Global Product Management Talk

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Cindy F Solomon, the founder of Global Product Management, is also the founder of the Startup Product Academy and other product manage Organizations and events Cindy has created: Global Product Management Talk: This podcast! The Product Summit: Conference bringing together the community of passionate product professionals, developers, designers, managers and marketers over 4 interactive days of events.Startup Product: Creates and nurtures inclusive local communities for passionate product professionals across disciplines, provides a sandbox for product and skill experimentation, and enables a launch pad forwarding product people, product ideas, product teams, and product success.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Ash Maurya is the author of “Running Lean: How to Iterate from Plan A to a Plan that Works.” Educated as an electrical engineer, he worked in software development before founding his first company, WiredReach. He is now the founder and CEO of Spark59, which equips entrepreneurs to succeed by providing tools, content and coaching. Highlights from the discussion include: The seed for the book “Running Lean” started after exploring the early works of Steve Blank and Eric Ries and the desire to test product concepts more quickly.A “Lean” approach is defined by Ash as one that maximizes quickly learning about the riskiest aspects in product concepts.The core issue in product management is not “Can we build the product” but “Will customers care” if the product is built.The Lean approach involves running small fast experiments to test what customers want and what creates value.The Lean Canvas provides a one-page business model that works as well for startups as it does product managers.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Geoff Peters is one of the nicest and most professional product managers you could meet. I met him at a product management meeting where he described how a faith-based nonprofit, Compassion International, created their first new product in several decades, called Water of Life. To begin creating an innovation capability, Compassion did three things: Implement a phase-gate methodology for managing new product development.Train key employees on the principles of new product development using the NPDP certification process.Create an ideation event that started with a 2-day innovation retreat. Geoff developed the concept of providing safe drinking water, resulting in the Water of Life product, a simple and effective way equipping impoverished families to have clean water.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of... The Everyday Innovator The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Brian Ottum is a market research specialist with 30 years experience in new product development. He started as a chemical engineer and joined Procter Gamble, contributing to Charmin, Pampers, and other products you know. He went on to earn a PhD in Market Research. Today, he helps Kimberly-Clark, Johnson Controls, Thomson Reuters and other companies with product development. BTW, he also is an amateur astronomer, star gazing since he was 12 years old – and he is serious – while he lives in Michigan, last year he built a remotely controlled telescope station in New Mexico to take advantage of clear skies. Highlights from the discussion include: Qualitative and quantitative approaches to customer research.New product development projects can take on a life of their own and be difficult to make adjustments to once they get rolling – hard to stop the train.If you have customer data that suggests a product will not be successful, it is much better to kill the project quickly than to continue wasting resources on it. The earlier the better. However, this can be a challenge and requires courage.Choose metrics wisely – too often they can be used in unintended ways.Test everything. Never carry ideas into development without first testing them with consumers.Best qualitative research tool is ethnography – observing customers.Best quantitative research tool is conjoint analysis.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Andrew Warner is the master of learning from entrepreneurs. As the founder of Mixergy, he has interviewed over 1000 entrepreneurs, sharing what they did to become successful. Prior to Mixergy, he was an accomplished entrepreneur with an internet business selling greeting cards that generated over $30M/year in revenue. However, his path was not always paved with successes – he learned from his costly failures and mistakes – and eventually created Mixergy to discover how successful products and companies are created. Highlights from the discussion include: Product innovators and entrepreneurs struggle with the “counter-mind” that tells us our plans will not workAn example of the “counter-mind” is wanting to go for a run but your counter-mind telling you that you don’t have time, or knowing that you need to contact customers but your counter-mind telling you that they won’t be interestedAfter spending $300,000 developing an invitation system for events, Andrew realized it was a failure. He had not asked for feedback on the product concept before developing itTalk with potential customers about the product concept to learn about their real problems and how your product can provide valueUse an iterative approach to develop and refine product concepts, learning from customers as you goAndrew shared his minimal viable product (MVP) approach he used for creating a training product.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  Karla Phlypo is an avid dreamer, builder, artist, and scholar. She holds a Ph.D. combining research in social innovation, knowledge management, and decision science. Her background is in automotive product engineering. Although she has many interests, the common thread is contributing to a culture of sharing and innovation through collaboration. Highlights from the discussion include: Karla studied how people participate in innovation environments (open, crowdsourcing, and collaborative communities)Key contributors needed in innovation environments are solution providers that tend to be quiet (may not offer ideas until asked to do so), non-political, and boundary-less with a systems viewOrganizational innovation is improved by knowledge managers who aid the flow of knowledge in an organization and identification of best practices“Hardy perennials” are not flowers, but problems that keep showing up in product efforts that need to be prunedIdea management systems that collect suggestions for employees can destroy trust when they don’t understand how their ideas are used – they can be counter-productive when not managed properly

