Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Preston Smith’s Corner

Thursday, March 21st, 2013
 
Preston Smith retired in 2012, and we created Preston Smith’s Corner as a repository to store his important contributions to new product development. He has a long list of accomplishments during his career in new product development. Preston received his PhD in Engineering from Stanford University. He was the Principal at New Product Dynamics for 26 years. During this time he helped scores of companies with getting products to market faster and improving their ability to deal effectively with the inevitable changes that arise in mid-project.
 
Preston is also a prolific author and is the co-author of Developing Products in Half the Time (1997) with Donald Reinertsen. This is recognized as a leading book in reducing product development cycle time. His book, Proactive Risk Management, won the 2003 David Cleland award from the Project Management Institute as the best piece of project management literature published in 2002. In 2007, Preston published Flexible Product Development. In this ground-breaking book, Preston attributes the recent decline in innovation to pressure from financial markets that drives management toward rigid development approaches, such as phased development processes and Six Sigma. In addition, Preston was the Book Review Editor of the Journal of Product Innovation Management for five years.
 
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Trends in the Medical Device Industry – The next four years

Monday, November 12th, 2012

Some members of our firm attended the 4th Annual Healthcare Medical Device and Life Sciences Conference hosted by McGuireWoods, LLP on Thursday. There were some excellent panels and discussions regarding the medical device industry.

A panel titled ’Medical Device – the Next Four Years’  included Ross Gordon, Director at Lincoln International and Jay Istvan, Director at Bain & Company.  They outlined some major medical device trends, including:

Patient trends:

1. Greater patient engagement

2. Higher prevalence of chronic disease

Provider trends:

3. Increased profit and loss focus in medical technology and supply purchasing

4. Integration of care and protocol standardization

5. Physician shortage

Payer trends:

6. Increased pressure to measure speed

7. Integrated care as a lever to improve outcomes and lower cost

Providers will focus on 2 primary strategies that include; consolidation and reduction of cost of care on site (e.g. teleservices and the home). Growth in medical technologies will occur in the following areas; point of care cost, remote patent monitoring, tele-consultation and consumer devices and tracking apps.

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Now on iPad and iPhone – NPDP On-Demand Crash Course

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

This on-demand crash course is intended for anyone preparing for the NPDP certification exam, and provides a review of all the relevant NPDP material. It is a ‘true’ on-demand service designed to allow customers to access the course material anytime, anywhere, and at their own pace.

Click here for more information

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Univ of Chicago IRT: Kraft’s upsurge in innovation performance

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

The University of Chicago Innovation Roundtable is pleased to announce that Barry Calpino, Vice President of Breakthrough Innovation at Kraft will present on March 20th at the Gleacher Center Downtown Chicago.  He will tell the story of Kraft Foods North America’s recent major upsurge in innovation performance.  He will discuss how Kraft’s leadership made it a key area of strategic emphasis and the story behind how they have recently risen to top-tier level of innovation performance in the CPG industry – capped off by the recent launch of over 70 new products in early 2012.  He will also share lessons learned from the journey and some general thoughts on innovation from spending over 18 years in CPG Innovation.

Barry oversees the Global Innovation Center of Excellence for Kraft.   Amongst his Center of Excellence roles, Barry oversees the Corporate Breakthrough Innovation group and is on the Kraft North America Leadership team, leading Innovation across the KNA teams.

Barry has been at Kraft since 2009.  He has over 18 years of CPG Brand Marketing experience,   with 13 of those years spent mostly or entirely focused on leading Innovation.  Leading CPG companies he has worked for in Innovation include SC Johnson, Kellogg’s and Wrigley, where he led Gum and Candy innovation for North America prior to coming to Kraft.

Barry has an undergraduate degree in Marketing from Marquette and his MBA from Kellogg-Northwestern.   Barry is originally from Chicago and resides there today, where he is married with 3 kids.

Where:

The University of Chicago: Gleacher Center, Room 100

450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive

Chicago, IL

When:

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Agenda:

Registration: 6:00-6:30 PM

Presentation and Q&A  6:30-7:45 PM

Midway Club: 7:45-9:00 PM

Cost: Free (Food and drinks are not served)

Registration:

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/roundtable/innovation/

Questions:

Mary Drotar

312.212.3144

mdrotar@strategy2market.com

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The University of Chicago Innovation Roundtable LinkedIn Group The Innovation Roundtable group on LinkedIn is a networking tool that is open to anyone with an interest in the development and commercialization of new products and services.  We established this group to encourage connections between our members to discuss concepts, tools and best practices for innovation.  In addition, we would like to use it as an informal ‘membership directory’ for IRT members who have LinkedIn profiles.

We think the development of a membership directory of this type can be useful for networking, and for finding subject matter experts, and we encourage anyone on our mailing list to enroll via the website links below:

Innovation Roundtable Group on LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/groups

Group Owner: mdrotar@strategy2market.com

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Join the IRT email list

If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please use the following

link: http://lists.chicagogsb.edu/mailman/listinfo/innovationroundtable

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The University of Chicago Innovation Roundtable (IRT) Tackle a Topic Program

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

The University of Chicago IRT has a new format for securing future speakers, and we appreciate your input.  It is called the IRT Tackle a Topic Program.  The purpose of our events is to inform our members on new innovation trends and theories/practices. Perhaps you know of an interesting new product, process, business model or a planned interactive exercise that a friend or colleague has developed, and they want to share their findings with the IRT community.   Or you heard a great speaker that could provide further insight on innovation/new product development. 
As a sponsor, we invite you to introduce the speaker/event and be actively involved in the event.  We especially encourage interactive formats.
In order to sponsor a speaker, please find the guidelines below:
* The event must be relevant to Innovation/New Product Development
* Provide the IRT Board Members a short outline of the presentation (see outline below):
  Description of the presentation/event/activity
 -What participants will learn
 -Who should attend
 -How often has this individual presented on this topic?
 -Does the speaker wish to sponsor the event at their location?  If so, refreshments are welcome but not mandatory
 -Presenters bio
Please send to Mary Drotar at mdrotar@chicagobooth.edu or mdrotar@strategy2market.com

If the IRT board agrees to move forward with the event, the sponsor provides the slides to the IRT Board Members for review 2 weeks prior to the event.  The events usually occur at the Gleacher Center or offsite if there is a sponsor availiable.
Submit your short description as soon as possible so we can plan and promote the event in advance.
We appreciate and welcome your participation.

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