This book offers advice on making medical decisions inspite of confusing and conflicting information, provides insight into the personal beliefs influencing how choices are made while citing the marketing practices that complicate the process. Making the right medical choices is harder than ever. Whether deciding on a cholesterol drug or choosing a cancer treatment, we are overwhelmed by information from all sides: our doctors' recommendations, dissenting expert opinions, confusing statistics, conflicting media reports, the advice of friends, claims on the Internet, and a never-ending stream of drug company ads. This book shows us how to chart a clear path through this sea of confusion. Both doctor, the authors reveal that each of us has a set of deeply rooted beliefs whose profound influence we may not realize when we make medical decisions. Recognizing our preferences and the external factors that might lead our thinking astray can make a dramatic, even lifesaving, difference in our medical decision making. The authors drew on research and insights from patients, doctors, psychologists, economists, and other experts to help reveal the array of forces that can aid or impede our thinking. Ultinately, this is a chronicle of how ordinary people, landing at a medical crossroads, must decide about care, who should provide it, and for how long. -- From publisher description.

This outstanding contribution to market research focuses on the upfront activities and ideas for new product and service development. A central theme of this book is that there is, or should be, a constant struggle going on in every organization, business, and system between delivering feature-rich versions of products and services using extravagant engineering and delivering low-cost versions of products and services using frugal engineering. A number of powerful concepts and tools are presented in the book to facilitate new product development. For example, three templates are featured that facilitate new product and service development. The FAD (features, attributes, and design) template is used to identify the features and attributes that can be used for product and service differentiation. The Ten-Ten planning process contains two templates: an Organizational and Industry Analysis template and the Business Plan Overview template. These two templates coupled with the FAD template can be used to develop a full-blown business plan. Entrepreneurship, technology and product life cycles, product and service versioning, product line optimization, creativity, lock-in real options, business valuation, and project management topics are also covered.