The Everyday Innovator Podcast for Product Managers show

The Everyday Innovator Podcast for Product Managers

Summary: The Everyday Innovator is a weekly podcast dedicated to your success as a product manager and innovator. Join me, Chad McAllister, for interviews with product professionals, discussing their successes, failures, and lessons-learned to help you excel in your career and create products your customers will love. Every organization must have products that provide value to their customers. People like you who know how to create that value are the ones with real influence. The topics are relevant to product and innovation management, and include: creating a culture of innovation, managing product development, validating the viability of product concepts, conducting market research, selecting a product innovation methodology, generating product ideas, working well with teams and cross-functionally, and much more.

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  • Artist: Chad McAllister, PhD - Helping Product Managers become Product Masters
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Podcasts:

 TEI 064: Help your product team go fast using Lean Startup practices – with Tristan Kromer | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 49:20

Product managers and innovators are using Lean Startup practices to create products customers love. But, many product managers are still learning about the right ways to apply Lean Startup to their work. To find some answers, I interviewed Tristan Kromer. His bio shares that he “helps product teams go fast.” He does this by coaching teams in Lean Startup principles, breaking down big problems into small steps and running experiments to improve product and business models. He’s done this for large enterprises as well as startups and companies in between. With his remaining hours, Tristan volunteers his time with Lean Startup Circle and blogs at GrasshopperHerder.com. In this discussion, you will learn about: * prioritizing product features, * tools to validate product concepts, and * what customers value.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * A few milestones in your past include a philosophy undergrad, being a bandleader and music producer, Marketing VP, and a startup co-founder. What is the thread through your experiences that led to Lean coaching? Except for philosophy, they all have creativity in common. The music industry is shockingly similar to the tech industry. It’s basically a bunch of people running around claiming to be rock stars of one form or another and trying to become famous while desperately looking for money . You have the same types of personalities and the same product development problems. They both want to bridge the gap between your delusions about what the world wants, your reality distortion field, your inward facing reality distortion field, and what people actually want and desire. So it’s a question of bridging that gap. * Why is there so much interest in Lean principles from startups and organizations of all sizes? One reason is because it’s the latest buzzword and bestselling book by the same name. Eric Ries is absolutely brilliant and does amazing things that appear magical but are not.  We have successful disruptive companies, such as Dropbox, who have used it, adding to the interest. * If we have a concept for a product but have done nothing else yet, what is the first thing we should do? I want to reframe the question. The job of a startup is to find a repeatable business model. A startup is any sort of organization that exists in a highly uncertain and risky environment or situation. Because of that, a startup has to essentially identify risks and eliminate them as quickly as possible. Knowing if customers will buy the product or not is a key risk area that is often considered.  Several tools can be used to determine if customers will commit to buying the product (a few are discussed by name). But that is only one area of risk. Once that is addressed, there may be technical risk, distribution risk, product use risk, etc. Clearly addressing risk leads to a repeatable business model. * What is an example of addressing risk? Let’s talk about evaluative experiments. If you have a clear hypothesis about who your customer is and what they want, you can run an experiment that will give you a relatively clear answer. For example, say my target segment is skateboarders who are 20 years old and had a broken arm within the past three weeks. My product concept is a magical cast that heals their broken arm in half the time of traditional casts. My hypothesis is that if I show them a specific landing page, they will purchase the product – a simple if-this-then-that hypothesis. I set a fail condition for the hypothesis to be 20% – if less than 20% commit to purchasing, the hypothesis fails.  I show that landing page to one hundred skateboarders. If less than 20% sign up, clearly this product is a bad idea or it’s unbelievable.

 TEI 063: Product management in large and small companies – with Ellen Chisa | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 31:42

Product management work changes from company to company and from one industry to the next. A key factor influencing the work is the size of the organization. Product managers at a large company like Microsoft will have a different scope of responsibilities than a product manager in a small startup.  To explore these differences and other aspects of product management, I interviewed Ellen Chisa, a product manager who has worked for companies of different scales. We got connected with each other because we were both listed among the top-40 product management influencers by Product Management Year in Review. Her educational background is in engineering and she has started her MBA at the Harvard Business School. She was a program manager at Microsoft (which is a “product manager” at other companies) and also a product manager for Kickstarter. She is currently the VP of Product at a startup, Lola Travel, in Boston. In the past she taught product management courses and workshops, including the product management bootcamp at General Assembly. In this interview, you will learn: * Differences working as a product manager in large and small companies. * What is rewarding about the work in organizations of very different sizes. * The challenges product managers can expect based on size of the company. During the discussion with Ellen I made an error attributing the quote, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late,” to the wrong person. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder, made this important statement. My apologies to Reid!   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: What was most rewarding in your work as product (program) manager at Microsoft? At Microsoft the role is aligned with marketing and involves getting into the technical details for what should be developed. Their product managers must have very good technical skills. The most rewarding aspect of working in a large organization with a large customer base is the number of people your work impacts. You may be making a small change to a product but that change impacts a very large number of users, making their day better. Also, you get a lot of practice with the fundamentals of product management because you have time to go through the process the way it is supposed to be done, considering the problem more deeply, who are the stakeholders, who do I need to coordinate with, etc. What are some challenges product managers face in large enterprises? I never could tell the impact I was making in the organization versus other product managers. The scope of control is limited. The requirements are pretty specific by the time they get to a product manager. Also, I would see some stakeholders infrequently compared to a start-up environment. For example, I would have a legal review once a year and not coordinate with the legal team outside of that review. Now for the other side of the spectrum – what is your role at the startup and what do you like? The startup is Lola Travel. I started as an intern as part of my Harvard Business School MBA program. My technical and business background was what they needed. The role is so much fun because you have large impacts on the product. We rapidly iterate product versions, getting customer feedback between each one. This creates a near-continuous feedback loop which I find rewarding. I see how my work is directly making a difference in the product and to  customers. What are the challenges working in the startup?  I tend to be a perfectionist and have to decide what are the most important aspects of a product to address and which ones must wait. It is also a balance between deciding when some part of the product is “good enough” and when another one must be excellent. We try to keep the focus on the user when making these decisions and judging what wi...

