As a starting point in leading my former company’s strategic plan exercise, I laid out a series of guiding principles, along with a process which we would follow almost to the letter. Included in the set of principles were 10 for product development and portfolio management. I offer these for your edification.

1. Good marketing works best in the service of good products, like Acquisio’s ppc management software (sorry for the plug – I’m a fan!).

2. Good products beat new products. Sustainable market leadership requires equal or better products than the competition.

3. Safety lies not in products but in portfolios of products.

4. Product lines must continually evolve as the market evolves.

5. The advantage goes to first movers.

6. Innovate rather than extend. In this way, you cannibalize someone else’s product instead of your own.

7. Seek technological leadership, but never be led by technology.

8. Competition always overtakes an innovation.

9. New products should not be developed, and current products should not be maintained, unless they are financially viable.

10. Product integrity and financial viability are the direct result of good execution.

At first glance, these principles appear straightforward, almost obvious, and your company may have applied many of them intuitively. My bet, though, is that there are products or groups of products in your company’s line-up that run counter to one or more of the guidelines and that their performance has been deleteriously affected as a result.

You may know of exceptions – successful products that break the rules – but invariably these exceptions will define and ultimately corroborate the rules.

Every company is different – to a point – and every market is different, again to a point. That said, I have found, over the years, that similarities outweigh differences and that one never goes too far wrong applying basic truths and process fundamentals. I would suggest, at the very least, you think about these guidelines not just abstractly but in reference to your own company’s product offering and those of your competitors. Better still, use them as a filter to see if your company is on the right track or if you are throwing fixed and working capital at losers.

A former boss of mine once opined that a point of view is worth 50 points of IQ. If you have a vision, stick to it. Build your enterprise around it. History shows that consistency and good execution of an imperfect strategy will usually win out over an excellent strategy badly executed. Of course, this was the same boss who, in referring to one of his less favorite colleagues famously said, “He has one opinion, and it is wrong”.

Saturn, a different kind of car company that never quite figured out how to make a go of being different and, as a result, made little difference to the fortunes of its parent GM, is now on the verge of extinction. It is ironic that the more Saturn made cars people actually wanted, i.e., the more mainstream it became, the less relevant and more redundant it became. In other words, it is good to have a point of view, but make sure the view has a point in the first place.

Starbucks had a strongly-held point of view about coffee and people and how the two could come together. And that was enough – along, of course, with impeccable execution – to make the company an institution and an icon. Over-expansion which led to under-execution, along with competition from the lower brow and lesser brews of McDonald’s brought Starbucks profits to a coffee grinding halt. Vivanno smoothies, breakfast foods and other unimaginative fixes proved to be little more than froth. So now, two years later, Starbucks comes out with its newest game changer: VIA Ready Brew instant coffee.

According to the company’s spinners and weavers, Ready Brew is a breakthrough in “soluble” coffee:

“Ready Brew is different – it’s full-bodied and flavorful, just like the Starbucks coffee you know and love…The magic is in a proprietary, all-natural process that we spent years perfecting. We microgrind the coffee in a way that preserves all of their essential oils and flavor. No other coffee company takes this step, and it makes all the difference.”

The wording is reminiscent of an old ad for Tab, a vile diet drink introduced in 1963. “How could just one calorie taste so good?” the jingle asked teasingly. “Because the Coca Cola Company kept the flavor in Tab.”

Ready Brew takes direct aim at the $17 billion instant coffee market. Starbucks hopes to satisfy analysts without resorting to franchising and other brand-sensitive restructuring initiatives. But you’ve got to wonder: will the Nescafe crowd spend more for a Starbucks brew and could a frapuccino freak fall for an instant coffee? Will the brand be damaged by its implausible dip in the soluble pond? My guesses are no, no and yes. Time will tell.

So what about those 50 points of IQ? Starbucks shows what happens when your view gets fuzzy and Saturn when there is no substantive and sustainable view in the first place.

I always liked factor analysis as a strategic tool. To begin with, statistics were never a strength of mine. Factor analysis is different; there is nothing arcane about it. It is simply a method of observing linear combinations of attributes or factors. They may or may not be accurate measures of interdependencies. Multiple attributes can be highly correlated with no apparent reason. And if important attributes are missed, the value of the analysis is reduced accordingly. That said, marketers often use them successfully to construct perceptual maps and other product positioning devices. At the very least, it is a neat, almost elegant, way of capturing and presenting information.

Factor analysis was a tool used cleverly by Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist who, with N.Y. Times journalist Stephen Dubner, co-authored Freakonomics in 2005. The subtitle of Freakonomics is apt: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Cause and effect were turned upside down as they searched for interdependencies and correlations that to others seemed, at best, coincidental. They were able to debunk commonly held theories on many topical issues…as, for example, why the crime rates in New York City fell precipitously under the watchful eye of Rudy Giuliani.

Without being referred to specifically, factor analysis was also used by Malcolm Gladwell in his very clever new best-seller, Outliers: The Story of Success. It takes a leap of faith the size of the Grand Canyon to suggest that Bill Gates’ ultimate success was the result of accumulative advantage starting as an eighth grader when he had unlimited access to a computer, access denied even to university students. Ditto for hockey players who took advantage of the age cut in minor hockey to jump ahead of the pack.

Cultural legacy provides the basis for an even more startling leap from rice paddies to Chinese aptitude for math and deference to Korean Air pilots being the unwitting triggers to a succession of horrific crashes.

Gladwell is near-Holmsian in his ability to apply observation, deductive reasoning and inference to reach his conclusions. But he has the numbers to back up the anecdotal, if anomalous, evidence.

This is a fun book. It is, like Gladwell’s other books, breezy and easy to read. And while some of his theories might be a stretch, they aren’t as silly as, say, the Paul Revere stuff in The Tipping Point. It is replete with interesting concepts and enough terminology – divergence testing, orthogonal intelligence, concerted cultivation and mitigated speech – to wow even the stuffiest psychologist.

Like Levitt, Gladwell makes you think. Unlike Levitt, he offers up the basis, if not the blueprint, for making the most of your potential.

It’s all in the numbers. And, as you know, numbers don’t lie.