The Product Pulse

As a product line manager in charge of several software products, my job is challenging. It's a constant balancing act around delighting the customer, minimizing risk, maximizing revenue, leveraging resource availability, and about 12 other considerations. While I quite often think the pain of having to make difficult tradeoffs between good ideas, I have never had the opportunity to "measure" the portfolio that I didn't choose. That is… not until I got to participate and help facilitate a Discovery Lab called Reinventing Portfolio Management at this year's PDMA Global Conference in Phoenix.

The session was led by SmartOrg's Co-Founder, President, and CEO David Matheson who is a regular lecturer at Stanford on the topic of Strategic Portfolio Management. In his brief introduction to the workshop, David introduced the dice game. While the portfolio simulation sounded interesting and fun, I had no idea how enlightening it would be. While I don't think we "reinvented" portfolio management, I certainly gained a perspective on portfolio management that was new. And after 16 years in the portfolio business, new is uncommon, and delicious.

Through the dice simulation, we were tasked to pick a portfolio of R&D projects to invest in. But that left a collection of projects not included in the selected portfolio but that still clearly had some sort of value. Before evaluating the selected portfolio, we were told to roll the dice to calculate the success and value of the unselected projects. For my Type-A personality, this was a little unsettling on two fronts:

1. It's very disturbing to me to think that a "roll of the dice" could be considered an accurate metaphor representing my chances of success with my portfolio. SURELY, I was a much better product manager (with better assessment criteria) and way too controlling to leave things up to chance, right? Statistically speaking, given the number of project and product failures, it can be a less than certain game, especially with new technologies.
2. The second thing that was so disturbing to me was the fact that there was so much value in the projects that didn't get selected. When you think of that value going unrealized, it can be a bitter pill to swallow. I've never actually considered calculating the potential value associated with my product backlog. Ouch.

I think that the dice simulation really opened my eyes about the real risk and uncertainty we deal with daily in portfolio management. It seems that this dice game gave everyone in the class (see picture below -- such a good looking group!) a different insight or nugget to take home, based on the dynamics of their particular organization. Check out the post-class review video for some of those takeaways.

"Why is innovation in everyone's DNA and not in every organization's DNA?" According to Darwinism, the weak eventually die and the strong, most adaptable ultimately survive. However, if that is the case, why hasn't the spirit of constant improvement effectively spread throughout the business world?

We discussed this topic and more at the recent Stage-Gate Innovation Summit in Miami a few weeks ago. The moderator of this panel was Damian Killen, managing director for Thrive, an international human resources consultancy based in Dublin. He has spent more than 20 years researching and speaking about the application of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator was developed by a mother-daughter team who built upon the findings of Carl Jung. The key principles to remember with their test are that while humans are all dissimilar, they vary in comparable ways. Understanding this concept, patterns of behavior can be determined.

Killen, with his lilting Irish accent and his sarcastic wit, proved to be an extremely entertaining speaker. He defined innovation as the implementation of creative ideas and thus, an innovative organization is one that is constantly applying ideas. According to Killen, true innovation comes through gathering and utilizing people's different strengths. The understanding and use of personality type theory can help organizations determine where, when and how best to utilize their people in order to achieve the best results.

Although there are four dichotomies, for the purposes of Killen's presentation, he focused only on Sensing-Intuition (S-N) and Judging-Perceiving (J-P) as the other two (Thinking-Feeling and Extraversion-Introversion) were found to not have a significant impact on innovation behaviors. Sensing-Intuition pertains to how a person takes in information while Judging-Perceiving deals with how someone sees the outside world.

• Sensing (S): focus is on the present, notices details, practical
• Intuition (N): focus is on the future, notices patterns, imaginative
• Judging (J): stickler for following plans and schedules, likes closure, decisive
• Perceiving (P): flexible, energized by last minute pressure, likes to keep options open

The breakout is approximately 48% SJ, 27% SP, 8% NJ, and 17% NP. You can find all of the details of this principle in Killen's book, Introduction to Type and Innovation, co-written with Gareth Williams. The basic principle is that SJs strive for outcomes and perform best in the delivery phase, SPs enjoy simplifying matters and perform best in the definition phase, NJs align ideas to needs and perform best in the decision-making phase, and lastly the NPs like to develop and generate ideas and perform best in the discovery phase. This is not to say that a personality could not do well in another area or that someone's persona cannot change over time or in differing circumstances. After all, the Myers Briggs assessment is concerned with discovering a person's preferences and does not say anything about their intelligence or abilities.

