but decided not to launch, and
instead Chrysler seized a billion-dollar market opportunity first. Risk-adverse management
is often blamed for Type II errors, but they are also a result of a development process that
deals poorly with change, inadequate incentives, outdated decision-making techniques and
criteria, and the failure to deal with uncertain information.

C. The Need to be Customer-Driven

Finally, the paradigm of being customer driven is taking a strong root in the practices of
best-in-class companies and is being taught in business schools as a required management
practice. The customer-driven paradigm is a shift in thinking about the customer. No longer
are they thought of as the source of demand at the end of the value chain; they are now
the crucial resource and a key player in all of the company’s core processes. Being customer
driven has great strategic benefits and significantly aids innovation and product
development, but it requires managing more ideas (Selden, MacMillan; 2005).

Customer-Driven Thinking as Applied to Manufacturing Processes

Truly being customer driven results in an adjustment of the company’s core processes and
the ensuing changes offer great strategic benefits. Take the example of a previously insular
manufacturing process which is now graded on the customer’s evaluations of quality, not
management’s notion of quality. Customer returns, defect rates, and customer-assessed
quality directly affect incentives and performance reviews of this manufacturing department.
In dealing with this shift, the manufacturing department creates new customer-centric
mechanisms to help mend issues and improve quality, such as detailed field assessments,

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customer quality groups, customer research teams, and root-cause squads. In addition,
they now will work much more closely with the service and design departments to prevent
problems before they occur. The improved manufacturing department is now much more
sensitive to the customer’s assessment of quality, more responsive to changes, and
becomes forward-thinking anticipating future quality needs.

Customer-Driven Thinking Across Core Processes

Customer-driven thinking is not limited to the manufacturing process, it should also be
applied to pricing, marketing, advertising, service, supply chain, product development, and
many other core processes. This combined change and respective adjustment create great
strategic benefits (Selden, MacMillan; 2005). Firstly, it makes the company much more
sensitive to the customers, their environments, and their current and future needs, resulting
in a more agile enterprise. Secondly, because it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty,
the company’s market position becomes more resilient and less susceptible to market share
attacks. Finally, because the company is more tuned into the customer, it can make its
current products more attractive and realize more opportunities for new products.

In particular, the customer-driven innovation process is distinctly different and more

effective than the old style of product development, and it has been proven to be so
(Souder, Buisson, Garrett; 1997). Customer-driven innovation uses things like
ethnographic research to collect “sticky information” – hard-to-gather information on
customer environments, problems, espoused and unmentioned needs (Thomke, Von
Hippel; 2002). It also uses the hundreds of eyes and ears of employees with customer
contact, like those in Services, Sales, Repair, Delivery, and so on, to collect this information.
With this, a company can detect almost indiscernible trends, needs, and uncover many new
product opportunities. Further, the customer-driven development process uses many more
points of customer input to improve the odds of a successful product launch and drive
higher product revenues.

New tools and methods are required to deal with this massive amount of customer
information (Karkkainen et. all; 2001). As well, the customer-facing employees are now
being turned into idea factories, and must have an easy method of submitting ideas. In
combination, this creates a great number of new and valuable ideas, and to successfully
make use of them, the idea management process must greatly increase its capacity and
efficiency.

III. Moving Towards a Set of Solutions

Luckily, each one of the mentioned trends has solutions, and most of them involve
improvements in ideation. The need for more and better ideas will be filled by effective
idea generation and idea management processes. My research details the top idea
generation processes (see the References section of this paper to download it). More
importantly, training development managers in how to conduct these processes is going to
become a standard best practice (Glassman, 2009). Further, time cannot be wasted; the
old days of waiting for ideas to fall into your lap must be supplanted by immediately finding
or creating ideas via focused ‘idea campaigns.’ Capturing more and better ideas will also
require tapping more external sources like prospective customers, suppliers, hobbyist
groups, universities, and so on… Consequently, establishing relationships with new external
sources is going to be vital, and implementing effective methods of capturing ideas and
providing the supporting tools or software to do so will be the critical enablers.