 TEI 062: Stage-Gate, agile Stage-Gate, and innovation tools used by 80% of the Fortune 1000 – with Mitch Kemp of Stage-Gate International | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 41:09

One of the frequent topics I am asked about is processes for new product development. Sometimes the topic is approached from the perspective of an innovation framework, which includes how ideas are discovered for product concepts, or it is focused on developing a concept into a product. Both are addressed by the Stage-Gate system. Stage-Gate International, founded by Dr. Scott Edgett and Dr. Robert Cooper, created the Stage-Gate system after researching what successful product teams did that unsuccessful products teams did not do. To explore Stage-Gate, I interviewed Mitch Kemp. He is the Managing Director of Stage-Gate International for their business in the United States. Mitch is a Stage-Gate practitioner and coach, specializing in enterprise transformation, strategy, and high value results. He has a broad industry background that includes industrial manufacturing, high tech, financial services and government, working with well-recognized companies across the globe. In this interview, you will learn: * who uses Stage-Gate and why * framework basics, and * adding agility to Stage-Gate.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed:   * How did Stage-Gate come into existence?  Stage-Gate has a 30 year history. It started with Dr. Bob Cooper and Dr. Scott Edgett’s  fundamental research on what makes companies better innovators. The results of that research was a set of best practices that  evolved into what we know commonly as Stage-Gate. But really, there are four key drivers that we found to drive innovation results. One is of course the Stage-Gate process. The other drivers are innovation strategy, portfolio management, and innovation culture. Together, those four drivers create our Innovation Performance Framework with Stage-Gate as the foundation. A philosophy is embedded in this framework, which is to do the right projects and to do those projects right. * Who uses stage-gate and why?  80% of the Fortune 1000 uses Stage-Gate-like process. Sometimes they call it Stage-Gate or they use other terms. It is used in businesses of all sizes, but by the time revenue exceeds $100 million dollars, the organization really needs a Stage-Gate system. Other factors are the complexity of the business, the number of products developed, and the competitive environment. * What are the Stage-Gate basics we should know? All organizations will use stages tailored to their environment, but there are three primary stages with gates in between: * Scoping: We begin with a scoping stage that is two to four-weeks in duration. This involves preliminary market and customer research to understand a problem and its needs. Also, technical feasibility of a solution is investigated. * Business case: A business case is developed to assess and justify pursuing the product concept. The business case is used to determine if the project deserves further investment. * Develop: This is the stage where the product concept is developed into an actual product – physical goods or intangible service. * Between each stage is a gate, which is a meeting of senior managers who decide if the project should continue to the next stage. * A frequent topic I encounter with medium to large organizations is the need for a flexible or agile Stage-Gate, which implies some rigidity to the original Stage-Gate and the need to adapt it to groups doing agile development. How has Stage-Gate International responded to this?  Stage-Gate is about making sure you have the right information to make a business decision. Agile is a project management technique and you need the best project management technique for the technology that you’re developing.  The technique is actually independent of Stage-Gate.

 TEI061: Product managers are uniquely prepared to transform organizations for greater success – with John Latham, PhD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 51:43

