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Expert NPDP is a certified product developer offering seminars and unique knowledge exchange services for product development managers desiring to learn and implement the four elements of the Toyota Lean Design product development system.

Expert also offers Lead User methodology that product developers need for robust product designs that they can get to market in short time cycles.


Expert develops tools, techniques, and best practices for getting customer influence into the early stages of R&D He identifies those customer needs which coincide with the R&D He has applied his knowledge across a broad range of industries including foods, energy storage cells (batteries), electrical products, waste disposal, metal stampings, and grey metal die castings.

Expert has created techniques to identify leading market customers such as lead users, needs rich users, and early adopters. He then selects the appropriate information gathering processes that these innovation-leading customers linked into the R&D process. This linkage supports R&D efforts and gives the product a customer orientation.


As Director of Marketing for a battery and electrical/electronic product manufacturer, Expert was responsible for division sales and marketing and customer service organization management.

Expert has extensive experience in new product development with interest in product planning, customer research, and cross-functional team development. He has launched 14 new products in a 15-year period for several Fortune 500 companies including General Mills, Gould, Inc., Toro Company, and Huffy Corporation.

Applying his extensive knowledge in product development, Expert helps R&D people find creative market-inspired solutions in their "fuzzy front end" development work. He uses a Genesis approach in idea generation and problem-solving processes, applies cross-functional processes in the development stage, and uses "time to market" reduction techniques centered on product definition.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: In order to aid those in the R&D and commercialization process, Expert created a personal development tool that helps achieve high performance in the fast-pace, high-risk culture of product development. Whether the tool is used by an individual team member, by pairs of people, or by all team members, its function is to increase professional and personal competence while working in the development team process.

Following 15 years of corporate experience, Expert started up an innovative product development research service. The service evolved into an innovation management business, serving large and small corporations in their efforts to generate business growth from new products and services. Expert developed a cross-functional approach to training R&D people by leading a full-day immersion workshop/seminar. The seminar has been used by people in a broad variety of industries, functional disciplines, and by those with a familiarity with product development. Topics in the seminar include innovation process, organization around cross functional teams, voice of the customer, time-to-market, and current best practices. As part of his extensive work in new product development, Expert managed the innovation process tasks for several Fortune 500 companies. His work ranged from idea generation to researching the customers' needs to selling new products to distributors. He has collaborated with a number of leading innovators, engineers, and technology people from several companies.


In order to learn and understand a competitor's technology, development methods, and strategy, Expert develops and uses information gathering techniques. His work focuses on key competitive activities in the marketplace that generate a rich amount of information. Expert then translates this data into competitive intelligence issues and opportunities for which the information is gathered.


Expert leverages customers who modify existing products and technologies to suit their own use. Because these users tend to lead the general market and are often market "trend-setters," they can help manufacturers reduce their time-to-market. After working with these customers for his new product development work, Expert launched superior new products into the market before his competitors.


Customer visits research. Lead-user methodologyProduct Development Process ImprovementProduct Development skills TrainingCross-functional Team facilitation