Preston Smith: New Product Development Expertise

Preston Smith: New Product Development Expertise

Preston Smith, founder and principal of New Product Dynamics, began specializing in rapid product development in 1984 as an internal consultant, became an independent management consultant concentrating on time to market issues in 1986, and earned Certified Management Consultant (CMC) standing in 1990. Preston has consulted on highly effective new product development techniques and time to market over a wide variety of industries in many countries. He is known for adapting techniques that have proved valuable in one industry to another industry.

Prior to 1986, Preston gained broad engineering and technology management experience over a period of twenty years through employment with

North American Aviation (now part of Boeing)
Pratt & Whitney Aircraft
IBM
Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies)
General Motors Research Laboratories
Ensco (a government transportation safety contractor)
Institute for Defense Analyses
Emhart (since merged into Black & Decker)

Although Preston may be best known for his many publications, his daily activity centers on onsite consultation and training in new product development using a results-oriented approach that he has honed over the years. Consider how his consulting capabilities can benefit your organization.

For professional development, Preston participates in one industry or professional conference per month, on average. He develops his consulting skills by participating regularly in meetings and conferences of the Institute of Management Consultants, and he contributes to Consulting to Management.

Some product development techniques Preston is best known for include

Project economic trade-offs, such as the cost of delay
Flexible product development (valuable when a project is subject to many changes)
Proactive project risk management tools
Continuous improvement of the product development process (and viewing product development capability as a competitive advantage)
Effective cross-functional development teams and the trade-offs involved in using them
Co-located and dispersed (virtual) product development teams
Iterative (non-sequential) product development processes

Preston Smith contributes to the product development profession while keeping up to date on its literature by serving as book review editor of the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He is a founder of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN).

Preston Smith holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University, and is a member of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and the Agile Project Leadership Network.

In off hours, Preston pursues his penchant for speed through alpine skiing and windsurfing.

Download a biography as a PDF file.

Donald (Don) Reinertsen?