Global Product Management Talk

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: One of the skills you need as a product master is customer and market research. We explored this earlier with Gerry Katz in episode 071. It was an episode several listeners really appreciated and I have invited Gerry back to share more of his expert experience with market research. Specifically, he discusses market research mistakes product managers too often make, including: Confusing qualitative with quantitative research.Talking to the wrong customers.Asking customers what they want.Not separating needs from solutions to needs.Translating customer vernacular into company-speak.Hearing only what you want to hear.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: When I ask product managers why they got involved with product management and what they want from the role, a frequent answer is to have more influence. This also ranks as most important out of all the reasons for being a product manager. Does that ring true for you as well? Product managers with more influence are able to accomplish more — creating better products for customers that they value. Product managers with less influence may be treated like gophers — asked to go do this or go do that. Such product managers are more reactive than proactive. If you are like me, there is little that sounds fun or rewarding about that. Indeed, we need influence. To help us get it, I invited Tom Henschel back. He joined us in episode 137 to share a tool for talking like a leader, which is part of increasing your influence. This time he shared a model for having more influence called the Five Influence Strategies. In the discussion, you’ll learn how to use the components of this strategy, which are: Build credibilityInvolve people activelyFrame ideas for themPresent compelling evidenceCustomize your communication

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Back in episode 110 we learned about FirstBuild, the innovation lab of GE Appliance. It allows them to test ideas and solve problems that would be considered too small or risky by GE Appliance. They have built a platform that is fueled by an open community of consumers and problem solvers. What would happen if that capability was used by other companies to tackle any type of product concept? That is what Taylor Dawson is discovering. When I talked with him in episode 110 he was the Product Evangelist for First Build. Now he is the CEO of Giddy, who is providing a First Build capability to any large company. That is like being able to create a successful innovation lab overnight without actually building one. This also means that Giddy will be deepening and rapidly increasing their own learning started at First Build. That makes them the leader for the rest of us to learn from. Specifically, in this discussion you will discover: Why it’s important but almost impossible for large organizations to innovate like a startup.The advantages of an open innovation lab.What makes the FirstBuild innovation lab a success — which are ideas to help your organization be more innovative.The benefits of leveraging Giddy for increasing product success.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Fundamentally, product managers should be driving success for their organization. We do that by providing customers value. The source of that value may be, and perhaps should be, closer to our core capabilities than is often thought. The toy company LEGO found this to be true, only after being on the brink of bankruptcy. Other companies have also discovered this principle, which is something my guest calls innovating near the core. My guest this week, David Robertson, explored this in a book-long case study of LEGO, called Brick by Brick:  How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. In his recent book, The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation, he studies other companies who have won their market using a similar approach. David is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he teaches Innovation and Product Design. He is also the host of the weekly radio show on SiriusXM called “Innovation Navigation,” where he interviews world-renowned thought leaders about the management of innovation. In the discussion, you’ll learn: Why almost all of LEGO’s product innovation efforts resulted in millions of dollars lost.What action turned LEGO around and produced growth.How companies have innovated close to their core to create market success.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: No one and no organization has a perfect record when it comes to releasing new products into the market. Failures are frequent — around 40% or so depending on the industry — and they happen at small companies, big companies, and experienced companies, including Pepsi. In this episode, you’ll learn a simple and profound concept that every product manager and product marketer must understand. And, this is an easy one to get wrong. Even Pepsi got this wrong when they created a new product called Crystal Pepsi. The simple part of the concept — don’t confuse your customer. The profound part — when introducing something new or making a change, give your customer a reason. My guest to explain this concept is Kyle B. Murray, the Vice Dean and Professor of Marketing at the Alberta School of Business. Kyle studies human judgment and decision making. His research uses the tools of experimental psychology and behavioral economics to better understand the choices that consumers make. He is a co-author of an article explaining the mistake Pepsi made with Crystal Pepsi. When I read the article I recognized how important the concept is to product managers and contacted with Kyle to tell us about it himself. In the discussion you will learn the: Reason people didn’t purchase Crystal Pepsi.Solution to the issue so you don’t make the same mistake.Examples demonstrating the solution.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Every week I’m involved in virtual meetings and the same is true for many Everyday Innovators. If it’s not yet true for you, virtual meetings are almost certainly in your future as more teams become virtual. Facilitating virtual meetings and making them productive takes specific skills that product managers should know. With these skills, you can run virtual meetings that don’t waste people’s time and that build trust and cohesion in the team. To learn the right skills, I have the perfect guest as his company is all about facilitating virtual meetings. He joins us to share his “Six How’s of Great Meetings.” His name is Dan Hoffman and he is founder and CEO of Circles, an online service that provides guided video peer groups to foster deeper conversations for impactful continued professional learning and personal growth. Dan is also a serial entrepreneur, previously the founder of M5, a pioneer in cloud communications, which ShoreTel purchased. He is regarded by colleagues as down to earth, completely approachable, and one of the brightest guys you will ever meet. In the discussion, you will learn the Six How’s of Great Meetings, which are: Culture,Conversation,Presence,Participation,Agendas, andFacilitation

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  In this episode you’ll learn about some of the big ideas in product management to help you make the move to product master, specifically: The difference between building the product right vs. building the right product,Challenges of working with development teams,How to assemble a roadmap,Release planning, andThe benefits of first using divergent thinking followed by convergent thinking. My guest for addressing those topics is Suzanne Abate, a seasoned product coach who has developed hundreds of digital products for clients and helped dozens of startups go from idea to execution. She is the Co-Founder of The Development Factory, an LA-based product consultancy, and Chief Product Officer of 100 Product Managers, a free online resource and weekly podcast for new and aspiring product managers.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Several listeners have asked about medical device products and I searched for someone with deep experience in this area. I realize most of us are not involved with medical devices, but there is much any product manager can learn from the upcoming discussion. This ability to learn from product managers in different industries is one of the things I most enjoy about this podcast. We have a lot in common regardless of the industry we work in. The topic of this episode is pricing. It is a frequently asked about topic and I have a great guest to help us understand the components of a pricing strategy and how to price a product. My guest is Mike Lawless, who has over 25 years of experience in medical devices, starting as a mechanical engineer. For more than a decade he has been helping to create medical devices for a variety of organizations through his own company, Lawless Consulting. In the discussion you will learn the: Challenges of creating a high-volume manufactured product,Importance of prototyping and testing to failure, andBenefits of using parallel problem-solving and development.

The topic of this episode is pricing. It is a frequently asked about topic. Determing the proper price for a product  impacts profit potential and sales volume expectations. I have a great guest to help us understand the components of a pricing strategy and how to price a product. He is Tim Smith, author of five books on pricing, Adjunct Professor of Marketing and Economics at DePaul University, and founder of Wiglaf Pricing.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: A few months ago I was contacted by a product manager, Areo Wong, who works in Hong Kong. He described himself as a “newbie” with about one-year of experience. He has been struggling to learn what the role of product manager was really about. After trying a few different approaches to learning more, he took a very creative path. He decided to interview 30 expert product managers and create a virtual summit of the insights shared on the interviews. This would help him rapidly learn and provide an opportunity for other younger product managers to do the same. I thought it was a great idea since my work is all about helping product managers know what they really need to know. So, I eagerly accepted his invitation to be part of his Product Manager Summit. More recently, I was discussing his experience as a product manager and what he had learned so far.