Summary:  Lean, Rapid, and Profitable New Product Development brings the stage-gate process into the lean implementation world.  The stage-gate process has received significant criticism due to the tendency of organizations to implement bureaucratic applications to control innovation.  Stage-Gate is a necessary control point for strategy and risk management but it can also prevent or slow innovation when applied in a linear and rigid process.  The authors appear to make a correction in this text to focus on the lean aspects of innovation and how to speed progress on the right things.  They focus on innovation management at the project level with spirals of iterative learning steps that are quickly executed.  This is in line with the conclusions of other good texts on lean innovation.

InnovaSpec Recommendation:  Lean, Rapid, and Profitable New Product Development is a quick read compared to Robert Cooper’s bible of stage gate process “Winning at New Products.”  It combines the stage gate process with seven recommendations for lean tools to improve speed and targeting of innovation projects.  Traditional Lean Sigma concepts are not explicitly taught but it is a good source of improvement ideas and tools.  This is a great book to introduce general management and individual project team members to the concepts as they may actually read it.  Use it as a reference to avoid the curse of linear and rigid stage-gate thinking.