Most people, when asked, would share they want to work in a better organization. And, most organizational leaders would like to improve their company. How to accomplish both objectives is answered by organizational design. Product managers and innovators have an important role in this. The cross-functional nature of product management uniquely equips product managers to make significant impacts not only on product strategy but the organization as a whole. For those who desire organizational-level influence, product managers need to become organization architects. To learn about becoming an organizational architect, I interviewed John Latham, who is a social scientist and organizational architect with over 35 years of experience helping organizations improve their performance. Some of his clients include Boeing, Kawasaki, Tata, The Ritz-Carlton, British Airways, Motorola, Department of Energy and Lockheed Martin. John has deeply researched leadership and organizational design. His award-winning research has appeared in several journal articles including IDSA’s Innovation journal and the American Society for Quality. In this interview, you will learn: * what it means to be an organizational architect, * why product managers are uniquely equipped to become organizational architects, and * how to accomplish this.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * What has been your path to helping organizations transform for higher performance and to become the organization the leaders and employees really want? There’s really no established career path for transforming organizations and that’s one of the many parallels with the listeners who are product managers. There’s no established career path or university degree that you can go get. My first interest in these kinds of things – the interaction between people, processes and technology was when I was teaching at a flight simulator and we were tasked with developing a cockpit resource management training program, which essentially was the combination of leadership, team dynamics, and problem solving in a high-speed environment with both a technical system (the airplane) and an external environment which was often unpredictable. I became very interested in team dynamics and leadership and how all that interacted with the situation.  After that I became interested in organizations in general and encountered the same issues. I was involved with process improvement initiatives back in the quality movement in the ’80s and ’90s and this led me pretty quickly to overall organization assessment and improvement using performance excellence models like the Baldrige Criteria and other models that address everything from leadership and strategy and customer market focus to people processes and information and analysis.  I also spent a lot of time working with and researching successful organizations and how they did the transformation and sustained it. * You’ve written several books and articles – including ones that have won prominent awards for their contributions to this area of organizational transformation. In an article published  in “Innovation” from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), you shared “Most organizations are like VCR’s blinking 12:00. They are poorly designed, out of date, and ill-prepared to survive, let alone thrive, in the modern environment.” What did you mean by that statement? There’s plenty of great organizations out there, but I’ve seen many that have a ton of documents, procedures, and artifacts that nobody really reads or pays attention to. It reminded me of all the features and functions that used to be on the VCR that didn’t get used. We used play, stop, record, and rewind.

 TEI 060: Design Thinking for greater innovation – with IBM Design Director Karel Vredenburg | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 45:32

I expect you’ll enjoy this wonderful discussion with the world-wide director of design at IBM, Karel Vredenburg. In this role, he leads design efforts, applying Design Thinking. He also conducts organizational transformation design workshops with senior executives at major companies around the world. Karel introduced User-Centered Design at IBM in 1993 and assumed a company-wide role only two years later. He has written over 60 conference and journal publications, authored a book titled “User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach,” contributed chapters to other edited books, and has served as editor for special issues of notable design journals.  He also hosts the Life Habits podcast, which helps you learn new habits to optimize your life so that you can stay sane in this crazy world. I tracked Karel down after seeing he was a keynote speaker at the Product Innovation Management annual conference, where he spoke on the topic of “The Power of Design for Business.”   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of a few questions discussed: * How did you get your start in User-Centered Design? It was not a career path I was seeking. I was working on a PhD in cognitive science that led to examining the social phenomenon of a gender difference in computer use. That caused me to dig deeper, leading to research on how to increase the enjoyment of using computers, reduce anxiety, and related topics. My research results became very popular and one day a person at IBM called me and asked if I had thought of joining IBM. I decided to try it for a year and am still there, 27 years later. * You introduced UCD to IBM and rapidly went on to be responsible for design at IBM worldwide. This would lead me to believe that you think of design from the traditional cognitive science perspective of human-computer interactions. Yet, your keynote speech at the Product Innovation Management conference had a much broader context – design as a team sport involving all the functions of a company. How has your perspective of Design evolved? It has evolved in interesting ways. Most recently, there is a new movement focusing on design.  IBM accelerated its design emphasis by purchasing a company that did not provide a technology advantage for us but a design advantage. The company was using the latest methods of Design Thinking from David Kelly and the d.school at Stanford (e.g., Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford). They had taken those principles and put them on steroids for the purposes of business. We are embedding them in the culture at IBM. We do this by focusing on three different areas: (1) people, (2) places, and (3) practices – the 3 P’s of IBM design. For people, we are increasing the number of designers on staff, hiring over 500 in the last couple years with around 1100 in the company now.  Places are studios designed to accelerate Design Thinking and experiential learning among a small team, such as two products managers, two designers, and two engineers. We now have 26 studios around the world. The practices piece is all about the IBM Design Thinking framework, which is grounded in having empathy for the user. We can use this method to create absolutely anything, whether it’s a process, a back-end system, or the way to run your child’s soccer team. You start with deeply understanding the user and then being able to look at their experience, what pain points they have, and then creating solutions to those pain points. In the process you get clarity on which of the ideas are better than others and then create prototypes, gather feedback, and iterate. * In your roles you have worked with numerous product managers and product teams. What would you tell new product managers to help them be more successful in their careers? Become a T-shaped person.

 TEI 059: Leading product teams and scaling a business- with Mike Paschal, Product EVP | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 63:55

