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How is Your Innovation Health?

Recently, a family friend underwent a total hip replacement surgery – at the age of 87!  He said he had no pain, but his mobility was becoming severely limited.  My friend said he was a “very healthy 87” and after just a few weeks, he is again walking and driving with no apparent restrictions.

What does healthy mean?  To my family’s friend, healthy meant mobility since that equated to staying in his home without intrusive care.  To me, healthy means I can participate in 5K runs, ride my bicycle as far and as long as I desire, and that I maintain the same weight I was in college.  (Thank goodness I don’t wear all the same clothes though!)

Innovation Health

A healthy innovation system is one that produces repeatable new products and services, delivers continuous profitability, and maintains a competitive advantage for the firm.  That’s a great list, but it’s not measurable.

Global NP Solutions has designed the Innovation Health Assessment benchmarking tool.  By using the short survey, you can quickly assess the strength of your innovation system on seven key measures.  These include strategy, portfolio management, processes, life cycle, teams and leadership, tools and metrics, and customer insights. 

What is Your Innovation Health?

You can benchmark your organization’s innovation health at https://simple-pdh.com/courses/innovation-health-assessment/.  Registering at Simple-PDH.com will allow you to receive a customized copy of your Innovation Health Assessment, delivered to your inbox within 24-48 hours.  We ask you to register as a user to participate in this unique benchmarking survey so we can preserve data integrity and continue to build our large database.  Contact me at area code 281 phone 280-8717 or [email protected] for any questions.  We build innovation leaders!

© Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Building Innovation Leaders

This was first published on the blog at www.GlobalNPSolutions.com.

Product Development Fundamentals

New product development (NPD) is a set of processes and systems that convert ideas into saleable products and services.  Successful NPD means that those processes are simple, repeatable, and lead to profit.  Nearly every organization – big or small – creates new products and services in order to stay competitive.  But, to win the competition, the business must be successful at continuous NPD.  As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Simple

NPD processes and systems must be simple to lead to repetitive success in innovation.  As an engineer, I appreciate simplicity.  The most elegant systems that humans have ever created are truly the least complicated.  And as an engineer, I know that when a system breaks down, it is much quicker and easier to troubleshoot a simple system then a complex one. 

Simple NPD processes include traditional staged-and-gated systems as well as emerging agile processes, like Scrum.  A typical staged-and-gated system for innovation requires the NPD team to lay out goals and action plans for the next stage of work.  A set of gatekeepers, will approve the course of work along with an appropriate budget and by assigning adequate resources.  In this way, each stage of work is evaluated for risk and the gate reviews ensure progress on the project as the new product moves from idea to concept to prototype and, finally, to commercialization. 

Scrum processes are also simple systems to develop new products.  In this case, flexibility in design is valued and product specifications are varied to ensure customer satisfaction.  Risk is managed via frequent customer feedback, and prototypes are created in parallel while the NPD team scopes the remainder of the project. 

Repeatable

Regardless of whether an organization chooses to follow traditional staged-and-gated NPD systems or more flexible Scrum project management frameworks, innovation processes must be repeatable.  Processes should repeatedly eliminate poor concepts early and rapidly advance the most promising ideas.  Project advancement decisions are made on a consistent and predictable basis.  As a result of repeatable innovation, investment in design and marketing is steady while new products grow in contribution to the overall product portfolio. 

Profitability

I recently heard someone say that if you’re not making sales, you are just playing with a hobby.  New product development must lead to business profits or the business will suffer.  Of course, there is an expected time period in which the investment in design and development will exceed sales, but at some point, every successful product or service turns a profit. 

As a kid, I really loved doing plastic canvas needlepoint.  I made all kinds of cool items from coasters to tissue box covers and tic-tac-toe games.  During the course of a summer, I completely saturated my mom, sisters, and grandmothers with my clever crafts.  So, I put the rest up for sale at the shop of a family friend.  After Christmas, half of my “wonderful” products came back to me.  I made a teensy, tiny profit and learned the difference between a hobby and a business.   

Fundamentals of Product Development

New product development requires three facets to be successful:  simple processes, repeatable systems, and profitable endeavors.  Without these three fundamentals an idea might be converted into a reality but not a commercial, saleable product. 

To learn more about product development fundamentals, join our easy online course at www.simple-pdh.com.  Learning about Product Development Fundamentals is the first step in your journey to becoming an innovation leader.  Contact me for more information!

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.   Learn.   Earn.   Simple. r

Job Crafting to Increase Creativity

Working as product, project, and engineering managers, we often balance quality with deadlines.  Product concept tests must be completed before the engineer designs for the plant can be locked in. Customer testing – while ongoing – must be limited by budgets and workforce availability.  

