Early in the development of a new product line, the critical resource

1) early in dev, critical resource is talent
2) new ventures require more managerial skill than short-term rev prospects
3) usually talented managers are assigned to high rev product lines, so most new marketing ventures fail

4) best managers in a company should be assigned to development projects


1,2,3 are premise
4 is conclusion.

based on (2), we can assume that the managerial positions are most important for development of new product lines

So to strengthen the conclusion, you want to show that existing product lines wont suffer significantly from losing the more skilled managers.

a) This basically weakens one of the premises, (1)
b) Expense is not particularly relevant. We are concerned with the success of a product line, not how much it costs.
c) This indicates that it may be hard to find a talented manager for new product lines, but doesn't address whether it should be attempted.
d) Correct. This agrees with our pre-phrased answer. Moving talented managers off the existing product lines won't cause them to suffer.
e) Does not have any influence on whether talented managers will increase success rate.

Guys i know the answer so there is no point replying to this Message with
IMO A,B,C,D,E
What i wanna discuss is about how B and C fail to strengthen the argument.

(B) For most established companies, the development of new product lines is a relatively small part of the company’s total expenditure.
Cant this be the reason why Talented managers are not assigned to new development projects.The company does not want to spend much on the new projects and therefore it decides to assign mediocre managers to the new development projects in order to keep the Project cost as low as possible.

(C) The more talented a manager is, the less likely he or she is to be interested in undertaking the development of a new product line.
Cant this be 1 of the reasons for the company not to assign taleneted managers to the new dev. projects

What is the argument? That since more talent is required during development phase, best managers should be assigned to development projects.

C is saying that talented/ best managers are not interested in development projects mostly. How can this strengthen author's argument? In fact it is sort of weakening only - that best managers should NOT be assigned to development projects, since mostly they will not be interested in these projects, and this arguable can affect adversely their perfomance and that of the project.

B says that development projects are a small part of the expenditure. Assuming that best managers will mean more expenditure on development projects, this is contadictory to the author's conclusion, hence it cant strengthen the argument.

D is clearly the winner
now why B and C fail -

(B) For most established companies, the development of new product lines is a relatively small part of the company’s total expenditure. and hence there is no need to assign a experienced manager to it. This weakens the argument


(C) The more talented a manager is, the less likely he or she is to be interested in undertaking the development of a new product line. and hence he will not show much interest in making the product a success. This also weakens the argument.

Hey Mundasingh:

Thanks for the invite to weigh in! This is a fantastic example of why it's so critical to identify the conclusion of an argument before attacking the answer choices - a task that I don't think is typically taught all that well. While the author definitely does talk about talented managers typically NOT being assigned to development projects, his argument is that they SHOULD BE assigned to them. Ultimately, there are three ways to find a conclusion in one of these arguments:

THREE WAYS TO IDENTIFY THE CONCLUSION

1) Conclusion language (such as "therefore", "thus", "in conclusion", "so", etc.)

2) A call for action ("We should", "they must", etc.)

3) The effect of a cause-effect relationship (It is raining, so the parade will be cancelled. The rain causes the cancellation, so "the parade will be cancelled" is the conclusion)

3a) To better exemplify this, try the "Why Test". Facts in these arguments don't have a reason why. Why is it raining? It doesn't say. But it does give a reason "why" the parade will be cancelled - because it's raining. So "the parade will be canceled", because the argument provides a reason why, is a conclusion based upon existing facts.


So...given all that, the conclusion of this argument is "the best managers in a company should be assigned to development projects" - it has a call for action "SHOULD BE", and it passes the why test. Why should they be assigned to those projects? The passage says because "early in projects the critical resource is talent"; because "new ventures require a disproportionate degree of managerial skill"; etc. So the conclusion is "the best managers should be assigned to development projects".

B weakens that, giving a reason that they shouldn't be (it's a small portion of the company's operations).
C weakens that, giving a reason that they shouldn't be (they probably don't want to)
D strengthens it, giving another reason why they should be (we already know that they'll significantly improve the odds of the new project's success; D says that they'll also not really be missed in the regular operations)


I hope that helps - keep in mind that the conclusion is by far the most important part of any of these arguments, so take care in making sure that you identify and embrace it.

The argument talks about talented managers, who are generally used in established high revenue product lines.
It also talks about the new product line(with relatively less revenue) which fails because of not having a good manager
to run it in the initial stages, as that is one of the important critical resources required to make a new idea successful.

Since we need an option, which most strengthens the author’s argument
The current revenue and profitability of an established product line can be maintained
even if the company’s best managers are assigned elsewhere(Option D)
provides the most support as it states that an average manager could manage the revenue and profitability
of an established product line.

If you negate D the argument breaks. Hence D is correct.

On the other hand E seems promising but actually is wrong because it does not state that any kind of short term revenues are an indicator of future success but its states that through the short term revenues you can predict HOW successful a product line can be.

for example 100$ short revenues could be an indicator of scarce success while 100000$ could be an indicator of huge success. The statement at hand does not tell us in which scenario we are so it is wrong