Leading engineering teams from a strategic perspective of creating competitive products can be the source of a company’s growth. I interviewed Mike Paschal to explore this dimension of product development, management, and innovation. In our discussion he shares his experience building and leading engineering teams and applying the 3 P’s of business – people, product, and process. Mike has been in several software engineering related roles, serving as product manager, director of engineering, COO, and founder. He has worked for Intel, Sequent Computer Systems, Sun, Nortel, and other companies. One of his favorite roles is helping $5-10 million dollar companies scale to $50-100 million dollar companies. Scaling a business, regardless of where you start, is challenging work because businesses tend to operate differently each time they scale up and the differences are predictable.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators A few questions discussed: * How did you get into product roles in the beginning of your career?  I was working as a software engineer on a blood analyzer product. The software engineering team volunteered me to be the project leader and interact with rest of the organization because none of them wanted to. In doing this work, I discovered that I had a talent for bringing people together to solve problems and come up with new ideas. That was the start that led to other roles as engineering manager and development manager. * How do you get people working effectively together on problems? When I was at Sun Microsystems, I learned a valuable lesson from my boss, Rich Green. He said, “Mike, people on your staff are smart. You’re a smart guy; they’re smart too, and you won’t be the smartest one in the group. What you have to do is get them all going in the right direction. You have to get them all on the same page.” When I brought the team together, I would let the discussion progress for a while and then I would end it by saying, “Okay, here’s the idea and let’s summarize it. Does anybody have a better idea?” When no better ideas are offered, the discussion tends to be over and everyone is moving in the same direction. Another approach I used when working with people that had much deeper knowledge in an area than I had was to share a half-baked idea. I would bring the team together and share an idea. The experts would start attacking the idea but in the process uncover gems that others built upon. It was an effective way to get people to collaborate – being willing to offer an incomplete idea, have it cut up and dissected to foster collaboration among the group. * What is a barrier that prevents a company from scaling – to go from being a $10M company to a $100M company? You have to confront the brutal facts. This means being honest about what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, your position in the market, your product weaknesses and defects, issues with your support process, and the experience you create for your customer. There must be transparency in the organization and a willingness to confront problems. Another issue is not having what Jim Collins calls the Hedgehog concept. This is the intersection of what you’re passionate about, what you’re best at, and what generates revenue. Companies need to understand their hedgehog – what they are better at than anyone else. Useful links: * Mike’s LinkedIn Profile   Innovation Quote “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt   Listen Now to the Interview   Raw Transcript   Thanks!

 TEI 058: How to 5X your product management career- with Allan Neil & Chad McAllister, PhD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 45:45

I have a special guest today from the Great White North. It is cold at home in Colorado as I write this, but it was much colder at Allan Neil’s home in Toronto, Canada. Allan is a fellow product management podcaster, hosting Ready Product Radio. Allan asked if he could interview me for his podcast and I suggested we do the interview here instead to introduce The Everyday Innovators to his helpful podcast – another great free resource for product managers. Allan brings his 20 years of product management experience to each episode of Ready Product Radio. In our discussion, I share my personal journey to product management and how my experiences – successes and failures – along with focused education on product management and innovation, led to creating the Product Mastery Roadmap that shows how product managers become PRODUCT MASTERS. The Roadmap charts the path for product managers to 5X, or more, their product success rate as well as their career success.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * For people new to Ready Product Radio, what is a good first episode to listen to?  Episode 15 is a recap of my 2015 interviews and is a great place to start (see links below). * Chad, how did you get started in product management? After studying electrical engineering in college, I joined a small company. Within six months the office had tripled in size and we are rapidly becoming more of a software company than an engineering company. I enjoyed working with customers, understanding the problem they wanted a solution to, and developing prototypes of product concepts. I had the opportunity to work with a group of potential customers for a week in their offices. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was essentially doing ethnographic research. After that week I had a clear understanding of the problems they needed to solve and their work environment, which allowed me to build a prototype that later turned into a very successful product. My journey learning about product management involved leading software development teams, investigating project management, diving into product management concepts, and eventually earning a PhD in Innovation. Along the way I added certifications in product management, new product development, and innovation. * When did you start training other product managers? In 2006 I earned the New Product Development Professional certification from PDMA. It integrated 6 knowledge areas in a way that helped me make a lot of sense out of product development and management. The knowledge areas include: (1) Business and Product Strategy, (2) Product Development Process, (3) Portfolio Management, (4) Leading, Managing, and Working with Teams and People, (5) Project and Product Tools and Metrics, and (6) Market and Customer Research. After this, I started helping the Denver, Colorado PDMA group prepare people for the NPDP exam. A friend, Lynne Vanarsdale, created a pilot for a study group program that met in person and I evolved that ultimately to an online study group and then an eCourse. I have helped many people prepare for and pass the NPDP certification exam. Later, I got involved with AIPMM, helping to lead creation of their Certified Innovation Leadership (CIL) program. I developed and refined online eCourses for both the NPDP and CIL certifications with valuable help from Jama Bradley, who first taught me the NPDP concepts. From there, companies began contacting me to conduct product management and innovation workshops and assessments for them. Today, I also facilitate product and innovation management courses for Colorado State University, Boston University, and Walden University. I have trained product managers at Microsoft, Kind Snacks, Level 3, Kohler, John Deer, J.D. Power, GHX, FedEx, Cummins, Compassion, Clorox, Cisco, Mastercard, SAIC, Thomson Reuters,

 TEI 057: Applying the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework – with Chris Spiek | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 44:26