These trade-offs are frustrating to both managers and new product development (NPD) team members alike.  Too many project boundaries can constrain innovation, yet infrequent or fuzzy milestones can delay a market launch.  NPD managers ask their team members for both rigorous adherence to schedules and budgets and creative, out-of-the-box problem-solving.

One solution to improve the trade-offs that are inherent in a complex innovation project is to increase the role of job crafting.  Job crafting is a set of tools that allows team members to frame their work to capitalize on their most important skills, to increase learning and engagement.

Job Enhancement

Enhancing a job typically means adding horizontal tasks to improve the skill sets of the worker.  To a point, job enhancement will improve employee motivation.  But job enhancement sometimes means just adding more tasks without re-balancing the staff’s existing job responsibilities.  Managers have good intentions in expanding a team member’s work, including learning and growth, increased exposure, and skill development.

Years ago, in one of my earlier assignments as an engineering manager, I specifically sought job enhancement for a star employee.  Darcy, as I’ll call her, was a smart engineer, had great interpersonal skills, and was dedicated to her work.  Knowing that the performance ranking system at the corporation was treating her (and many others) unfairly, I wanted to improve her potential and give a new opportunity to showcase her competency as an engineer.  To that end, I assigned Darcy to lead a small, customer-focused research study.  As the project lead, she would gain visibility with senior management and would be able to demonstrate skills in which I knew she excelled.  Compared to her peers, Darcy was best positioned to successfully deliver the results of the research study.

To my chagrin, Darcy responded negatively when I offered her the opportunity to lead the research project.  What I thought was a job enhancement, she interpreted simply as “more work”.  At the time, I didn’t know she was attending night school to get an MBA and was also trying to start a family.  Of course, any “job enhancement” in those circumstances would be viewed as “more work.”

Job Crafting

A better alternative to job enhancement is job crafting.  Job crafting allows team members to select the majority of their work tasks based on their likes and dislikes, anticipated learning opportunities, personal career trajectories.  When you allow your team members to work on what they like and what they choose, creativity and motivation skyrocket. 

At first, many managers think that job crafting will leave them with no one to do the steady, boring work like printing and sending invoices, conducting sales calls, or bookkeeping.  Yet, everyone is different and while a Type A personality team member wants to press ahead on a new technical product design, a quiet detail-oriented team member is happy to immerse herself in the statistical analysis of big data.  Together, these team members can tackle all the necessary tasks for an innovation project to reach completion, on-time and on-budget.

Agile Teams

This collaborative approach to NPD is precisely called out in the agile philosophy.  Working as generalist-specialists, the agile NPD team will take on product development projects with a high degree of motivation that is driven from within themselves.  The generalist-specialist on an agile NPD team will work on whatever tasks are necessary to complete a sprint and will do the “heads-down” work of his or her specialty to ensure overall team success.  Collaboration among team members wand with the customer is easy because the generalist-specialist desires to learn new skills and is inspired by the project rather a self-serving ego.

It is natural for an agile team to craft their jobs according to skills and competencies and to do tasks that give them joy.  These types of teams have higher rates of output and their work is more creative as a result of the deep trust and collaboration.

Another characteristic of agile teams is the determination to complete a project for the benefit of the customer.  An agile NPD project is continually driven by customer needs which are tested and validated throughout the product development life cycle.  Rapid concept and prototype testing is used to weed out bad ideas and to ensure customer needs are properly incorporated into the product design requirements.  Frequent customer interaction leads to better designs, faster time-to-market, and higher market share upon product launch.

Job Crafting for Innovation

Successful innovations require a clear understanding of customer needs, good market timing, and excellent design of product and service features.  To generate successful innovation, NPD teams must be motivated, creative, and collaborative.  Allowing team members to craft their work assignments within the NPD project boundaries leads to greater success.

Job crafting is different than job enhancement (as I learned the hard way).  In the latter case, managers try to motivate and engage team members by expanding their roles and responsibilities.  And while job enhancement can increase team engagement, the most motivated and inspired workers are ones that craft their daily work to use skills that they value most.  Team members that craft their own jobs, as in an agile project management environment, are more creative and inspired.  Project work is balanced among team members with different skills and desires.

Learn More

To learn more about job crafting and agile NPD, please join me and other inspired and creative innovation workers in a master mind group where we exchange ideas and hold each other accountable to achieve the highest level innovation goals.  We are currently accepting new applicants to the Life Design Master Mind group with a new cohort starting 21 May 2019.  The discounted upfront payment ends soon, so you’ll want to join soon to learn how to apply Design Thinking tools to craft your own best job!  Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at [email protected] for more information.  

