In all aspects of our lives, personal and professional, each of us strives to build valuable, lasting relationships and the building process continues through the course of our entire life. The topic on building business relationships came to me this past weekend when I got the sudden and inexplicable urge to revisit some old marketing articles from my MBA marketing class. In particular, I dove into materials on innovation as well as risk and reward management of new product portfolios. Since I'm now more immersed into my marketing role and working with new thermocouple wire and cable product ideas, it seemed like a progressive and productive thing to do on a weekend where the weather, quite frankly, wasn’t my definition of springtime.