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The need to convert ideas at higher rates and more efficiently will be aided by new
and proven methods of managing the development process, including agile development,
portfolio management, project management, product lifecycle management, rapid product
development, and knowledge management systems. Additionally, more effective
development processes will be created by tying together, and strongly linking, previously
separated parts of the development process. Interestingly, new development software has
made great strides in these areas.

Intriguingly, the costly Type I error, or failed project, which is often blamed on middle and
upper management, can be reduced by gathering more ideas. Consider that for every batch
of ideas gathered, there is some distribution
of idea quality as shown above. When
dealing with a batch of, say 50 ideas, one
would pick the top 30 ideas to evaluate, and
out of this try to select the top 10 ideas for
preliminary development. Selection is not
an exact science, because there is a natural
error in estimating an idea’s quality and its
probability of future success. Now, if the
batch grows to 100 ideas, one would
probably still pick the top 30 ideas to
evaluate because of time constraints.
Hence, the chance of getting higher quality
ideas increases and the risk of a Type I
error decreases. This would be especially
important to managers whose careers are
based on on-going success in picking good
projects to develop. Further, by increasing
the quality of ideas going into the
development pipeline, you have a higher
chance of converting the products into
market successes. The old adage, “garbage
in equals garbage out” truly applies to the
development process and starts with
ideation.

Lastly, the need to be customer driven Figure 1: How idea quality is affected by the number
will require executive management of ideas gathered
committed to making core processes
sensitive to customer needs. This starts with making the incentive and performance review
processes from the leaders on down sensitive to customer metrics. Choosing the right
metrics for each department or process is vital. Once that is completed, the departments
will feel the pressure of customer demands, and should implement mechanisms to better
understand and deal with customer needs. In conjunction with this, a stream of information
and ideas will trickle, then pour in from the different parts of the business: Sales, Customer
Service, Repair, Delivery, and so on. To deal with this great influx, and capture its value,
knowledge management tools and idea management systems will need to be put in place.

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IV. How Ideation Fits into the Development Process

With all of this talk about how important ideation will be, it would be helpful to quickly
review how ideation (being idea generation and idea management) fits into the product
pipeline. Typically, the product pipeline is broken up into the front end of innovation,
development, commercialization, and the market launch processes. Certainly, some
companies combined processes; nonetheless, on average the pipeline resembles the one
shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Where ideas are needed in the pipeline

The typical view of ideation is that of a front-end activity, where ideas for new products and
services are created or captured and then enter into the pipeline. This is correct, but what
most people do not consider is that ideation is actually needed throughout the whole
pipeline (Hardagon, & Sutton; 2000). For example, development teams often explore
multiple design aspects of a product, and most often run into technical problems. To deal
with this, team leaders often run problem-solving sessions which often involve
brainstorming and problem-solving activities. From this, the team leader gathers a small
batch of solutions (ideas), and often settles on a less than optimal design because of the
limited number of solutions. However, if he quickly ran an idea campaign tapping the larger
brain of the company, he would have a much better chance of getting an optimal solution.
This type of situation exists not only in development, but also in the commercialization, and
market launch processes.

Nevertheless, ideation’s heart is in the front end of innovation, and must be elaborated on.
Figure 3 represents a simplistic yet accurate view of this process, based on my research on
the front end of innovation (Glassman, 2009). From this figure, one should note that the
idea management process deals with ideas from the idea generation process, but also
captures ideas floating around the company or ideas submitted by outside sources like
customers or suppliers. The ideas then move through the idea management process.
Promising ideas are put into preliminary development, where they are further developed,
researched, and have business cases wrapped around them. Finally, the best ideas, being
preliminary product concepts, are presented to the gatekeepers of the development
process for acceptance.

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Figure 3. A simplified view of the front end of innovation

This simplistic view of this process is illuminating, yet it does not highlight where things can
go wrong. The following section will look at the common problems with the idea
management process.