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple. e

Continuous Learning for Innovation Leadership

Learning today takes very different forms than it did 10 or 20 years ago.  In the past, learning was primarily delivered in a classroom and was delivered based on a schedule given an employee’s tenure with the firm.  Skills transfer occurred from an expert teaching novices. 

Today, learning materials are delivered in short cell phone video clips, on-line, via webinar, and yes, even in a classroom.  Skills transfer occurs both vertically and horizontally, and training can be driven from an expert teaching a novice technical skills or from a new employee to experienced staff teaching market approaches.  Importantly, training is delivered more on-demand, when the learning is needed and job skills need performance enhancement. 

On-Line Training

There are a lot of benefits to on-line training period participants can access courses anytime and anywhere using practically any device.  (iPhones still have some format limitations to deliver video learning content.)  This means a person can access training during regular work hours or choose to learn new skills at home in evenings for weekends.  On-line training is very flexible. 

Of course, with the prevalence of on-line training, many organizations have observed the disadvantages, too.  A lot of on-line courses for leadership and innovation performance enhancement go unfinished.  Mandatory on-line training courses (e.g. for safety or regulatory requirements) must include constraints on screen advancing because participants tend to skip to the test in order to avoid dry, boring content but the training hours can be audited.  And while people have the best intention to do an on-line training class at night or on the weekend, there are lots of things that can get in the way such as sports, family, friends, yard chores, and so on. 

Classroom Training

A recent Harvard Business Review article (Mar/Apr 2019) notes the classroom training is essentially a thing of the past.  For all the benefits and flexibility of on-line training, classroom learning is not competitive.  And so goes the case against facilitated courses.  The argument is that classroom training is expensive, not only for the instructor and facilities but also because people are pulled away from their “regular” jobs.  Some employees will need to travel to the training center, resulting in added costs due to airfare, hotel, and rental cars. 

Yet, with all the expenses of classroom training, many organizations are missing the key benefit of face-to-face learning.  Networking.  Especially as employees climb career ladders, internal and external networks become a crucial resource for learning as well.  Leadership development and soft skills growth are best delivered in face-to-face format to allow a diverse cohort of young leaders opportunities to network. 

Kenny Smith, former Houston Rocket and ESPN basketball commentator, noted that the team was laser-focused on the game, especially during playoffs, when they traveled.  The team ate meals together, practiced together, and spent their free time together.  Home games always had distractions.  Classroom learning built this same camaraderie for an up-and-coming leadership cohort. 

Master Mind Groups

in the best of both worlds, people will get the training they need when they need it and are given a chance to build a reliance network for learning later on.  A master mind group offers a hybrid for learning and practicing leadership development skills.  Advantages of both on-line learning and the networking effects of classroom training are enhanced.  And because master mind groups are largely self-directed by the cohort, learning is on-demand and delivered just-in-time.  Training is delivered via live webinars, on-line video modules, podcasts, and through collaboration with your cohort advisory board.  In between live webinars, master mind members communicate on private discussion boards and complete required activities to develop and practice their leadership skills. 

Continuous Learning

As the March/April 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review emphasizes, leaders need continuous learning.  Successful innovation leaders don’t limit themselves to required corporate training courses or wait for nomination to an executive training session.  Smart, growing leaders are passionate about trying new skills how to improve their current situation.  They are as excited and proud to place a new certification on their Linked In profile as they are to share the development opportunity with their teams.  This is continuous learning. 

Contact Me

I am passionate about learning, especially for innovation and leadership.  I want to help you and I’m sure I can learn from you, too.  A great opportunity to engage in continuous learning is the Life Design Master Mind group where we apply tools of Design Thinking to career, professional, or personal challenges.  The next open cohort meeting is 21 May 2019.  Click here to register for your six-month transformation and learning journey.  Based on your feedback, this master mind group is extremely affordable.  You’ll also be interested to learn about the Flagship Innovation Leader program.  Join us for a free webinar in June.  Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at [email protected] for more information. 

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple. a

Why You Need Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

A lot of people say they are not creative.  I guess we are afraid that if we share our imaginations and dreams, we might be ridiculed or criticized.  Yet, every day, an artist opens a new gallery.  She is proud and excited to share her creations with others. 

Kush Art Gallery, Las Vegas

Creativity is defined by Dictionary.com as “the state or quality of being creative,” which in turn means original thought or expression.  So, an artist creates original oil paintings and we admire them at an art gallery or museum.  An architect designs a modern symphony hall and we praise his work with the unique building style fitting into the skyline of the community.  My personal creative outlet is in scrapbooking and making greeting cards.  Someone who is a “real” artist might criticize the simplicity of my cards, but others find joy in receiving a handmade card on their birthday or anniversary.  I am not afraid of what others think because my creativity is my own and I relax while I am creating. 

