Episode 112 – The Role of the Successful Project Manager in Innovation

Hear about the role of the project manager in successful innovation from John Carter, an inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones who shares the original patent with Dr. Amar Bose. John shares the surprising discovery they made by talking to customers about critical features. Topics include the differences between a program manager and a project manager, career progression for a PM, how to assess PM talent, managing project risk, establishing boundary conditions, small “a” Agile, and the characteristics of a successful PM. Table of Contents 00:32 … Meet John 03:43 … The Bose Headphone Project 06:14 … Listening to the Customer 10:00 … Taking Risks in Innovation Projects 13:45 … Courage to Bring Bad News 15:30 … Effect of COVID-19 on Innovation and Work 19:46 … Program Management vs. Project Management 22:21 … Career Progression from PM to Program Management 26:19 … Characteristics of a Successful PM 28:11 … Why is it Difficult to Hire a Successful PM? 30:38 … Small “a” Agile 35:55 … Establishing Boundary Conditions 40:48 … John’s Success Tips 43:31 … Get in Touch with John 44:14 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.   A word to our listeners.  If you have an interesting COVID-19 story, how your project has been impacted by the pandemic, we’d love to hear from you.  You can email me at manage_this@velociteach.com. I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is project manager Bill Yates. BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy. WENDY GROUNDS: We’re going to talk to someone today who is a true innovation veteran. Meet John BILL YATES:  Yeah, Wendy, I’m so excited to have John Carter join us.  He is very respected in the area of innovation and product development.  He is actually the co-inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones . We’ll certainly jump into this Bose topic with him.  That’ll be a lot of fun to discuss. WENDY GROUNDS:  John is also the founder of TCGen, and he’s also been advisor to companies like Apple and Amazon with their  product development and innovation processes.  So I think he comes with a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge that he’ll be able to impart to us. BILL YATES:  Yes.  John has been a project manager.  He’s been a product manager, he’s been a manager of managers, he’s led his own company, and so I cannot wait for the advice he’s going to share with us. WENDY GROUNDS:  John, welcome to Manage This.  We’re so grateful to you for being with us today and being our guest. JOHN CARTER:  Well, thanks for having me. WENDY GROUNDS:  Well, we want to start off by asking you about your career path, and particularly to do with the Bose headphones.  I think most people are really going to be interested in hearing about that.  So tell me a little bit about yourself. JOHN CARTER:  Well, thanks for asking.  And it’s really part of my passion.  It was true since I was a kid.  I’ve always been kind of a boy scientist and had a chemistry set and microscope,  telescope, I mean, whatever I could get my hands on.  I really, really enjoyed technology.  As I grew up, though, I found the importance of sound.  I really thought that that was something I wanted to know about.  It’s invisible.  It conveys meaning and emotion.  And as I learned more, it has incredible range as far as what it can be used for.  Obviously speech versus music is something that’s happening today.  With mobile phones and speech recognition it’s just the Wild West.  So I’ve always been interested in sound.  In college I designed a music synthesizer from scratch before its time. BILL YATES:  Of course you did. JOHN CARTER:  Yeah, right.  It kind of worked.  And when I was looking at graduate school, I looked at places that had audio programs.  And one of them was Stanford; the other was MIT.  And I knew that Dr. Bose taught at MIT, and I decided to go there.  I didn’t have a scholarship at the time.  I just packed