V. Common Problems with the Idea Management Process

Every company’s problems are different and must be assessed individually, yet during the
course of my research I have uncovered a list of common problems with ideation which
should be avoided or fixed. Again, ideation is composed of two very different processes
being: idea generation and idea management. Idea generation deals with finding or creating
ideas and opportunities and is highly customized to the company’s current strategic needs;
while idea management is highly logistical (like the post office) and is always running, ready
to capture ideas (like packages) and send them to the right people. For reasons of brevity, I
can only elaborate on problems with idea management; as this is more logistical in nature,
these problems are much easier to fix.

The idea management process is broken up into six major activities: 1) capturing, 2)
screening, 3) storing, 4) categorizing, 5) diffusing, and 6) routing ideas, and there are
common problems which each.

1. Capturing Ideas
For capturing ideas, companies often erroneously limit themselves to employees and current
customers, when they should actually be tapping many sources like prospective customers,
lead customers, suppliers, hobbyist groups, universities, national labs, inventor groups,
research firms, friendly competitors, and so on... This error is usually due to inexperience in
capturing ideas from outside sources, legal concerns, or due to an inadequate system for
capturing ideas.

Another major problem is the lack of active management over the capturing of ideas, as
shown in Table 1. My research has shown that active management greatly increases a
company’s satisfaction and effectiveness in capturing ideas from employees and outside
sources (Glassman, 2009, pg. 265). Passive methods like suggestion boxes or email
requests for ideas are often the most ineffective means of gathering ideas. In order to

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capture ideas as they occur, flexible and engaging methods like idea management software,
open door policies, idea fairs, idea contests, and designated idea coordinators are needed.

2. Screening Ideas
My research also observed idea screening being applied haphazardly or randomly by
managers, even inside the same company. This is a constant source of frustration for
employees hoping to submit helpful ideas, and can even dissuade them from future
submissions. For screening to be effective, uniform criteria must be applied to all ideas, and
be applied fairly. This minimizes personal bias or obsolete criteria from influencing what
ideas are kept and which are discarded. This can be avoided by training, audits, or through
structured screening processes like those present in idea management software.

3. Storing Ideas
As for storage, I have seen small number of ideas effectively kept in spreadsheets or in
Microsoft Word documents. However, with more ideas, emailing an idea document around
or updating it manually quickly becomes tedious and eventually fails to be practical.
Consequently, a considerable amount of ideas requires robust storage systems like those
present in top-grade idea management software; antiquated or repurposed databases often
do not work.

4. Categorizing Ideas
The ability to categorize and sort ideas is vital for managers seeking a specific type of idea,
like a disruptive product idea, amongst many hundreds in the idea bank. Further, spotting
and filling gaps in the idea bank can only be done with formal categorization and sorting
methods. Here, filing cabinets of ideas are often ineffective, and relegated to collecting dust.
Spreadsheets and documents packed with ideas are often just as frustrating; here again the
viable solution for a large numbers of ideas is idea management software or purpose-built
databases.

5. and 6. Diffusing and Routing Ideas

The most important and, regrettably, often the most undermanaged, activities are the
diffusing and routing of ideas. Diffusing ideas is the necessary last step in the chain, where
development managers and eager employees learn about these new ideas. These ideas then
have the option to be turned into projects for new products or services; where if they are
not discussed or diffused this option never materializes. A common error in diffusion is
allowing ideas to sit stagnant and unviewed in Word documents or in antiquated idea
databases. The answer here is to force ideas out via multiple mechanisms, and idea
management software is only part of the solution. To be truly effective, one must
supplement highly searchable and user-friendly idea databases or software with forced
diffusion methods like ideas meetings, weekly emails, lively discussions, idea bulletin
boards, idea fairs, and others. Routing relevant ideas to the appropriate employees is also
vital, and an idea coordinator should be appointed to email new and significant ideas out to
pertinent employees.

VI. A Balanced View of Idea Management

With any new management activity, there are costs associated with implementing it, and in
order to present a balanced argument for idea management one must also understand its
costs as well as its benefits. For idea management, the costs revolve around its 1)
assessment, 2) implementation, and 3) ongoing use.

