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The 2 W’s of Product Development

October 25, 2010 By

Over at the BusinessWeek blog, Steve McKee wants you to make sure that when it comes to marketing planning, you have the full story before you go to market.

Steve recommends that marketers should focus on the “why, who, what, where, and when” and in that order for building their strategy. While the article is directed at outbound marketing, its message is equally poignant for product planning

When it comes to new product development, start with the “Why and the Who” before working on the “What“.

  • Why should we develop a new product (pain points)?
  • Why is this opportunity interesting?
  • Who is this the primary user of this product?
  • How are they solving this problem now and why isn’t that good enough?

Now that you have this information, work on the “What” (the new product).

It sounds like a simple approach but it will help avoid the dreaded “solution looking for a problem” product. And as an added bonus, get this done up front and it will really help your outbound marketing.

Filed Under: Product Management Tagged With: ,

Slowing Innovation

August 23, 2009 By

Unfortunately, buybacks are rampant in industries where investment in innovation is crucial—energy, technology, and pharmaceuticals….And five high-tech leaders—Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Intel, (INTC) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)—are in the Top 10 of repurchasers, each having spent more on buybacks than on research and development from 2000 through 2008. (While spending $73 billion to buy its own stock, IBM increased its offshore employment by 133,000, reducing U.S. jobs by 36,000.)

Via BW’s The Buyback Boondoggle.

Filed Under: innovation, Marketing Resources Tagged With: ,

On The Bright Side

August 15, 2009 By

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Put simply, workplace optimism, if nurtured properly, can be a competitive advantage…Best Buy (BBY), for example, says a 2% increase in employee engagement at one of its electronics stores corresponds, on average, to a $100,000 annual rise in sales at that location.

via Is Optimism a Competitive Advantage.

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The Waterline Principle

July 27, 2009 By

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I just finished listening to Jim Collins’s new book, “How the Might Fall“.  One of may favorite quotes in the book was on risk management:

Bill Gore articulated a helpful concept for decision-making and risk-taking, what he called the “waterline” principle. Think of being on a ship, and imagine that any decision gone bad will blow a hole in the side of the ship. If you blow a hole above the waterline (where the ship won’t take on water and possibly sink), you can patch the hole, learn from the experience, and sail on. But if you blow a hole below the waterline, you can find yourself facing gushers of water pouring in, pulling you toward the ocean floor. And if it’s a big enough hole, you might go down really fast, just like some of the financial firm catastrophes of 2008. To be clear, great enterprises do make big bets, but they avoid big bets that could blow holes below the waterline.

Excerpt from the book in Business Week here.

Filed Under: Product Strategy, Worth the Read Tagged With: ,

A.G. Lafley On Innovation

April 7, 2009 By

Procter & Gamble’s CEO, A.G. Lafley, is interviewed in this week’s Business Week magazine on managing during these troubled times.  In the article, he as some great quotes on innovation:

We continue to invest in our core strengths. First, we don’t skimp in understanding the consumer. Second is innovation. Our capital spending will go up in 2009 for new engineering and manufacturing technology.

You need creativity and invention, but until you can connect that creativity to the customer in the form of a product or a service that meaningfully changes their lives, I would argue you don’t yet have innovation.

Read the full article here.

Filed Under: innovation Tagged With: ,

WE UNWIND DREAMS

December 11, 2008 By

BusinessWeek article on the corporate dismantling boom:

In the current economic tempest, Pichinson is working 13-hour days that often start at 6:30 a.m. That’s a big switch from the period between 2002 and 2008, when he coasted along with two or three deals a month. Since last spring, when tech began feeling the economy’s chills, he has been getting about three new deals a week.

Read the full article here.

Filed Under: Marketing Resources Tagged With: