Posted by
joshua duncan – January 18, 2010
I spent last week putting the final touches on a Voice of the Customer research effort we conducted near the end of 2009. As a product manager there is something very satisfying about coming back to the office with a list of potential ideas.
Listening to your customers is a great way to generate ideas. Some of these ideas will align nicely with your current thinking and some will present challenges. Then there are ideas that sound just plain crazy.
The just crazy ideas are usually the quickest to be dismissed. The idea maybe technically impossible or cost prohibitive. Often, it comes down to a belief that customers just won’t buy it.
However, paying attention to crazy ideas can pay off, and LEGOs are a great case study to prove it. LEGO (eventually) started listening to the 5% minority of their customers (adults) who had become enthusiastic fans of the product line. This minority set of customers were spending 50 times more a year than the 95% majority customer (the Gaspedal word of mouth marketing blog has a good overview of the LEGO case here).
More…
Posted by
joshua duncan – April 7, 2009
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.
Posted by
joshua duncan – March 23, 2009
Being a product manager is a tough job at any company. But imagine working at a company where your main product line is going to go away. The good news is that you have several years before this happens but it going to happen ,and there is absolutely nothing you can do about.
So what do you do? Milk it for as long as you can? Try to buy into another business line? Or take your existing product expertise and try to innovate and do something completely new (but unproven)?
Fast Company’s story on Sylvania and their New Venture Group (NVG) is an inspiring read for product managers. Sylvania’s main business of making light bulbs is facing a bleak future but here is how they are handling it:
- They are not in denial that their business is in trouble
- They made a conscious choice to do something about it
- They created a new group dedicated to innovating and bringing new products to market (and gave it budget and resources)
- They are wiling to take risks – such as funding product development before any retails orders had been placed
- They are willing to explore and take design inspiration from anywhere
The results:
NVG — which banged out 20 new products in the last fiscal year — is the fastest-growing unit of Sylvania’s billion-dollar LED business and already profitable in its second year, with revenues due to triple by 2013.
Very cool!
Posted by
admin – March 15, 2009
Forrester blog has a post on Invention, innovation, and product management that is defeinity worth the read.
Innovation is a messy, difficult, strenuous, and time consuming process. With a good product manager, there are opportunities to be the voice of the customer during the iterations that can greatly improve the chances that a compelling product will emerge:
- Develop target customers
- Increase/decrease scope
- Fine tune feature requirements/priorities
- Gather feedback/support from key internal/external decision makers
One the flip side, when it is time to pull the plug, product managers can help make the call before its too late (as in, too much time/money/reputation has been invested).
Posted by
joshua duncan – December 15, 2008
Money Quote from Clayton M. Christensen in today’s WSJ on how hard times can drive innovation:
So, if you give people a lot of money, it gives them the privilege of pursuing the wrong strategy for a very long time……The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited.
Clayton M. has literally written the book (s) on innovation so arguing with him is like disagreeing with with Alex Trebec on Jeopardy. The next to impossible part here is “how?”.
In my experience, the step that most companies miss most is developing a process around innovation. At some point times will get tough and there will be a call for more innovation. Then consultants will be called in, brainstorming will ensue, and tons of power point will be created (and after a few executive reviews, discarded).
Since most innovative ideas are half baked, it takes time to craft and mature these ideas into a full fledged business case. Without the proper steps in place to help nurture these emergent ideas, they will die a slow internal death as champions give up or more on to other things.
Clayton M. Christensen has a whole chapter dedicated to this topic in his book “The Innovator’s Solution” that I would highly recommend reading.