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For companies with existing idea management systems, a qualified assessment should
quickly show if the current system can be made adequate, or if it needs to be replaced. This
can be done internally by an innovation expert, or, if one is not available, an expert can be
hired or often provided for free by an idea management software vendor.

Next, the implementation of the idea management system will cost the company time and
money. The time requirements will consist of training employees to use the new system,
and formatting the system to meet the company’s specific needs. Often, user-friendly idea
management software can be quickly learned by employees and requires minimal training.
In some case, behaviors of employees will need to be changed (like making employees want
to talk about new ideas) and this behavior adoption will also take time. Now, as can be
expected, the price of a premium idea management system can be quite a bit higher than
that of lower-end ones, but often this is justified through their robustness, user-friendly
design, and dedicated support.

Finally, there is an ongoing diversion of management’s time toward supervising the idea
management system. But as management becomes more knowledgeable and proficient in
controlling this process, the time required to do so becomes minimal. Interestingly, the
structure of the idea management system also determines how much time is required to
manage it, with hand-run systems often requiring a lot more time than software-based
systems.

VII. Conclusions
Thankfully, after so many years, some of the sources of Thomas Edison’s inventive genius
are being remembered and put back into practice. However, we still have a long way to go
before companies are proficient at ideation. So one must remember that the ideation
process is important and must be actively managed in order to create high quality results.
Also, there are three major trends pushing companies to improve their ideation processes,
these being: the need for more and better ideas, the need to convert ideas at higher rates
and more efficiently, and the need to be customer driven. Next, ideation is broken up into
idea generation and idea management, and there are common problems with idea
management that can be avoided with smart management of this process. Finally, using
idea management software for large numbers of ideas will greatly help in the logistics and
execution of this process. Hopefully, this white paper was illuminating and moreover
motivates you to improve your company’s ideation process; in this way we can all “invent
like Thomas Edison.”

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VIII. Planview Enterprise for Product Development

Planview Enterprise®, the portfolio management solution from Planview®, features
capabilities that help product organizations automate the ideation process, optimize product
and roadmap planning, accelerate time to market, and provide transparency into the true
cost of product development.

Planview Enterprise Ideation Management provides enterprises with an easy-to-use yet

robust method for creating and maintaining dynamic customer communities that generate
and evaluate product ideas, providing a true view of customer needs and wants.

Integrated with the industry-leading Planview Enterprise portfolio management platform,

and powered by an exclusive partnership with Brightidea®, this unique offering helps
product organizations shorten the time to delivery of winning ideas within the optimal
product and feature mix by ensuring efficient, consistent execution through sound portfolio
analysis, capacity planning, and project and resource management.

Planview Enterprise is certified Stage-Gate® Ready, an endorsement by Stage-Gate, Inc.,

that this solution meets the requirements to help drive innovation while minimizing risk in
product development efforts, and can be leveraged to successfully implement Stage-Gate
best practice processes such as Idea Management, Idea-to-Launch, and Portfolio
Management.

Learn more at www.planview.com/proddev.

© 2009 Planview, Inc. All rights reserved.

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About the Author

Brian Glassman, Ph.D., graduated from the College of Technology at Purdue University
specializing in Innovation Management and Technology Commercialization. He received his
B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a second M.S. in Engineering
Management from Duke University. His research, consulting, and scholarly interests
continue to explore the many facets of Innovation Management and Technology
Commercialization; and he is a passionately-driven entrepreneur. Brian is very open to
questions and can be reached at Brian.Glassman@Gmail.com.

References
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Better Manage the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation, Ph.D. Dissertation, Purdue
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Randall E. Stross. (2007) The Wizard of Menlo Park: Thomas Alva Edison invented the
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Ref 1 Anonymous. (2009) Type 1 and type 2 errors,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive#Type_I_error
Selden, L., & MacMillian, I. (2005) Manage Customer-Centric Innovation Systematically,
Harvard Business Review, April 2006 pg 108-116
Souder, Wm., Buisson, D., Garrett, T. (1997) Success Through Customer Driven New
Product Development, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 14:459-471
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Thomke, S., & Von Hippel, E. (2002) Customer as Innovators A new way to Create
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