The Lean Startup approach has brought a lot of visibility to the importance of getting out of your office and interacting with actual customers. And you do that so you can understand the details of their problems related to the solution or product you envision as a product manager and innovator. However, accomplishing this brings up questions like: who do we talk with, what do we ask them, and what information is most important. The practical answers to all these questions is in a framework called Jobs-to-be-Done. When used properly, it positions product managers to greatly increase the success of the products they develop – because the products are solving a real job the customer has in a way the customer recognizes as being most valuable to them and easiest to choose. To learn about this framework, I went to the source – the person who runs the website http://Jobstobedone.org, which has the support of Clayton Christensen, who was one of the original creators of the framework. This person is Chris Spiek. Chris is a software programmer who discovered the Jobs-to-be-Done framework and used it to create successful software products customers loved. He has also been a founder and co-founded his current company, the Re-Wired Group, which is a firm based in Michigan that creates improved products and new products for their clients by applying Jobs-to-be-Done.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * Your background is in software development. What took you from that to product management? I was involved in custom software development. Customers often pushed for more features, making negotiations and managing scope creep very challenging. I realized I needed to learn more about what the customers of my customer really needed. That led me to learning about customer personas, big data, and more. At the same time, I started doing work for Bob Moesta, who was one of the co-creators, along with Clay Christensen, of the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework. His specifications for products were a bit different from what everyone else was doing, yet they were always wildly successful. In 2008 Bob and I started the Rewired Group to apply, refine, and teach the JTBD framework.   * You tell people that “you develop great products that people want to buy using Jobs-to-be-Done.” How do you describe JTBD? It’s a way of gaining an understanding of how someone decides to purchase something new.  For example, think about the last product you purchased and ask: what was your motivation to make the purchase, what was your thought process, and how did your opinions change over time? At its core, it is a framework for thinking about how purchasing decisions are made. An example is buying a shovel to dig a hole. If you are the product manager trying to sell more shovels, the traditional approach is to think about what would make the customer love your shovel more. This might lead to different colors, lighter-weight materials, etc. Instead, JTBD prompts us to change the perspective and ask why the customer needs to dig a hole and what are the other ways this could be accomplished. This leads to realizing that the shovel is not competing with other shovels at the hardware store but with other ways of getting a hole dug.   * How are jobs identified? Can you walk us through an example using JTBD – who was interviewed, what questions were asked, what was discovered? One of the first applications was for the Snickers candy bar. The Snickers bar was competing head-to-head with Milky Way. Both were Mars’ products, similar to each other, and one was going to be retired. Bob Moesta was asked to help the Snickers’ product team. Bob ended up talking with people who purchased Snickers and people who purchased Milky Ways,

 TEI 056: 5 steps to becoming an innovative company – with innovation VP Michael Wynblatt | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 39:26

Most companies talk about wanting to be more innovative, but few take the steps needed. In this discussion, I discovered the five steps organizations can take to be more innovative, from someone who has successfully executed the steps many times. Recently, Ingersoll Rand was ranked #9 for Innovation in Fortune’s Most Admired Companies 2015. They made the #9 ranking the very first year they appeared on the Fortune list – a great accomplishment.  Clearly something is changing at the company in terms of innovation, and this change is being driven by Michael Wynblatt.  He is the Vice President of Innovation & Emerging Technology at Ingersoll Rand. He has also led innovation at other companies, helping more than 40 technology-based products come to market. This includes serving as the VP of Innovation for Eaton Corporation and the VP and Chief Technology Officer at the Siemens Technology to Business Center. Throughout these roles he has learned a great deal about helping companies become more innovative and specifically how to create a culture that breeds innovation.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * What is the charter of your role as VP of Innovation and Emerging Technology at Ingersoll Rand? My main responsibility is to build the innovation capability of the entire organization. This includes developing processes, tools, and methods and then providing training for these. I also have a team that models and demonstrates what good innovation process looks like. * How did that role come into existence? The role has existed for 3.5 years.  The need for the role came about because the company has been undergoing a transformation to take advantage of the synergies between the businesses through a business operating system. We are creating functional expertise around a lot of different areas, including human resources and engineering and operations, and innovation was one of those. * At the Back End of Innovation conference you spoke on creating an innovative culture in large organizations. You know a lot about this as you have accomplished it at three large industrial companies. What does it mean to have a culture of innovation? Culture is how the company behaves and what we do. To have a culture of innovation, you need three things. (1)  Your leadership must aggressively promote the expectation that you should identify new ideas. (2) Resources actually get prioritized for taking action on groundbreaking ideas. (3) Your employees prefer to join the teams that are working on those game-changing kind of topics. * You created a series of steps for creating an innovative culture. What is the first step? Step 0 (I start with 0 because I was trained as a computer scientist) is setting expectations that creating an innovation culture is a multi-year journey. In one experience I had, the first three years of the journey didn’t product a lot of success but that dramatically changed after year three. It takes time to get the culture thinking and acting differently. * What is the next step – Step 1 in your numbering system? Step 1 is adopting an innovation methodology. Any innovation methodology is better than none – find one that works for your organization. A key here is what I call standardizing the antidote. Identify the real barriers that are preventing innovation today. Pick one or two that are really critical and make doing the opposite the standard in the company. That is how barriers are removed. * What is Step 2? Next, you’re going to need some examples of success and people to create the successes. I call this step building the army – those people eager to be trained with the right skills and can hit the ground running in a very short order to create success. The specialists are the soldiers and the success ...

