Making Products is Easy, Making Product Decisions Are Hard
The saying is ‘Hardware is hard’, but it isn’t really. Companies continuously strategize, develop and launch successful new products in every category in existence. This can only happen if the skills, process and tools to innovate are widespread and mastered by many. Ever since my first foray in innovation, sewing and selling duffel bags to […]
When it is better to buy or build innovation?
When large companies need to solve a consumer problem often the fastest route to market, with the lowest risk, is to buy a company that already has a solution. However, when consumer behavior has changed rapidly and getting to market with the right solution is critical, I believe building innovation is the better choice. There […]
This is Why Innovation Teams Lose Money
Corporate innovation teams are money losers because innovation teams are not using analytical simulations to make investment decisions the way fund managers do.
How do you innovate for the unknown?
What confidence do you have in decisions for an innovation that will launch into a market undergoing such dynamic change? How do you create alignment to act when investing in innovation is even more risky than normally?
Should innovation teams put time to learning over time to market?
Giving innovation teams more learning cycles increases new product adoption by enabling a larger range of concepts to be tested for best product-market fit.
Does a corporation need to innovate during a crisis?
Many companies are reducing their innovation costs as they see sales declines and are laying people off. The COVID crisis, like every one before, is creating significant and long-lasting changes to our everyday lives.
A Proposal for a Corporate Innovation Mission Statement:
Before any function can be created it needs a definition of its purpose, a Mission Statement. The Mission Statement Statement must clearly communicates what it is going to do, defines success, and sets limits to its scope.
Why you must always listen to consumer research even if Steve Jobs didn’t
There’s always been a stream of thought that because Steve Jobs didn’t conduct consumer research the average customer can’t describe the future until it’s created. Without a doubt, the results from consumer research can be wrong, misleading, or worse, make company risk-averse and their products mediocre. But Steve Jobs and Apple used consumer research to take risks and make their products insanely great.
Why it takes data, design thinking and Agile to innovate
For as long as someone has created a breakthrough innovation there was a process proposed for replicating their success. But three innovation systems stand out to me because I’ve found that they are especially effective when used in combination. Using these tools I recently launched a breakthrough product a year sooner than expected and with a customer satisfaction rating of 94%.
Why Adopt Agile over Waterfall for Developing Consumer Products
My company transitioned from a classic waterfall to Agile for a three important reasons. 1) Prioritizaion and focus, 2) Transparency and communications and 3) Team development