The June 9, 2007 issue of The Economist ran an article titled “Lessons from Apple.” After many had left it for dead a decade earlier, the article started, this is the company that now, unequivocally, sets the pace in the consumer electronics industry.

The article highlighted four main development strategies:

First, Apple looks freely outside its walls for new product ideas, an approach referred to as “network innovation.”

Second, Apple orients product design around the needs of its users, rather than technology.

Third, Apple seems particularly gifted at knowing when to ignore market input and go with its gut—Apple was ridiculed when the iPod launched, for example.

And fourth, Apple is able to “fail wisely,” as the authors put it—use mistakes to learn, and then move on.

According to a McKinsey & Company study, more than 70% of senior executives said that innovation will be one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies.

Unfortunately, at the same time they also said they were “generally disappointed” in their ability to promote it—but they knew intuitively that any sustainable effort must be grounded by their company’s people and culture.

A few years ago,BusinessWeek recounted how, in a joint survey with the Boston Consulting Group, one thousand senior managers ranked slow development times as the number one obstacle to innovation. Innovation, the publication said, is about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time (Jena McGregor, “The World’s Most Innovative Companies,” BusinessWeek, April 24, 2006).

The second stage (out of three) of my career was spent in high-tech hardware and software companies, where learned something about supply-chain and distribution-channel innovation.

By now globalization was in full swing, and I was witness to the transition from heavy vertical integration to heavy outsourcing. I saw how to use infrastructure and component costs to strategic advantage. One company I worked for, while it was a much smaller entity, drove an entrenched multibillion dollar industry leader into bankruptcy. It developed a single-minded channel strategy, fueled by lower prices enabled by lower manufacturing costs in Taiwan.

Our competitor was stuck with direct-sales overhead it just couldn’t shed fast enough, and the numbers caught up with it. It was an eye-opener: The unique power of the supply chain in all its glory.

Little on this planet compares to creating a successful new product from scratch. For those involved, it can be the most challenging activity they’ve ever taken on.

It’s also one of the most risky. In Silicon Valley, an incalculable number of entrepreneurs have bet their houses, spouses and futures to have the opportunity for just one good roll of the dice.

We accept this risk because we’re driven by the chance for money and fame, of course, but a surprising number of people I meet are also driven by the chance to change the world. That’s how intertwined products are with our very society. If yours is a blockbuster, you can literally alter the way we live. How’s that for leaving your mark?

Lots of work has been done on the topics of product success and innovation, and what it takes to optimize team output, but no one has pulled all the pieces together into one cohesive process structure designed for the realities of our times—accelerated introductions, fewer resources, non-technical customers.

That’s the purpose of this blog. It provides a forum for discussing those things most important in building, marketing and supporting successful products today. From critical success factors to creative problem-solving, we’ll attempt to capture and archive the best ideas here.

It’s written for anyone with a vested interest in product success, which at last count was just about everyone in business. But in particular, it’s written for technical developers, the ones who are now directly chartered with creating the vast majority of the world’s consumer products (what doesn’t have some technology aspect?).

Thank you for your interest, and if you choose to participate in our discussion, thank you for that as well.