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 Book Specs
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: FT Press; 1st edition (10/22/2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0137137478
ISBN-13: 978-0137137473
Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
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

