Selling Blue Elephants: How to make great products that people want BEFORE they even know they want them

Product Author Bios

Howard Moskowitz is President and CEO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. He is a well-known experimental psychologist in the field of psychophysics and an inventor of world-class market research technology. Widely published in the scientific press, Dr. Moskowitz is known worldwide as the leading thinker and creator of advanced research technology in the area of new product and concept development.

His background includes a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University and seven years as a Senior Scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories. In July 2004, he was elected as an IFT Fellow for his contributions in the field of food science and technology. He was also awarded the American Marketing Association’s 2005 Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award, regarded as the “Nobel Prize” of the market research industry.

Dr. Moskowitz has spoken widely at both scientific and market research conferences, and guest-lectured at leading business schools including Wharton, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Texas at Austin. He also appeared weekly from 2004-2006 on ABC News Now as The Food Doctor, highlighting the food industry’s most exciting innovations.

Alex Gofman, VP and CTO of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc., is the architect of several globally-recognized market research technologies and holds multiple patents. Widely published in the scientific press on the topics of technology-oriented experimental psychology, he has led new methodologies and algorithms development as well as other aspects of MJI operations since joining the firm in 1992, and is lead developer and architect of its IdeaMap® family of products. He holds a BS and a MS in Computer Science from Donetsk National Technical University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1981.

Really great products and really huge successes don’t come from focus groups! And if you simply rely on trial and error, or guesswork, you’ll lose far more often than you’ll win. Now, there’s a solution: Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE), the first systematized, disciplined, solution-oriented business process of experimentation.

In Selling Blue Elephants, RDE’s creators reveal how to systematically design, test, and modify alternative ideas, packages, products, and services, to discover offerings your customers will be passionate about...even if they can’t articulate the need, much less the solution!

Discover the seven easy steps that take you from cluelessness to clarity in just days... sometimes even hours. Watch RDE succeeding in companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Campbell’s, MasterCard to Maxwell House... and learn how to get the same outstanding results yourself, one step at a time, every time!

• Discover “how the world works” in your market
• Reveal the hidden rules that define your next breakthrough product
• Create prototypes that answer the right questions, fast
• Get at the truths your customers don’t know how to tell you
• Use automated tools to streamline the entire process
• Streamline your research, and get actionable answers in just days
• Extend RDE value throughout the enterprise
• From messaging to corporate communications to investor behavior

Table of Contents

FOREWORD     xi

ABOUT THE AUTHORS    xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS     xv

INTRODUCTION     1

PART 1     MAKING MONEY     17

CHAPTER 1     HEWLETT-PACKARD SHIFTS GEARS     19

CHAPTER 2    MAXWELL HOUSE’S CALCULUS OF COFFEE     27

CHAPTER 3     DIALING UP DELICIOUS: MAJOR DISCOVERIES FROM VLASIC AND PREGO    47

CHAPTER 4     HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD EVEN WHEN THEY PAY MORE    65

CHAPTER 5    DISCOVER MORE ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS THAN THEY THEMSELVES KNOW—LEGALLY!     87

PART 2    MAKING THE FUTURE     105

CHAPTER 6     RUBIK’S CUBE OF CONSUMER ELECTRONICS INNOVATION     107

CHAPTER 7     BRIDGING COOL DESIGN WITH HOT SCIENCE     125

PART 3     FLYING TO VENUS    153

CHAPTER 8     MIND GENOMICS: CONSUMER MIND “ON THE SHELF”     155

CHAPTER 9     MAKING THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS INTO “PRODUCTS”     183

CHAPTER 10     RDE DEFEATS MURPHY’S LAW AND “BARES” THE STOCK MARKETS    205

CHAPTER 11     ASIA CALLING, LTD.: THE CHINA ANGLE    225

CHAPTER 12     RDE’S “BRAVE NEW WORLD!”     235

EPILOGUE     239

INDEX     241