By merely understanding that people have diverse personalities and thus different strengths, organizations can build the most effective teams for their projects and rotate people depending on where the project is in its lifecycle.

"Innovate or Die." It's the current battle cry for businesses trying to get or stay ahead of the competition and remain viable in the market. But how do you avoid innovation for innovation's sake, and instead drive measurable business results through innovation processes and tools?

Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders Workshop

I learned the answer to that question (and more) at the Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders Workshop in Chicago a few weeks ago. The event was sponsored by Brightidea and hosted on the Kraft campus. The speakers were great and I especially appreciated their willingness to share what did and did not work in their innovation endeavors. Here's the Cliff's Notes version in four easy steps:

1. Prepare to Innovate!
   Often companies jump right into idea collection with their employees and customers, desperately searching for the next big thing without giving any consideration to organizational preparedness. I think it was Yoda who said: "There is great responsibility in receiving the idea." Okay, maybe it wasn't Yoda, but it sure sounds like him because it is so profoundly true. For successful innovation, it's necessary to ensure the organization:
   1. is in the right mindset (that of problem-solving)
   2. has supporting processes and tools in place
   3. is properly structured/staffed to execute the processes and administer the tools
   4. is culturally prepared to respond.
   Whatever you do, don't skip these steps! It will sink the innovative spirit of the organization and backfire in harmful ways. I'm not saying you need to spend months and years getting ready to innovate; I'm just recommending that you have answers to the above questions to ensure you are equipped to handle and implement the changes innovation programs can bring.
   
   
2. Focus! And Capture Needs BEFORE Ideas!
   There is a time and a place for the electronic employee suggestion box and open innovation. But having a short-term (2-4 week), focused innovation campaign that gives people a specific problem to solve often leads to more valuable results. And by narrowing idea capture down to a specific problem to solve, it's much easier to define metrics (hard or soft) to determine success and benefit.
   
   
3. Brand It, Baby!
   One way to get people excited about driving innovative results is by branding and marketing your innovation tool and specific campaigns. With today's technology, there is no excuse for rolling out a vendor-branded software tool. Presenters at the conference had full-blown advertising campaigns, including videos to explain the objective and generate hype, and logos with associated color schemes to skin the software. Re-branded programs and tools had names like "Think Tank" and "Idea Kitchen" to really capture the attention of idea submitters. Some companies even sponsored specific "Innovation Days" around a particular campaign to encourage involvement and ownership. Don't fall victim to assuming that "if you build it, they will come." (Field of Dreams; not Yoda.) By branding your innovation program, you're sure to drive quality ideas that deliver results… because it is, after all, about the results.
   
   
4. Show Me the Money!
   Sometimes solving a problem and the feeling of accomplishment in contributing to the success of the company is a reward in itself. But for most of us, a little incentive or some recognition for the great, problem-solving ideas we submit goes a long way. You know how it feels when you put thought and effort into something and it seems as if your idea has dropped into a black hole where there is never so much as a reply or simple, "thank you." It sucks. And why would you waste your precious time on something to which management is only giving lip service. Whether feedback comes in the form of public recognition for being a top innovator (that's FREE for all of you penny pinchers keeping track at home) or in the form of a big fat check (option B, please!), it is critical for the success and sustainability of your innovation program to reward good ideas.

So there you have it, Product Pulse Peeps…innovation in four simple steps. Implementing an innovation tool and program isn't hard, but you can't skip any of the steps if you want to drive real results. As it relates to innovation, Yoda would say (and this time, you can look it up!): "Do or do not. There is no try."

There were many great takeaways from my recent 2-day session with Pragmatic Marketing. Their expert team, including John Milburn, a friendly upbeat guy with 20 years of product management experience in the tech industry including long stints at Tivoli and VTEL, has more than 10 years of experience working with over 70,000 professionals globally in product management training.

Let's start with the most important thing: The FOOD at the AT&T Conference center on The University of Texas campus (where the class was held) is excellent! This information is neither here nor there but if you get the chance, check out the conference center or hotel as an option next time you're in Austin.

