From Concept to Consumer

Product developer Phil Baker reveals exactly what it takes to create great products and bring them to market. Baker's product successes range from Apple's PowerBook to the Stowaway portable keyboard, the most successful PDA accessory ever created.

In From Concept to Consumer, Phil Baker walks you through the entire development process, showing how to develop products, underscoring the crucial links between product design, engineering, testing, manufacturing, marketing and distribution.

From Concept to Consumer is available from Barnes and Noble, both online and in bookstores, and from Amazon in both hardcover and Kindle electronic versions. Read a free excerpt online at FT Press

 

 

From Concept to Consumer Table of Contents

Preface

01 New World, New Rules

Build It and They Won't Come

New Rules

Asia

02 Just Do It

Organizing for Rapid Development

Get Customer Input

Leveraging Outside Resources

Remembering That Less Is More

Don't Get Hung Up with Perfection

03 The Basics of Development

Development

Marketing

Why Does Estimating Sales Matter?

Product Specs

Schedule

Product Costs

04 Industrial Design Matters

Discovering ID

The Industrial Design Process

05 Why Outsource?

The Rise of the OEM and ODM Model

Taiwan

Mainland China

Asia's Advantage

Is Outsourcing for All?

Protection of Your Intellectual Property

Product Quality

The Chinese Factory

06 Selecting and Working with an Asian Partner

Managing the Relationship

Manufacturing Costs

Manufacturing Quality

Durability Testing

07 The Marketing Component

Product Definition

Market Testing

Product Positioning

Public Relations

Customer Service

Establishing Price

08 Distribution: Getting Your Product to the Customer

What Are Your Choices?

Retail Distribution

Distribution Costs

Selling Through

Licensing

09 Legal Advice: Knowing When to Ignore It

Patents

Agreements and Contracts

Development and Manufacturing Agreements

10 Now What?

Epilogue: The Future of Product Development

Appendix A  Top Ten Rules

Appendix B  Products and the Environment

Appendix C  China-Helpful or Harmful?

Appendix D  A Representative List of Recommended Resources

Index 167

 

The author: Phil Baker is a product development consultant to U.S. and Asian companies. He has spent his entire career in all aspects of product development, with a focus on utilizing Asian resources for development and manufacturing, and has played key roles in developing flagship technologies and products for many companies, including Apple, Seiko, Polaroid, Atari and Think Outside as co-founder. Baker holds more than 30 patents and is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He also writes a weekly technology column for the San Diego Daily Transcript.

Visit the Press Room for downloadable content and press releases on Phil Baker and From Concept to Consumer

 

From Concept to Consumer
Podcasts & Interviews

October 14, 2009, Phil Baker on WLKF 1430-AM Radio, sponsored by Allen & Company:
Business Born of Adversity, Dollars & Sense

Facebook:
Business Born of Adversity, courtesy Dollars & Sense

Business Week – Smart Answers Podcast:
Bringing Your Invention to Market, How to put products on store shelves

From Concept to Consumer
Book Reviews

For those who think that the invention is the important stuff, and bringing it to market is just "business stuff," this is a worthwhile read.
— Techdirt Book Reading List 2009

I recommend this book for the person at home or in his office inventing something new. If you learn from someone who has been successful at it, you can duplicate their success. This book is full of meat and I rate it an L.A. 8!
— Dr. Letitia Wright, LA Business Book Review Examiner

This is a fascinating, convincing,and highly detailed discussion of the innovation-and-marketing process as it actually works. Phil Baker has helped me understand how the modern, global high-tech industry actually works, and anyone who shares that curiosity will benefit from reading his book.
— James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly

In the high volume, fast moving field of high-tech consumer gadgetry, learning from your mistakes can be a very expensive education. It takes much more than a great inspiration to create a great product, and Phil Baker's book provides hard earned, practical advice (and fair warning) to those obsessed with making the next great shiny new toy.
— Paul Jacobs, CEO, Qualcomm

Phil Baker knows product development like no one else. This book is the true guide to getting your ideas to market. A must own for the entrepreneur.
— Robert Brunner, Founder and Creative Director, Ammunition LLC, Former Apple Computer Director of Industrial Design

Phil Baker combines a long-earned knowledge of product design, manufacturing, and marketing to give us an insider's look at how a company or entrepreneur turns an idea into a real-world product. Ideas are easy, he observes, but creating something people want to buy is a complicated business, with many tradeoffs and difficult choices. He's been there, done that, and it shows.
— Dan Gillmor, Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Arizona State University

…this book is a delightful tour of the virtues and dangers of outsourcing. If you want to get your product produced, this book is essential reading.
— Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Author, The Design of Future Things

This is a cracking little book, It's short and to the point.… The book has solid theory around the commiseration process and also gives some nice case studies.… Its nice to see a non-design person notice the importance of Product / Industrial design.
— Ben Arent, Product Designer

 

Reader Reviews on Amazon

I've been developing electronic products for 20+ years in Silicon Valley. From Concept to Consumer is an accurate synopsis of the myriad of issues involved in launching a product. It is filled with appropriately-sized examples that make the concepts approachable. If you have an idea your thinking about taking to market, READ THIS FIRST.
— W. McNary, Ft. Lauderdale

Whether you are an inventor, a product engineer, an entrepreneur or a business reader interested in the topic, getAbstract recommends this clear, informative, engaging read.
— Rolf Dobelli, getabstract.com

I'm an Entrepreneur that has manufactured my products both in the U.S. and China and this is the most practical and comprehensive book i've read on this subject.
It's important to understand that this book is really written for entrepreneurs and companies that want to design and market their products themselves but outsource the manufacturing. The author lays out the case for why this setup is very desirable and has become increasingly easy in the current economy.
— S. Sykora, San Diego

Bottom line… if you have a product or company, or if you are thinking of launching a product or company, or even if you think you have done it all and know it all, this book is required reading.
— Michael, Company Founder/CEO, New York