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GGI RapidNews R&D Product Development eZine: Volume
3, Issue 1- January 9, 2002
GGI NEWS & NOTES New Year 2002 Wishes: We at GGI would like to wish you the very best of the New Year: health, happiness, prosperity, and personal fulfillment. Without challenge, accomplishment would have less meaning. We will all have many challenges during 2002. However, may our 2002 challenges be less taxing than our 2001 challenges. Confirming New Office Address: Not surprisingly, many of our reader's Rolodexes and databases still have GGI in Cambridge, MA. We would appreciate it if you could check your contact information files and verify our new address and phone. Goldense Group,
Inc. [GGI] Phone: 781-444-5400 Pharmaceutical & Biotech: GGI has consistently done work in this sector of industry since our founding in 1986. In 2002, we are embarked on an internal initiative to make some of this industry-specific knowledge available on our website, in our iStore, and in issues of RapidNews. We expect to make some initial capabilities available on our website beginning next month. We will announce these new features in the next issue of RapidNews. FEATURED iSTORE PRODUCT Concurrent Product Development Videotapes - Masters Course: This month we are deeply discounting our 9 hour CPD Videotape Course, which is part of the curriculum for the Masters in Engineering Management program at The Gordon Institute of Tufts University. This course has been a required part of the Masters curriculum and has been taught by Brad Goldense since 1992. In the mid 1990s, in conjunction with The Gordon Institute, we videotaped the course and packaged it into these tapes. There are a total of 8 tapes. Seven are one-hour long and one is two-hours long (Baselining Change With Metrics). Each tape discusses a different major subject related to creating and maintaining rapid product development environments. A single CPD Coursebook accompanies the videotapes. We will also provide you with a multiple choice Final Exam if you call us directly after your purchase. This series has consistently sold for US$ 1600.00. We are offering the series at a 40% discount for US$ 960.00. We only have a few sets left. This product was developed using analog technology and it would take 16 digital CDs to capture what is on the 8 analog videotapes, so we offer this product in videotape format only. In sequential order, the topics of the 8 videotapes are: Definitions & Driving Forces For Speed, Baselining Change With Metrics, Designing Concurrent Processes, Selecting Products Effectively, Creating Concurrent Teams, Defining Products, Reviewing Designs, and Creating Repeatable Environments. This product will benefit developers in all levels of the organization. Watch the whole series, or just the topical tapes that are of specific interest to you. This product was shot in a classroom full of graduate students. It is quite down to earth. There is very little glitz in this production, just content. Turn your browser to the following Featured Item URL: http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/cgi/catalog.cgi?display_promo MANAGEMENT PRODUCTIVITY Measuring Intellectual Property Efficiency: Patents are costly to acquire. Time and resources are expended in an effort to secure them. Not all patents are created equally. Some are more valuable than others. CHI Research, Inc. looked at various company patent portfolios to learn what constituted an effective and efficient company Intellectual Property (IP) patent strategy. They suggested that high-value patents are frequently referenced in documentation issued with new patents as "prior art." Prior art, as described in Volume 2, Issue 6 (July 30, 2001), is earlier patenting or publication. No invention can be patented that has already been patented, or which was published prior to the time of patent application. These new findings present a different perspective of patent citation analysis, which is a well known technique for identifying key patents. The idea behind patent citation analysis is that technologically important patents are often cited frequently by later patents.�This has been validated in papers�going back more than 20 years (see "Citation Rates to Technologically Important Patents" Mark P. Carpenter, Francis Narin, and Patricia Woolf. World Patent Information, 3, 4, 160-163, 1981). Additional subject sources are available from CHI Research at http://www.chiresearch.com/pubs.htm. The author of the CHI Research study, Tony Breitzman,* suggested that high-value patents are: Highly cited, or referenced as prior art in subsequently issued patents. Correlated with corporate stock price increases, increases in sales and profits, inventor awards and expert opinions on company technology. Based on the above measures, the study continues, one can determine which companies have the most efficient IP portfolio. An efficient IP portfolio was defined as having "a large share of highly cited patents because a large share...is likely to mean a higher proportion of commercially valuable IP." But is the most efficient portfolio the same as the largest number of highly cited patents? Companies in the top 5% of most highly cited patents in the 700,000 patents issued between 1996-2000 (normalized by age/technology) include the usual high tech suspects like IBM, Micron, Lucent/Bell Labs, Canon, Hitachi, Sony, Eastman Kodak, P&G, Intel, Xerox, AMD and 3M. But, is IBM patenting as efficiently as its competitors? IBM has 11,000 patents that are not highly cited while Micron, with one-half its number of high impact patents, has only one-third of IBM's portfolio. In order to measure IP efficiency, CHI Research: Found all companies with 100 or more patents in the last 5 