 TEI 055: Solving challenges organizations create with product management and innovation – with Rich Mironov | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 44:53

Rich Mironov is a legend in the world of product management. He is the founder of Product Camp, a collaborative unconference for product managers and marketers that has spread across the world. He also is the author of the book The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator. Today he provides full-time and short-term product management direction to technology companies. While our discussion is in the context of software product management, much of the insights apply to product managers in any industry.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * You coach a lot of people who are new to product management. What do you hear are the reasons people want to be product managers?  Typically three reasons or explanations are given. People becoming product managers want to make a difference in the products that are created. They also want to have influence. This influence can be from a positive or negative position. The positive position is the desire to help guide product selection and overall product strategy. A negative position is people seeking power for themselves. For people that are seeking personal power, they will likely be disappointed in their choice of product management. Further, they’re not the people others want to work with. A related reason that people get into product management is to be involved early in the product development process to help guide the creation of the right product – products that customers love. * For all of its appeal, the role of product management has challenges – what are the frustrations people encounter in the role? Many of the challenges lie outside the scope of the individual product manager. One challenge is sales teams that are given free reign to close deals by committing to new features that don’t yet exist in products. Pressure can also come from the engineering/development side if a culture of “making it perfect” exists. There are no perfect products, only ones that customers love and buy. Another issue is making too much of an investment too early in architecture. For software products, the architecture needs to be sufficient for the current product, not for some future scale that may never happen. A key challenge is not having sufficient time to talk with customers. For product managers to be effective, they need to be spending about 30% of their time externally with customers and the remaining 70% focused on internal work. Finding that 30% is a real issue for many product managers. If they’re not working closely with customers, they cannot reasonably know customers needs, emerging trends, and the direction of the market. * Organizations are creating many of these challenges. What is your advice to product managers to navigate them and increase their influence in the organization? Great sales people are masters at understanding other people, and in this sense, product managers need to be salespeople. A good tool product managers can use in understanding others is the Myers-Briggs temperament assessment. This is also related to the ability to talk with customers in a way that helps to uncover unmet problems without making assumptions or adding bias. The most important tool product managers have to overcome challenges is providing evidence from customers and evidence can only be collected if they are spending sufficient time with customers. * Organizations are also trying many approaches to being innovative. It is the current mantra – to be more innovative. Let’s discuss what is not working and is working. The number one thing that seems like wasted effort is the so-called innovation day. Employees are excused from their regular activities and responsibilities and brought together to be innovative. Making innovation a one-time activity removes innovation from reg...

 TEI 054: 5 Steps for selecting the best product ideas – with SVP Peter Duggan | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 45:41

The discussion with my guest is about selecting ideas to be developed into products. Many organizations encourage employees, partners, customers, and other stakeholders to provide ideas for products, but only a few companies successfully manage organizing the ideas, selecting the best one, and executing well to turn ideas into valuable products. Peter Duggan, a SVP and Head of Product Management & Development for Computershare Investor Services, has created a simple and effective 5 step process for selecting the best ideas for new products. He shared some of these concepts in a workshop at the Product Innovation Management annual conference and I am delighted to have him share the 5 steps with us. After listening, you’ll know how to help your organization become idea-selecting ninjas through 5 simple steps.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * Before we can select product ideas, we have to first have ideas – how are ideas generated in your organization? How we don’t generate ideas is important to describe first– we don’t run campaigns with catchy names, that imply that idea generation is a temporary activity. Instead, we solicit ideas on a regular basis from employees that are close to the front lines. We tell employees that no idea is a bad idea – the objective is to generate lots of ideas and then to select those ideas with the most value for the organization. When ideas are selected, we also ask for the employee to identify the purpose of the idea, such as generating additional revenue, saving expense, improving client satisfaction, etc. * The first element is cataloging- what is involved? Every idea is placed into an Excel spreadsheet – we like keeping the system easy and avoid using complicated software. A template is used to collect specific information about the idea, such as its purpose, potential worth to the company, etc. The list of ideas in the spreadsheet is essentially a pipeline, like a sales pipeline. As ideas move through the pipeline, actions are taken, including seeing the idea developed. * The second element – sizing – how is that accomplished? This involves noting all the assumptions made, including specifics related to the purpose of the idea. For example, if it’s a revenue-generating idea, how large is the target market, what is the potential price of the product, how large of an effort is creating the product, what are the timing considerations for getting the product to market, how complex is the project, and what other stakeholders need to be involved. * Prioritizing is the third element. What is your experience with prioritizing? A key question is what is the capability of the organization to manage change – the capacity to accomplish projects. The number of projects need to be maximized and aligned with the capabilities of the organization and the availability of required stakeholders. Consequently, the highest priority ideas need to be identified and balanced against the needs of the organization, considering the short term and the longer term objectives, and the availability of resources. * Next is selecting – the fourth element. How is selecting accomplished? The highest priority ideas are evaluated by a team. Those selected enter a flexible stage-gate development process. Ideas that enter development are managed as a portfolio, aligned to the organization’s strategy. Each idea is assigned to a product manager. The portfolio is organized by the original purpose of the idea, either (1) revenue-generating, (2) expense saving, or (3) client-satisfaction improving. Ideas that are not selected stay in the idea pipeline but are moved to a “hold” state for revaluation in the future.