From a more business-oriented standpoint we learned:

• Product management's primary job is to know and speak for the customer.
  • The following quote (with a few modifications) by Peter Drucker was used multiple times: "The aim of product management is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself."
• Product management's main responsibility is finding their market's problem. To do this, product managers should:
  • Contact customers (both their own and their competitors'), evaluators, and prospects.
  • Use various research methods including discovery (onsite interviews, focus groups, secondary research) and validation (surveys, choice models, experiments).
• Too often product management gets overwhelmed with tactical instead of strategic activities.
  • As Milburn noted in class, if product management doesn't do its job then the other departments will fill the void. Other groups have their own goals and ideas so if the product management team is not there to speak for the customer, an inside out product could result (one that solves a space problem but not a strategic one).
• By focusing on my customers' needs and wants, product managers can help their company build solutions that the market will buy, and what is profit if not the ultimate goal of any company?

After spending two full days getting my head stuffed with information (and my belly stuffed with yummy food), I was raring to go out and apply all these new tips and energy to my job. I was eager to see how much of what I learned in class was applicable to real life.

So far, most of the points ring true. I've spoken with multiple customers about their needs and concerns and gathered a lot of useful information. I have also met a good portion of the executives, sales, marketing, and development teams and worked with them on a hodgepodge of projects. It will be interesting to see how well I remember my role as Chief Customer Advocate once I get inundated with a lot of tactical stuff. I will try my best to focus on strategy, Milburn and Drucker!

I am new to product management, but there were people in my session with years of experience, and we each felt that Pragmatic Marketing taught us something useful. Just goes to show that no matter where you are on your career path, there are always opportunities to better understand the marketplace and your role in it. And, that information is almost as satisfying as the AT&T Conference Center's dessert bar!

Social Media is a fact of life. It impacts not only our personal lives every day, but our business lives as well. Malcolm De Leo, Chief Evangelist at Netbase, is responsible for helping people see the power of social media as a data source for driving the business. Join us at PIPELINE 2011: The Online Conference for Innovative Product Development where Malcolm, during his closing keynote presentation, will share how social media fits into your organization's innovation process.

Malcolm has recently blogged about the challenges and impact of social media in the Enterprise. He says:

"… About two months ago I discussed the concept of culture based adoption. This idea, which discussed how new software is as much about getting people to use new tools as it is about changing culture in the process, is at the center of the social media debate in my mind.

For many months, I have learned much about what I consider the slow adoption of social media as a data source. In working with many companies in many fields, I have heard many reasons why they are slow to integrate what is clearly impacting all of us everyday. It's not accurate. It's biased. Only gen y is online. Companies are poisoning the data. The list goes on and on. But what often amazes me is this. When confronted by what I consider fear of change within the corporation (a topic of the politics of innovation), I always ask people one simple question. When you are about to buy an appliance or an electronic product what is the first thing you do? The all say go to the web and read up. This to me highlights the struggle social media faces within the Enterprise. The ENTERPRISE is not telling the WE or the ME (my earlier post) that social media is extremely important. There is cultural misalignment and therefore resistance to this new and powerful idea. The proof is in the fact the everyone (ME) turns to the web immediately about hundred times a day through their phone."

Read Malcolm's full blog post at The Innovation Muse-ings.

From the convenience of your desktop, join us and watch Malcolm's presentation at PIPELINE 2011. You'll find that it's not unlike live conferences: you can connect with other attendees, hear keynotes, choose speaker tracks, network, access sponsor resources in the Expo Hall, etc., -- with one major difference. You don't have to leave your desk.

Oh, and did I mention it's free? Check it out at www.PIPELINE2011.com.

I had the privilege of participating in the 2nd Annual Medical Devices Summit earlier this month in Boston. Not knowing what to expect from the event, I was pleased to be going back to Boston, the cradle of American civilization. After making my way to Quincy Market, I set my sights on a fresh lobster roll and thumbed through the event guide. The event was focused on hot button issues, sharing information among medical device manufacturers and brought together some of the key thought leaders in the industry for two days of presentations, workshops and networking. I and Carrie Nauyalis, Planview Product Line Manager extraordinaire, were eager to meet and greet attendees and learn more about the medical devices industry.

The keynote Monday morning was given by Kamal Ayoub PhD, and Vice President of Operational Excellence at Covidien, a world leader in medical device manufacturing. Dr. Ayoub really set the stage for me at the summit with his opening keynote. He started off sharing success stories about the well-known innovation and poster child for innovation success. Guess who? Yes, some kind of fruit company… er, Apple. He talked about Apple and Netflix, the decline of Kodak, and posed a question to the audience. What if people could see new innovations coming that threatened their product line? How could these corporations better prepare themselves to bring the right new products to market?