years. Examined which of those companies had the most "elite" patents. Elite patents were defined as among the most cited 5% in their technology/year. The companies which emerged from that research exercise looked very different than the above list: Tokyo Electron Ltd., Cabot Corp., Verizon, Donnelly Corp., Candescent Technologies, Qualcomm, AOL Time Warner and ATMI, Inc. were the first 8 in a table of 25 companies in which IBM, Micron, Lucent and the other companies cited above did not even appear! Interestingly, only half of these IP-efficient companies are active in the computer, telecom and semiconductor industries. Many of the others are in "old economy" industries like pulp and paper, consumer products and machinery. This kind of IP metric raises some significant questions: Who are the most and least efficient IP producers? How does my company compare with others in my industry? Has my company's IP efficiency increased/decreased recently? * "Measuring Companies" IP Efficiency" Tony Breitzman, CHI Research, Inc., CHI'S Research, Volume 9, Number 2, November, 2001; abreitz@chiresearch.com. NEW WEB CONTENT Company Listings: If you are looking for listings of companies in key industries, this MEGA Gateway is the place. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/complist.shtml The Company Listings Gateways posted or updated this month are: + Automotive: It is well known that the Automotive Industry is going through a period of consolidation. Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Saab, Audi, Pugeot, Land Rover and many other famous brands are now just brands and no longer stand-alone companies. Certain US Brands are no longer, like Plymouth. This gateway gives you, at a glance, who is owned by who while maintaining brand identification. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/complist_automotive.shtml Technology Providers: If you are looking for suppliers of technology-based products and software, this MEGA Gateway is the place. We have created a resource analogous to the Thomas Register, MMNI, and others. However, GGI's Technology Provider Gateways are focused on the needs of both product developers and product manufacturers. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/techproviders.shtml. The Technology Provider Gateways posted or updated this month are: + Portfolio Management: This emerging area of practice in R&D and product development has now generated enough business interest that it is worthwhile for applications software providers to develop and sell software for portfolio management. Most packages sell for over $US 100K. Most are shells, but this is the state-of-the-art for early generation software! Expect new entrants in the portfolio management software market in the next few years. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/tech_portfoliomanag.shtml Service Providers: If you are looking for suppliers of software and services for product developers and manufacturers, this MEGA Gateway is the place. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/serv.shtml The Service Provider Gateways posted or updated this month are: + Train-The-Trainer: In these challenging economic times, one cost cutting strategy is to bring training in house. If this is the approach your company is taking, this Gateway may be for you. http://www.goldensegroupinc.com/gateway/serv_train.shtml CONFERENCES OF INTEREST How to Measure and Maximize Clinical Trial Performance with Metrics: How can R&D accomplish its work more quickly and efficiently without compromising safety and quality? This crucial question requires an understanding of what a company's R&D functions are doing now! Most pharmaceutical and biotech organizations have little knowledge of how well they currently perform their R&D functions. How effective is your organization at planning and executing clinical trials? How good are its protocols? How efficient is patient enrollment? How clean is the data? Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, device, and contract research companies are beginning to think more seriously about how to measure R&D and clinical trial performance. Companies must improve their development performance and R&D metrics offers a way to do so. On January 28-29, 2002 at the Hyatt Regency in Princeton, NJ, the Institute for International Research (IIR) will present its "How to Measure and Maximize R & D and Clinical Trial Performance with Metrics" conference. Eight good reasons to attend are:
Brad Goldense will be presenting a newly written Technical Paper at this conference entitled, "R&D Baselining: Diagnostic Medical Instruments." Please visit http://www.iirusa.com/performancemetrics/index.cfm/Link=1/NewSection=yes to get additional conference information. SCPD Call for Papers: The Society of Concurrent Product Development (SCPD 02) Annual Conference Chair Donald Stewart has issued a Call for Papers and Workshops. The 6th Annual Conference is scheduled for May 29-30, 2002 in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts with the theme of "Aligning Culture to CPD Principles and Practices." What are the corporate, business unit and/or team cultures that support or inhibit development and maintenance of NPD concurrency? What are the characteristics of concurrency that need support? Resources? Certain belief structures? Where do the principal conflicts between concurrent product development and culture occur? If you would like to submit a paper or present a workshop, or simply have a question, please contact Don Stewart at 781-788-9813 or stdon@mediaone.net. Thank you. Both Brad Goldense
and I are members of the WW Board of Directors of SCPD. It
would be really great if we got the chance to see some of
our RapidNews readers at the SCPD Conference! | |||