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 of my career was spent in high-tech hardware and software companies, where I learned about supply chains and distribution channels. By this point, globalization was in full swing, and I was witness to a sweeping transition from heavy vertical integration to heavy outsourcing.

I saw how to use infrastructure and component costs to our strategic advantage. One company I worked for, while it was a much smaller entity, drove an entrenched multibillion dollar industry leader to the brink of bankruptcy. It developed a single-minded channel strategy, and then provided liberal margins to resellers, enabled by lower manufacturing costs in Taiwan.

Our competitor was stuck with sales overhead it couldn’t shed fast enough. It was an eye-opener: the unique power of the supply chain in all its glory.

Creating a successful new product from scratch is one of life’s great accomplishments. It’s also one of the riskiest things you could ever commit yourself to. Every year, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs gamble their jobs, houses, and futures to pursue nothing more than an idea.

Very few achieve their dreams.

Why would someone take on such risk? Money is certainly high on the list, as are recognition and the desire to have more control over one’s destiny. A surprising number of people I meet also want to have a positive impact on the world—to make a major contribution. A successful product can certainly do all these things: an endless number have bettered societies and changed lives forever.

The purpose of this blog is to celebrate new product development, yes, but also something more practical: to mitigate risk, by providing 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. The ones that work.

It’s written for anyone with a vested interest in product success, which at last count was just about everyone in business.

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