Last weekend, I spoke with a friend who just returned from Italy. He asked: do you know how long it took to build the St. Peter’s basilica?
120 years! That’s 1.2 centuries. Or, a decent-sized-fraction of a millennium.
Awe-inspiring, no doubt. But what is particularly remarkable is that the basilica planners had to answer some extremely important questions before construction even began: would the building accommodate the size of the community in 120 years? Would the design meet the aesthetic tastes of our grandchildren? To answer these questions without the luxury of Excel, Stata or dartboards (created 100’s of years later by our friends in England) must have required luck—and prayer.
In many ways, it’s the equivalent of a modern-day, consumer product development cycle. In a sea of shifting segments, who will purchase my product when it finally hits store shelves? Not an easy question to answer, even with modern, predictive tools we now have at our disposal. Read More »



