Preston G. Smith co-authored developing-products-in-half-the-time with Reinertsen in 1991. A new product development consultant focused on speed-to-market, Smith's collaboration with Reinertsen produced Reinertsen's first book-length work on product development speed. Smith brought practical consulting experience; Reinertsen brought the economic and analytical framework. Together they established the core argument that development cycle time is an economic variable with quantifiable costs — an early articulation of what would become Reinertsen's cost-of-delay framework.