He drove it home by sharing that successfully developing new products is critical to the prosperity and organic growth of the modern corporation. It's also one of the biggest challenges facing corporations in an increasingly changing environment. He also pointed out that new products fail at an alarming rate – with only ONE in four product development projects becoming a commercial success.

Think about that. Now think about that as a medical devices corporation. What if your product fails and it has already been implanted or used to treat someone? The repercussions are costly and not just from a dollars perspective, but from a value of human life perspective. It's not a matter of "if" medical devices products are going to fail, it's often about "when" they will fail and/or get recalled. If they fail after harming a patient or they suffer a recall after having been introduced into the market, it can cost millions and millions of dollars – not only to the corporation but to its shareholders. And of course, to the families of the affected patients!

Then Dr. Ayoub zeroed in on something that really resonated with me. He held up a product portfolio management funnel that looked strikingly similar to the one developed by Carrie and team that we use here at Planview. He demonstrated that by taking a disciplined portfolio management approach and aligning that to your innovation strategy and to execution, you can make better decisions to bring the right products to market while prevent the wrong product from going to market.

He was also such a great speaker that I'm going to do my level best to recruit him to present at the upcoming PIPELINE 2011 Online Conference for Innovative Product Development event. But that's a blog post for another day – stay tuned!

I didn't really know what to expect when I prepared to present at the Innovation Risk Management conference in Barcelona, Spain. In the event, I was delightfully surprised at the cast of co-presenters that the conference organizer, Marcus Evans, had assembled (I think I was the only one presenting that didn't have a PhD or who hadn't written a book in the area of innovation).

At this conference, a charming and clever man, always in a bowtie, opened my eyes to an alternate NPD process methodology to Stage-Gate's. And if you've read some of my previous posts, you know that I love me some Dr. Cooper, co-founder of Stage-Gate, so I was definitely paying attention. Dr. Bengt Järrehult presented the idea that a funnel-based stage-gate process (a horizontal funnel, wide side on the left collecting ideas, narrow side on the right spitting out winning products) is great for incremental or next-generation projects and products.

But when trying to deliver radical or breakthrough innovation, Dr. Bengt said that the innovation funnel simply didn't work for his organization (SCA). Similar to what the approach my colleague Kurt Weisenberger wrote about in the blog entry By Product Pros, For Product Pros: Another Successful Product Camp in the River City, Dr. Bengt offered this option for working on those radical and breakthrough innovation projects: the incubation reactor.

In the above graphic, Dr. Bengt draws a variation of the pipeline funnel with the reactor, and overlays it with Gina Corarelli O'Connor's arrows from her book, "Grabbing Lightning." Dr. Bengt discussed that discovery and conceptualization would be similar between the two methodologies, but that the funnel doesn't narrow on into development because an incubation and experimentation stage was necessary before it could move into development and then on to commercialization.

I love this approach! And here's the kicker – these breakthrough or Blue Ocean innovations (read: Blue Ocean Strategy) produce almost 10 times as much profit than those incremental and next generation products. Wow!

A big thanks to my new friend/guru, Dr. Bengt, for presenting this innovative concept. And stay tuned, dear Pulse reader, as you may see Dr. Bengt coming to a presentation near you in Pipeline2011! (I'll be keeping my fingers crossed to see that bowtie again!)

Interested in understanding what more than 900 product development professionals had to say in the 2nd Annual Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Survey and how your organization compares? Join me, Carrie Nauyalis of Planview, as I present for the Georgia Chapter of PDMA's event, Bagels and Brains on February 15th. I will explore key trends and takeaways revealed via the survey, and understand answers to questions like: How has the recession affected the product development process? What are the biggest challenges for today's product-driven company? What tools are product development executives planning to use? How do your peers integrate the voice of the customer into the product development process? What changed from 2009 to 2010? You won't want to miss this session.

Saturday morning in Austin, Texas started out rainy, cold and dreary. However, once I stepped foot into to the AT&T Conference Center at the University of Texas for Product Camp Austin 6, it was clear it was going to be a great day nonetheless. More than 400 product management and product marketing pros had braved the weather for ProductCamp. I saw familiar faces from this volunteer-run organization including Mark Suchanek, Colleen Heubaum, Melissa Muckenthaler and Mike Boudreaux. I also had the pleasure of meeting new attendees and by the opening session at least 3/4 of the attendees were first-timers.