 TEI 053: The 26 Most Important Concepts for Product Managers and Innovators – with Chad McAllister, PhD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 36:55

Welcome to the one year anniversary of this podcast. I’m excited to review the key concepts I found most useful for product managers and innovators from the last 52 episodes. I heard Tim Ferriss do something similar on his podcast and thought it was really helpful and I think you will find it valuable for this podcast. Also, I want to share a product mastery roadmap I have been working on – a roadmap that tells you how to go from a product manager to a product master.   Before jumping in, I have some exciting news to share – thanks largely to this podcast, I was named a “Product Management Top 40 Influencer for 2015” on the Product Management Year in Review site. I’m honored and humbled to be on the list. I have had the pleasure of interviewing some of my fellow influencers. Others I have not yet interviewed but do follow, including Eric Ries, Steve Blank, and Guy Kawasaki.     Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators   Product Mastery Roadmap™ The Product Mastery Roadmap™ shows how a product manager becomes a product master, dramatically increasing the number of right products created – those that customers want and love – while also increasing your influence in the organization. The Roadmap goes through four levels towards mastery – Competent, Proficient, Expert, and Master. The first level, gaining competence, is where most product managers need to start. At this level you learn details of ideation, product development, and evolving products once they are launched. This builds your base towards product mastery. and learn how to go from product manager to product master.   Product Management & Innovation Year In Review TEI 002: The Product Manager’s Two Most Powerful Questions: Ask “What Else” and “Why” for Understanding Users – with Industrial Designer Darshan Rane. Understand what users need and value by: * observing * asking “correct” questions – the ones that avoid assumptions * “walking in their shoes”   TEI 003: Innovation Lessons-Learned Creating StudioPress–Test Feasibility, Identify Trends, and More – with Copyblogger Product Officer Brian Gardner Test product concepts and the business model with customers before beginning development. As an example, Brian asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme before he started creating it.   TEI 005: How Relying on Aggregate Marketing Data Can Doom New Product Development – with CEO George Farkas Watch out for those who say “we know what the customer needs” – the way to know is to iterate and co-develop prototypes with customers.   TEI 007: Simple Steps for Using the Minimal Viable Product Approach to Create a Product Customers Love–with Mixergy Founder Andrew Warner Andrew shared his minimal viable product (MVP) approach he used for creating a training product. The MVP was built entirely around a set of landing pages and used the approach of getting customers first and...

 TEI 052: The Simple Approach for all Product Managers and Innovators to be Effective Communicators – with Curtis Fletcher | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 44:23

Great product managers must interact with people across the organization and possess the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels, including the very top of the company. Further, they are skilled in developing rapport with customers to gain deep insights into their problems and what they value. All of this requires effective communication and learning how to communicate both effectively and efficiently is what my guest, Curtis Fletcher, and I discuss in this interview. Curtis has been a product manager at Oracle, a Customer Experience expert for several organizations, a CTO, and has served in other leadership roles. Today he coaches executives and their management teams to be more effective communicators and presenters. I met Curtis at the SCORRE conference, which is all about becoming a better speaker. He was my coach for the 3 day experience. Improving my speaking was on my personal development list this year because I want this podcast to offer you even more value, which means I need to become a better communicator. To this end, there are a number of things I have done already. Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy, has a great course I took for interviewing people. Alex Blumberg, the creator of the StartUp podcast, formerly the producer of This American Life at NPR, held a two day interview course that I found insightful. But now it was time to work on my actual communication clarity, so off to SCORRE I went. In this interview, Curtis and I discuss three parts of a simple framework that will help focus your communications and be more effective. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * What is the purpose of SCORRE and how did it come about? Ken Davis created the SCORRE communication system and the SCORRE conference.  He is a bit of a preacher, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur, but primarily he has made his living as a comedian. He recognized that he had the ability to captivate an audience and that he could share his method to others. SCORRE was created to teach communicating with more focus and clarity. (One of my personal observations from attending the SCORRE conference was the number of attendees that recognized they were presenters who could entertain audiences but who were not effective in delivering a message their audience could remember. SCORRE teaches both how to captivate attention and communicate in a way that audiences remember your key points.) * What are the two types of presentations a person can give? All presentations or speeches can only accomplish one of two things – you’re either trying to train or trying to persuade your audience. There are no other types of presentations. When you realize your purpose is only one or the other of these, it shapes how you think about and design your presentations. The core question is what you want your audience to do – are you training them to do something or are you persuading them to take some action? * SCORRE is an acronym – what does it stand for? The details of the system are in the book titled The Secrets of Dynamic Communication (see link below). We didn’t have time to discuss all of the elements, but they are: * S = Subject * C = Central Theme * O = Objective * R = Rationale * R = Resources * E = Evaluation * A key lesson I learned from the SCORRE conference is to begin any form of communication by having a clear objective in mind. How is an objective created? When product managers are asked to speak on a topic, such as the product roadmap or the findings of market research, don’t start preparing what you want to talk about. Instead, first ask what you want the audience to do when the presentation is done. This will be centered around a verb – I want you to buy, I want you to go do, etc.

