How Do Companies Create Blockbusters? Do They Know Secrets That Others Don't? 
Great products are the lifeblood of great companies, yet approximately 60 percent of new products fail in the marketplace, after major investments and huge risks. Why? Gary Lynn and Richard Reilly now offer advice that will radically change the way new products are developed and launched: a plan for companies to survive -- and thrive -- in today's competitive and turbulent times. Blockbusters shares the results of a ten-year research study of more than 700 teams illustrated by the inside stories of nearly fifty of the most successful products ever launched -- true "blockbusters," familiar to consumers everywhere. These include Colgate's Total toothpaste (now the market leader after Crest dominated for thirty years!), the Iomega Zip Drive, the Handspring Visor, the PowerShot staple gun, the Polycom SoundStation conference phone, the Apple IIe computer, and many others. 
Lynn and Reilly reveal and explain in detail the five keys to blockbuster success that companies ignore at their peril: the responsibilities of senior management, a compelling vision of the product, the role of prototyping, the collaboration of people under pressure, and the process of information exchange. In this book, the authors prove that without these crucial elements a blockbuster new product is virtually impossible! 
Blockbusters uses both winning and losing case studies to explode established myths and to chart a course for implementing the surprising strategies of history-making development teams. A must for senior managers, entrepreneurs, and team leaders alike -- and for any reader curious about how great products are created -- this heavily researched and groundbreaking book promises to become a classic in the fields of product development and organizational renewal.

Blockbusters: The Five Keys to Developing GREAT New Products

Business & Money

Reilly, Richard R.

Lynn, Gary S.

Business Culture

Harper Business

Praise for Uniting the Virtual Workforce "Uniting the Virtual Workforce offers much-needed guidance on how to navigate the largely unmapped territory of virtual work environments in the global economy. The authors do an outstanding job of presenting how organizations should address the challenges of virtual workforces so as to reap the huge potential benefits of increased growth, productivity, and innovation." -C. Warren Axelrod, PhD, Chief Privacy Officer and Business Information Security Officer, U.S. Trust, and author of Outsourcing Information Security "Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get-no nonsense practical guidance on how to manage distance, especially where it most often serves as an impediment to working effectively.Ê If you interface with widely dispersed team members who rarely see one another and communicate by virtue of impersonal electronics, you may expect to find this book provocative, counterintuitive, and above all, exciting. It gives all of us who have to struggle, while working with talent stretched across distance, hope, that maybe there are ways to do this right!" -Patrick J. McKenna, author of First Among EqualsÊ "A must-read for global corporate executives who manage geographically dispersed job sharing teams. Practical strategies for preventing productivity loss and optimizing innovation. The authors pull no punches in showing the real downsides to the virtual work phenomenon; they have done a great service for us all." -Jeff Saperstein, author of Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy "Uniting the Virtual Workforce charts the course for competing in the twenty-first century by tapping into the powers of virtual work. Any manager who ignores the virtual workforce is underperforming, and any company or organization that does not appreciate virtual work is already at a competitive disadvantage. Karen and Dick have tapped into a key ingredient in the recipe for global growth." -Jerry MacArthur Hultin, President, Polytechnic University, and former Under Secretary of the Navy "Authors Sobel Lojeski and Reilly have provided a useful primer for the harried executive striving for productivity improvements while seeing the workload expand and the workforce disperse. Using conceptual definitions of Physical, Operational, and Affinity Distance to describe the multifaceted dimensions of building teams of people to work effectively together, the authors construct a very powerful set of metrics for a manager to improve the capability of his or her workgroup, no matter where it resides or how it is composed. The book is rich in anecdotes and specific studies that illustrate the concepts in an engaging, pertinent, and easy-to-understand manner. In an age of outsourcing, offshoring, and decentralizing groups of people who have to get things done together, reading this small book will repay itself many times over." -Charles House, Director, Media X Lab at Stanford University, and former Director of the Societal Impact of Technology, Intel Corporation

Uniting The Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise

Lojeski, Karen Sobel

Management & Leadership

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

This revised second edition presents 14 years of data on virtual distance―shedding light on disconnection in the virtual workplace The still-evolving Digital Age continues to present new challenges. The burgeoning of remote work with its increasing reliance on electronic communication and virtual interactions have led to the escalation of a phenomenon called virtual distance. Virtual distance, which influences our behavior through three components―physical distance, operational distance, and affinity distance―affects not only how we interact with others thousands of miles away but even co-workers in a nearby office. Most importantly, virtual distance causes declines in teamwork, innovation, leadership and overall performance. Surprised? Uniting the Virtual Workforce, 2nd Edition is a must-read for those who want to understand the true cost of the virtual workplace and get more satisfaction out of work. It reveals an updated set of data, including the first award-winning analysis, collected from executives, managers and individuals alike, that represents situations, problems and solutions in more than a dozen international industries. Readers will get a “first look” at the data and its revelations on how to be less isolated and more integrated. Helping managers globally, this book: • Offers new, real-world case studies and a chance for readers to participate in thought experiments to help with personal performance, group synergy, or family dynamics • Demonstrates (with trend analysis over the past decade and predictions moving forward) that virtual distance remains a strong, growing and stable phenomenon • Offers expert advice on managing the “unintended consequences” of today’s workplace transformation technologies Companies that successfully manage virtual distance have substantial competitive advantage. The second edition of Uniting the Virtual Workforce is a valuable, one-of-a-kind resource for C-suite executives, human resource professionals, divisional managers, project managers to improve leadership, increase employee satisfaction, and bring about a more meaningful workplace.

The Power of Virtual Distance: A Guide to Productivity and Happiness in the Age of Remote Work

Sobel Lojeski, Karen

wiley

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