Just like the new product initiatives we describe in Monetizing Innovation, a book itself is the work of many people who play essential roles.

We start with those who allowed us to tell their stories in detail. In alphabetical order they are: Ralf Drews (former CEO of Dräger Safety), Andrew Freed and Josh Gold of LinkedIn, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital, Vishaal Jayaswal of Cox Automotive, Christoph Kargruber of Swarovski, Don MacAskill of SmugMug, and Dan Siroker of Optimizely.

Eddie Hartman (co-founder and chief product officer at LegalZoom) and Matt Johnson (a managing partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners) spent countless hours with us reviewing and debating ideas and giving insightful feedback that made our ideas better and more persuasive. We also owe a big special thanks to Cary Burch of Thomson Reuters, Chet Kapoor of Tenzing Global, and John Cline of Western Union for reviewing book drafts and providing invaluable feedback along the way.

Colleagues of ours at Simon-Kucher played the invaluable role of pushing our thinking. Sara Yamamoto helped shape ideas, reviewed chapter drafts, and served as our go-to person and internal editor. Hermann Simon, one of the founders of our firm and a serial book author himself, reviewed our content and provided great feedback as well. Charlie Sun and Justin Roman helped write several case examples and we thank them for their input and dedication. A number of partners and directors at our firm pointed us to examples that you'll read in the pages ahead and opened doors to their executive suites: Philipp Biermann, Gunnar Clausen, Dirk Schmidt-Gallas, Josee Hulshof, Klaus Hilleke, Dirk Kars, Nick Keppeler, Joerg Kruetten, Susan Lee, Rainer Meckes, Nina Scharwenka, Christian Schuler, Ekkehard Stadie, André Weber, and Antoine Weill. Thank you for helping us build the foundation of evidence upon which the book's insights are based. In addition, former Simon-Kucher colleagues Andrew Conrad, Frank Luby, Anya Rasulova, and Kate Woodward were big contributors to early drafts of the book. We thank you very much for your contributions. Finally we wish to thank Petra Dietz from our graphics department for helping with the numerous figures and charts.

We were truly blessed to have an all-star team of reviewers. They were (in alphabetical order): Andreas Altemark, Cary Burch, Robert Dolan, Ralf Drews, Bill Gurley, Stefan Jacoby, Mark James, Vishaal Jayaswal, Chet Kapoor, Christoph Kargruber, Philp Kotler, Nigel Lewis, Sheila Marcelo, Kevin Mitchell, Jens Müller, Marta Navarro, Mike Noonen, Stefan Paul, Allan Pedersen, Duncan Robertson, Hilary Schneider, Aditya Singh, Dan Siroker, Spenser Skates, Leela Srinivasan, and Greg Waldorf. Thank you so much for your support!

We wish to thank Richard Narramore, our editor at John Wiley & Sons, who saw the potential in our early manuscript and helped sculpt it into the book it is now. The book that is now in your hands wouldn't exist without the invaluable help of Bloom Group LLC. Thank you, Bloom Group team members Bob Buday, David Rosenbaum, and Laurie McLaughlin, for getting our thoughts into prose.

We must thank, and thank again, our family members for their nonstop encouragement and understanding. Our wives Hema and Ulrike offered us unwavering support and encouragement and served as an excellent sounding board for ideas. Finally, we also wish to thank our parents and siblings. This book wouldn't have been possible without their support.

—Madhavan and Georg
March 2016