College Project - Taking ideas from inception through to launch and achieved success

[naddyz]

New to the forums so hi!

I'm a student in Oxford doing a postgraduate business course and I'm doing a project looking into how different market leading companies have taken ideas from inception through to launch and achieved sucess with them. In particular I am interested in looking into how market research and customer responses feedback into each stage of the process and and so change future development-launch-release schemes.

For this project I am using Motorola as a case study because it utilises the 6 sigma program for new product development which indicates that they have quite a defined process. The RAZR phone is of particular interest to me also because it is a clear example of a sucessful NPD and launch.

Is there anyone here who can help me? I guess the best person to explain to me how Motorola undertakes this process would be someone who has worked at motorola recently or is working there now.

Please email me if you can help at all, or know anyone that can!

Thanks

Nick

[Jennifer Kirley]

How about it...is there anyone with specific enough knowledge of this subject to respond?

[Jennifer Kirley]

A second try. Is there anyone with specific enough knowledge to help Nick?

[Steve Prevette]

I will say we are having great success at Fluor Hanford with our safety performance / leading indicator system. But it was not something done through marketing. In fact, direct demands from the customer that it must look a certain way two years ago considerably derailed the project! After repeated failures and frustrations, I was given a free hand to propose whatever I wanted to propose. Now that wasn't a guarantee the proposal would be accepted, but as it works out it was. Both Fluor and the customer have liked the product, it is working well, and it is starting to spread.

In this case, the customer is the US government (Department of Energy) and the product is a way to measure and portray safety performance, both for actions by Fluor, and by the government in its oversight role.

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Jennifer Kirley

A second try. Is there anyone with specific enough knowledge to help Nick?

When something like this goes unanswered, it's usually because the question is too broad, and doesn't lend itself to a simple and direct answer or opinion. My suggestion to the OP would be to try and contact someone at Motorola directly, starting with Motorola Public Relations. Sometimes PR is a dead end and you have to use a little ingenuity, but that's what effective research is all about .

[Jennifer Kirley]

Originally Posted by JSW05

When something like this goes unanswered, it's usually because the question is too broad, and doesn't lend itself to a simple and direct answer or opinion. My suggestion to the OP would be to try and contact someone at Motorola directly, starting with Motorola Public Relations. Sometimes PR is a dead end and you have to use a little ingenuity, but that's what effective research is all about .

Thank you!

I had hoped to flush out a Motorola employee, present or past, but there may be press releases or white papers available through their Public Relations office.

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Jennifer Kirley

Thank you!

I had hoped to flush out a Motorola employee, present or past, but there may be press releases or white papers available through their Public Relations office.

Yes, and the idea would be to not only get the papers themselves, but get names of people to contact, which the PR office might not directly divulge. My experience has been that people are generally happy to talk about their work withing the limits of confidentiality concerns, so it's just a question of finding the right people.

[Jennifer Kirley]

Originally Posted by JSW05

Yes, and the idea would be to not only get the papers themselves, but get names of people to contact, which the PR office might not directly divulge. My experience has been that people are generally happy to talk about their work withing the limits of confidentiality concerns, so it's just a question of finding the right people.

Yes, I agree. When doing my research project I learned how little schools seem to teach about how to do this kind of sleuthing--or, the students aren't getting it. I suspect this because of how many times I have found a wealth of information from a fairly short Google search. I prefer people to develop their own Internet research skills, but I see little opportunity in trying to tutor it because individuals ask the questions one by one. Asking open ended questions like this one is also a means to the end. To mine the network.