Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S Thomke.
The high cost of experimentation has long put a damper on companies' attempts to create great new products. But new technologies are making it easier than ever to conduct complex experiments quickly and cheaply. Companies now have an opportunity to take innovation to a whole new level--if they're willing to rethink their R&D from the ground up.
Mouldy grains can cause problems with pathological changes in vital organs. This investigation involved histological studies including the occurrence of fungal conidiospores in organs of rats fed wheat contaminated by the addition of a mixed culture of Aspergillus and Penicillium spp.
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Most senior managers want their product development teams to create break-throughs--new products that will allow their companies to grow rapidly and maintain high margins. But more often they get incremental improvements to existing products. That's partly because companies must compete in the short term. Searching for breakthroughs is expensive and time consuming; line extensions can help the bottom line immediately. In addition, developers simply don't know how to achieve breakthroughs, and there is usually no system in place to guide them. By the mid-1990s, the lack of such a system was a problem even for an innovative company like 3M. Then a project team in 3M's Medical-Surgical Markets Division became acquainted with a method for developing breakthrough products: the lead user process. The process is based on the fact that many commercially important products are initially thought of and even prototyped by "lead users"--companies, organizations, or individuals that are well ahead of market trends. Their needs are so far beyond those of the average user that lead users create innovations on their own that may later contribute to commercially attractive breakthroughs. The lead user process transforms the job of inventing breakthroughs into a systematic task of identifying lead users and learning from them. The authors explain the process and how the 3M project team successfully navigated through it. In the end, the team proposed three major new product lines and a change in the division's strategy that has led to the development of breakthrough products. And now several more divisions are using the process to break away from incrementalism.