 TEI 051: Creating Strategic Narratives and Imagineering Your Innovation Process – with Joe Tankersley | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 32:03

I learned what a Walt Disney Imagineer was when my kids started watching the Disney Imagineering videos about science and engineering. Imagineers are known as the dreamers, doers, and the masterminds of magic at Disney. They create what we see and experience at Disney properties. I was fortunate to speak with Joe Tankersley, who was an Imagineer for almost two decades. Today he helps organizations improve their innovation process through the power of narrative. How product managers can use narrative was the topic of his keynote speech at the Product Innovation Management conference. I caught up with him to discuss the topic further. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * You talk about two tools for helping organizations improve the development of new products and services – foresight and narrative. Let’s start with foresight – what is that? Foresight is a series of practices designed to help groups and organizations anticipate challenges and opportunities beyond their traditional time range. It is not about predicting the future but about getting a sense of likely changes. Most people start with trends scanning, but if this is all you do, you will likely miss the underlying drivers of the trends. Foresight examines the reasons why trends exist. Culture, technology, social, economic, and political drivers need to be considered. It takes an outside-in perspective by envisioning what will be happening in the world in the future and how that impacts your organization. * What is narrative and how is it related to foresight? Narrative is story and is the most effective way to explore possible futures. We use scenarios to consider the range of potential futures – the worst case, the best case, and what may occur under specific circumstances. Story gives us a way of exploring the holistic system. (Interestingly, the topic of story and innovation has come up frequently in previous interviews.) You apply foresight and narrative because you believe you have some role in creating the future. The story becomes a guide to help you think about where you want to go. * How are you using story in organizations to help them become more innovative? One approach is to examine a range of scenarios for the future and then create scenario vignettes – small stories – that are focused on a particular market segment and products. This helps us to imagine what the needs of customers will be in the future and provides the foundation for envisioning a future product. This is not necessarily about creating a product today for users in 10-15 years, but recognizing what steps need to be taken starting today to prepare for customers’ needs in 10 to 15 years.  You will never create the story you started with and used as a guide, but you will create new technologies, new capabilities, and anticipate challenges that better prepare you for the future regardless of where you actually end up. * How can a group or product manager apply the tools of foresight and narrative to improve innovation? You begin by considering what you know, which leads to an understanding of what you don’t know. This expands your horizons and thinking about potential alternative futures. Imagination is a big part of this – you have to think beyond the world that you live in. These become the stories that guide your path towards the future. Unlike traditional persona work that creates a description of the ideal customer, the narratives begin with describing the future circumstances that customers will find themselves in. Considering the future is built around asking a series of if-this-then-that questions and basing the answers on the results of reasonable research. An important element is understanding the rate of change in technology, why things change,

 TEI 050: Use design heuristics to improve idea generation – with Seda Yilmaz, PhD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 35:21

I’ve been highlighting aspects of Design Thinking in several episodes and I continue with this episode that considers how idea generation can be improved using design heuristics. I discussed the topic with Seda Yilmaz,  a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Iowa State University. She earned her PhD in Design Science from the University of Michigan. Seda and three colleagues from the fields of psychology, industrial design, and engineering wrote a chapter in the Design Thinking: New Product Development Essentials book titled Boosting Creativity in Idea Generation using Design Heuristics . The discussion is about how 77 design heuristics can improve the ideation activity of Design Thinking and product development.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * What is a design heuristic? First, the concept of a heuristic comes from the cognitive science domain. It is a simple rule of thumb for making a judgment. They tend to be used by experts who have developed knowledge of rules of thumb and an understanding of when they can and cannot be applied based on experience. A design heuristic is a prompt that encourages exploration of a variety of ideas during product ideation (idea generation). Seda and her fellow researchers use a set of 77 design heuristics that help guide product designers and engineers in considering non-obvious solutions to customers’ problems. * How did you identify the 77 design heuristics? Three data sources were used. The first one was from an analysis of award winning products. The second was from a behavioral study of design experts and students. The third was a case study performed by an expert designer with over 40 years of experience. Each data source led to identifying design heuristics. Together the three data sources produced 130 design heuristics. After analyzing each and identifying ones that should be combined, 77 heuristics emerged. * What are some examples of design heuristics? Each of the heuristics have names and are described on cards (similar to playing cards). The prompts are intentionally simple to make them easy to learn and easy to implement. One is Designing for Specific Users. It prompts designing product functions for a specific target user. Another example is Reconfigure, which looks at changing the way product components are configured. The figures below are two additional examples, Reorient and Add to Existing Product, from the design heuristic Cards available at Design Heuristics.       * What are examples of applying design heuristics to generate ideas for new products? Rubbermaid made use of the Flatten heuristic when creating rubber storage containers that collapse like an accordion to save space when not being used and easily expand when needed. Cover or Wrap is a heuristic for improving a product, which was used by company that created a cloth covering for a teapot to keep the tea hotter longer. Nest is a heuristic often seen in containers that fit one inside another as well as in wooden Russian nesting dolls. * When it comes to the traditional activities employed in Design Thinking of empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing, where are the design heuristics most helpful?  The ideation activity is a perfect spot to use the design heuristics. They help designers consider many options to improve ideation outcomes.   Useful links: * Design Heuristics website with the “cards” containing 77 design heuristics. * Seda’s LinkedIn profile and

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