Linus Pauling's approach to produce ideas of greater quality included proficient individuals interacting with proficient colleagues to develop a few ideas and reject others.

The driver for taking risks in new product development is the expectation of asymmetric payoffs.

To evaluate when most of the product requirements are determined in a specific new product development (NPD) context, evaluate the domain according to the Cynefin framework.

For a high profile demo, the features that should be the highest priorities are the items that provide the most value to the people that are in the audience. Instead of boardroom logic, use customers interviews and dialog to inform your insights.

When pursuing innovation, risk is not the objective. Fast failure is not the objective. Learning is the recommended. Faster learning is desirable. Innovation is a result. It requires the generation of abundant.

Agility is a quality that enables someone to accomplish the desirable. It is a relative assessment.

Documents that describe "customer requirements" and schedules that spur discussions about "product delay" are artifacts of most new product development processes. Instead of these proxies for success, focus on improving the skills of individual contributors and the quality of their interactions within new product development networks.

Someone should evaluate the elegance of the design and the quality of the user experience before your next new application or product is released. In the past, the role was fulfilled by Steve Jobs at Apple. Does your development environment embrace this type of holistic approach?

At the end of a project, I want to do more than brag that I followed someone’s explicit list and met each milestone. The objective of a successful product launch can be pursued indirectly. The emphasis can be on the satisfaction of the individual contributors.

Silver bullets enable individuals to do better with less in new product development environments by leveraging nonlinearities in complex adaptive systems.