General managers in charge of new product launches may face a number of vexing questions: Why were we beaten in the market by competitors with inferior technology? Why are our newly commercialized technologies producing weaker than expected financial results? Why do our technology successes seem increasingly fleeting?

The classic dynamic at work here is the failure to jointly design the product and the business. Successful businesses address customers' underlying economics and decisionmaking processes, not just their technical requirements. The key to commercial success lies in understanding these customer requirements as well as industry dynamics in order to design the business as shrewdly as you design the product.