Chapter FiveCOMMANDING THE FUTURE

On a sun-filled September weekend, a dozen product development engineers set out on an unlikely mission. They were to spend the two days interviewing and riding around with local car owners at a shopping center in Oakbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Over the next month, two more groups of engineers from the same organization undertook a similar assignment in San Diego, California, and Birmingham, Alabama. Their company was in the early stages of planning for a new midsize, five-passenger sedan, and the engineers had been assigned to find out what potential customers actually thought about, and how they experienced, their cars.

All weekend long, two-person teams in Oakbrook interviewed and drove with the ...

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