A funny and moving memoir from the actor who played Kevin Costner's father for five minutes at the end of the movie Field of Dreams.

Know if you'll hit your targets before pulling the trigger on any marketing plan More than sixty five percent of new products are commercial failures, and if you compound this with a recession, now more than ever you can't afford to be wrong. In If You Build It Will They Come, business professor and strategy consultant Rob Adams shows you how to make sure you hit your target market before you spend a lot of money. He shows you the fast, systematic and proven approach of performing Market Validation in advance of making a large product investment. Adams outlines a simple and effective market validation and testing strategy that is proven, giving entrepreneurs and managers the ability to dramatically improve the prospect of product success. He explains how to quickly gather information on competitors, directly interview members of your target market, and figure out what the market really wants to buy, versus what customers say they want. The steps to quickly understanding the viability of your market Where to go to gather the information needed to hit the market requirements How to follow through with the right product launched in the right way Adams cuts through the fancy terms and expensive market research that gives lots of data but no real product oriented information about usage, pricing, features and competitive forces. In the end you'll produce results on your first release of a far more mature product, shipped in a faster timeframe with features customers will actually use. This book is for anyone involved with designing, developing and launching new products. Its examples and advice cover everything from the fledgling start-up that needs their first product to work just to survive to the successful Fortune Class company establishing new worldwide markets. Examples cut across all major industrial sectors including consumer, retail, manufacturing, technology, life sciences and services. This book offers the step-based guidance you need to make sure failure is not an option.

Help lay the foundation for the future of scholarly communication with these informative chapters on new information technologies and predictions for developments in the publishing industry. If We Build It, the proceedings from the 7th annual conference of the North American Serials Interest Group, stresses that the time to prepare for the revolution and phenomenal growth in electronic technology is now. This groundbreaking book addresses important questions about the future that libraries need to answer today such as: What will change for serials librarians, vendors, and publishers as ink and paper become the oddity and electronic transmitters and receivers become the norm? What services will be in demand and who will provide them? Which economic models will keep them afloat? Most importantly, can the disparate groups currently active in scholarly communication work together to build the physical, social, and economic backbone of a new model? If We Build It is an invaluable guide to the future of serials librarianship. It describes new technologies, predicts how the publishing industry will develop in the near future, and explores how the library may evolve within a new system of scholarly communication. Just a few of the exciting topics covered in these proceedings include the development of standards for networking technologies, the shift from ownership to access in libraries as a result of electronic information, the history of scholarly communication, copyright of electronic data, higher education in the 1990?s, marketing in libraries. A unique perspective on issues of cooperation between librarians, scholars, and publishers is provided by the inclusion of a joint conference day with the Society for Scholarly Publishing. If We Build It is an energizing look at the new possibilities for libraries and a call to strengthen structures and work together to build a solid future for libraries within the future of scholarly communication.

This book, first published in 1993, addresses important questions about the future that libraries need to answer today such as: What will change for serials librarians, vendors, and publishers as ink and paper become the oddity and electronic transmitters and receivers become the norm? What services will be in demand and who will provide them? Which economic models will keep them afloat? Most importantly, can the disparate groups currently active in scholarly communication work together to build the physical, social, and economic backbone of a new model? This book is an invaluable guide to the future of serials librarianship. It describes new technologies, predicts how the publishing industry will develop in the near future, and explores how the library may evolve within a new system of scholarly communication. Just a few of the exciting topics covered include the development of standards for networking technologies; the shift from ownership to access in libraries as a result of electronic information; the history of scholarly communication; copyright of electronic data; higher education in the 1990s; and marketing in libraries.

Step-by-step instructions for assembling items such as a jelly jar lightbulb or solar motor and also suggestions for their use in classroom instruction.

The much-anticipated follow-up to the E. B. White Award-winning picture book If I Built a Car In If I Built a Car, imaginative Jack dreamed up a whimsical fantasy ride that could do just about anything. Now he's back and ready to build the house of his dreams, complete with a racetrack, flying room, and gigantic slide. Jack's limitless creativity and infectious enthusiasm will inspire budding young inventors to imagine their own fantastical designs. Chris Van Dusen's vibrant illustrations marry retro appeal with futuristic style as he, once again, gives readers a delightfully rhyming text that absolutely begs to be read aloud.

Diversity and Inclusion to build better products from the front lines at Google Establishing diverse and inclusive organizations is an economic imperative for every industry. Any business that isn’t reaching a diverse market is missing out on enormous revenue potential and the opportunity to build products that suit their users' core needs. The economic “why” has been firmly established, but what about the “how?” How can business leaders adapt to our ever-more-diverse world by capturing market share AND building more inclusive products for people of color, women and other underrepresented groups? The Product Inclusion Team at Google has developed strategies to do just that and Building For Everyone is the practical guide to following in their footsteps. This book makes publicly available for the first time the same inclusive design process used at Google to create user-centric award-winning and profitable products. Author and Head of Product Inclusion Annie Jean-Baptiste outlines what those practices look like in industries beyond tech with fascinating case studies. Readers will learn the key strategies and step-by-step processes for inclusive product design that limits risk and increases profitability. Discover the questions you should be asking about diversity and inclusion in your products for marketers, user researchers, product managers and more. Understand the research the Product Inclusion team drove to back up their practices Learn the “ABCs of Product Inclusion” to build inclusion into your organization’s culture Leverage the product inclusion suite of tools to get your organization building more inclusively and identifying new opportunities. Read case studies to see how product inclusion works across industries and learn what doesn't work. Building For Everyone will show you how to infuse your business processes with inclusive design. You’ll learn best practices for inclusion in product design, marketing, management, leadership and beyond, straight from the innovative Google Product Inclusion team.