There is simply no other group out there quite ProductCamp. It's always inspiring is to see hundreds of people who work as Product Managers and Product Marketers spend a Saturday to come together with their peers and share best practices, case studies and tips.

One of the most exciting features of this "un-conference" is there is no set agenda. The topics are posted on a wall and attendees vote for the sessions they want to see. While not all proposed topics make the cut, within the first hour the agenda is set and attendees scramble to decide which sessions to participate in.

Faced with this challenge myself, I opted for Jose Briones' session, "Quantifying Uncertainty in Innovation Project Management". I met Jose last year at the Open Innovation Summit in Chicago and was familiar with his work on "Beyond Stage-Gate -- A New Approach to Innovation". You can find him on Twitter here: @brioneja.

Nothing like a little controversy to stir the pot!  Jose's content was very refreshing and well thought out. The foundation of his argument is that Stage-Gate is a linear process that works well for incremental innovations and product enhancements, but for truly disruptive and highly impactful innovation, he recommends a different approach.

His session was an open discussion, and he walked the group through how a Probabilistic Decision Analysis can be used in the management of innovation projects with high levels of uncertainty. Probabilistic decision analysis, when combined with the right management processes like Discovery-Driven Planning is a highly effective approach to evaluating and managing the risk and potential of product innovation projects. He used a case study from the company just about everyone holds up as an innovation model, Apple, with a focus on the iPad. It was definitely not a 101-type of session, but one much deeper that really got me thinking.

We all know the Stage-Gate path, and recognize the value it can drive as well as the investments that large product development organizations have made in that well-established process. Jose's presentation of a fresh perspective, with a three-dimensional approach to innovation management -- the Spiro-Level™ 3D Approach to Innovation -- is definitely something to consider. Rather than steal Jose's thunder I invite you to check out his presentation on Slide Share.

If you're interested in innovation, better product management and marketing, I strongly encourage you to participate in a Product Camp near you. Just go to the ProductCamp Web site and look for a chapter near you. If you're in Austin, I'll keep an eye out for you at the next ProductCamp!

I was re-watching Chris Trimble's PIPELINE 2010 presentation -- if you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out, it's free -- with an eye to doing a post about one of his key themes (the conflict between Operations and innovation) but realized I'll need to come back to it in a future post. Rather, what makes sense to speak to now, seasonally, is something he alludes to a couple of times: that of the responsibility of innovation to change the world.

At the beginning of his talk, he says that "I think we've lost our way a little bit… because we've let innovation become synonymous with the latest cool gadget… To me, innovation is much bigger than that. To me, innovation is about changing the world."

Sure, I like my iPhone. And with my Causeworld app, I can "check in" to local businesses and then donate my points to charities (hint, hint: download it, it's free). But let's take it to the next level, hmm?

I was watching a recently posted TED Talk video of Tata Motors' engineer RA Mashelkar -- a super-inspirational fellow in his own right -- titled "Breakthrough Designs for Ultra-Low-Cost Products." I don't know where you're reading this, but I'm writing it from the comfort of my American desk with all my American creature comforts. Mr. Mashelkar's reality -- the Indian reality -- is one of a country where 4 billion people earn less than $2 a day.

He talks about Tata Motors' founder, Ratan Tata, giving a small team of engineers the charter to design a car that could hold an entire Indian family safely. His only restriction: it could not cost that family more than $2,000. His only edict: question the unquestionable. Tata was so successful with the Tata Nano that every major car company on the subcontinent has now released its own nano-sized vehicle. But just as importantly, he made Indians believe that they, too, were equal to the dream of car ownership. Ratan Tata is India's Henry Ford (one who puts kids through school. Watch the video.)

He also talks about the Jaipur Foot -- prosthetic limb replacements that are fitted on the spot. In the US, this costs $20,000. The Jaipur Foot costs $28 (I’m sure these prosthetics aren't apples-to-apples comparisons, but for the Indian man who could never afford the US version, having this option must be amazing). I'm not going to do it justice, so watch the video, at about 10:35 in, you will see a man climbing a tree, then jump down and run up and down the lane, all with no pain. It's truly joyous.

This, then, is what the business of innovation can be about. Applying our smarts and technology to generate awesome revenue streams while making a difference in the world.