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. George Farkas is CEO of an electronics engineering service company in the Pacific Northwest called Tsuga Engineering. His company creates portable power components for electronic devices, such as integrated power in backpacks and business cases. Over his career George has helped several companies develop products that provide customers value.  He is also certified as a New Product Development Professional (NPDP) by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). Highlights from the discussion include: The winning product formula is developed by studying the customer and collaborating as a cross-functional team to deliver what the customer values.Using aggregate market data only, in isolation from real customers, results in a “me too” product that is more likely to be a failure.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.Wrong assumptions early in the process can set product development work on a path that leads to failure because time is not available to correct the issues.Skipping proven product development and management processes leads to expensive failures.Executives role in product innovation includes developing the company culture to support innovation and create alignment in strategies.Executives need to understand the best practices in product innovation processes and know that such training exists.Don’t design a product based on opinions – base the design on real customer needs.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Louise Musial, VP of Business Strategy at PCD Works, is an author of numerous articles for technical magazines and lecturer on the topics of Innovation, Open Innovation, and business trends in R&D.  Highlights from the discussion include: An example of a partnership with a University research group that led to commercializing a product that makes clean water from waste water.The need for innovation in water – availability of clean water and reclamation of waste waterDistraction-free innovation with the right people involved creates focusHow the problem is framed impacts the solutionPutting aside assumptions can create paths that lead to innovationsStory telling is a useful tool for product innovators – filter what is unnecessary and keep the message simple but compellingCarefully observing customers is an important aspect of voice of the customer researchAsking the same question multiple times in different ways improves understanding and can uncover assumptionsWhen discussing requirements, ask “What does that mean to you?”Keep ideation teams small (12 or less) and take steps to break down barriers, develop rapport, and establish trust to be effectiveSketching concepts helps explore concepts as a groupKnowledge is created through what we learn from failuresFailures are steps to innovation – the belief that “it is possible” creates breakthroughs

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Brian Gardner is the founder of StudioPress, creator of the Genesis Framework and Themes for WordPress, and Chief Product Officer at Copyblogger, the company that teaches business owners how to do online marketing that works. He is an ideal example of a product innovator and business creator.  Brian saw a need and created a solution that people valued and were willing to pay for. He continues to be the “idea guy” behind product innovations at StudioPress. Highlights from the discussion include: Test the feasibility of product concepts with customers before beginning development. As an example, Brian asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme before he started creating itInnovative products are often borne out of necessity to solve problems and create value for customersAs an example of innovation, Brian shares the creation of the Genesis Framework to separate WordPress theme functionality from theme layout and styleA familiar user experience increased acceptance of Brian’s productsAlways listening to the customer community and being responsive to feedback leads to product improvements and new products customers wantLearning takes place through trying things for yourself and experimentingObserving what is working for others is a good source of ideasProject management and customer service experiences prepared Brian for creating his own companyJust-in-time-learning of what you need to know quickly increases your valueInnovation takes a team of people with different strengths to be successful

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you another episode of The Everyday Innovator. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Welcome to my first “Everyday Innovator” discussion with a product development professional. For my inaugural interview, I had the pleasure of discussing product development with industrial designer, Darshan Rane, who creates prosthetics for Otto Bock Healthcare.  He enjoys creating products that provide an exceptional consumer experience. He has developed products in the fields of healthcare, fitness, and martial arts. Highlights from the discussion include: Industrial designers are found in a wide range of organizations beyond Apple and automotive manufacturers. They are involved in all aspects of innovation, from identifying ideas and conducting user research through product development and commercialization.Understand what users need and value by: observingasking “correct” questions and avoiding assumptions“walking in their shoes”A cradle-to-cradle view is needed when designing a productUnlock the power of open-ended questions by adding “what else”Understand the constraints of the product development project, such as cost objectives, shipping restrictions, reimbursement levels, etc.Only fight with your customers when developing fighting products!and, a bit funny, keep units of measurements clear – there is a big difference between inches and centimeters as a designer!