Creativity, then, takes many forms.  It can be the creation of an original work of art or it can be the piecing together of various parts.  Dictionary.com also defines creativity as “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns … to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods …”  This is the precise definition we should keep in mind as innovators applying Design Thinking to our life challenges.  Leaders can increase creativity in their new product development (NPD) teams by using tools that help team members capitalize on their individual strengths in a collaborative, sharing environment.  It is often the assembly of these various individual ideas into a larger whole that “transcends traditional thinking.“  And when we come up with new ideas and concepts, we can apply them to situations that improve customer satisfaction and product quality. 

Creative Problem-Solving

Problem-solving typically involves at least 5 steps to be successful period to be successful period

  1. Identify the problem
  2. Define the problem statement
  3. Generate potential solutions
  4. Test solutions
  5. Review and select the best solution

A standard problem-solving procedure is methodical and simple.  It should lead you to the best solution and in the shortest time possible.  Yet, I observe innovation teams marching through these steps, marking them “complete“ without a full consideration of really addressing the problem.  This is where creative problem-solving enters the picture.

Creative problem-solving doesn’t grab the first or the easiest or the cheapest solution.  Instead, creative problem-solving is a bit messy and it’s iterative, yet it will generate a better solution in the end.  For example, when you identify a problem that challenges your customers, is it a closed discussion in the problem statement such as “improve product reliability by 10%“.  Open-ended problem statements can lead to more creative solutions since there are not assumptions built in.  “Improving customer satisfaction” is a more open-ended problem statement than including a specific reliability improvement metric.

32381172 – problem – idea – solution

Creative problem-solving instead investigates the drivers and customer emotions that require product development work.  What percentage of customers complain about reliability?  How does our product reliability compare to competitors?  Where are failures in product reliability occurring?

Again, we return to the tools of Design Thinking to guide creative problem-solving.  Design Thinking allows us to empathize with customers to truly identify the problems they face.  We shadow and observe how, when, and where they use the product.  What is the reliability issue – does it occur immediately upon product usage or after 10 or 100 uses of the product?  And importantly, as NPD practitioners, we must ask why is product reliability important to the customer?  The food and drug industry will have different answers then companies that specialize in software-as-a-service. 

Divergent Thinking

When we’re satisfied that we’ve identified the right customer problem, and we can clearly and concisely define it with a problem statement, we generate potential solutions with creative ideation.  Ideation is just a fancy word that means creating ideas and concepts.  During ideation, functional NPD team members work with customers to combine, modify, and substitute pieces and parts to generate new ideas and concepts.  Ideation is a divergent thinking activity where even wild and seemingly illogical ideas are created.  Sometimes, there is a gold nugget within a crazy, impractical idea that leads to a creative product solution. 

For example, after an oil spill in the ocean, a large drilling company was stuck on how to clean it up.  Using the traditional problem-solving steps, they were only coming up with ho-hum, incremental ideas.  But, when they stepped back, applied the ideas of Design Thinking and creative problem-solving, they generated a unique solution to clean-up.  It started with the crazy idea that seals absorb a lot of oil into their fur.  Yet that innovation materialized in a rotating vessel equipped with oil-capturing brushes and a collection tank that facilitated removal of oil from the water surface. 

Design Thinking tools like analogies, role playing, interviewing, and SCAMPER all help teams generate potential creative solutions.  Matching, A/B testing, and card sorting are tools that provide insight to customer needs and whether we have defined the right problem to solve.  Design Thinking also lets us test prototype solutions for functionality and customer acceptance with a low-cost commitment during product development.

Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

Creativity is generating new ideas with the ability to transcend existing thinking about a problem.  All of us can be creative, even though we might not be famous artists or architects.  We can combine colors, textures, and functions to generate novel ideas.  Importantly, we can be creative problem-solvers using deep listening with customers to empathize with their problems.  Understanding the many different facets of a problem leads to a better, more creative solution.

Design Thinking tools are great to apply as NPD teams create lots of potential ideas and concepts.  Lots of ideas is an expected outcome of divergent thinking and supports customer collaboration.  Creativity in problem-solving yields superior results and allows an organization to get to market faster with new products that satisfy customer needs.  Many of these tools and techniques also serve individuals well as they seek to make balance personal and professional decisions to find joy and purpose in life.  Join us on Thursday, 18 April 2019 at 3:30pm to learn about the Life Design Master Mind group.   The webinar is FREE and, based on your feedback, we have redesigned the online workshops to make it extremely affordable!  Click here to register.  Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281, 280-8717 for more information or questions.

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple. ,a.set

What Does Diversity Mean for Innovation?

Innovation often means success or failure for a company.  Organizations need to create new products and services to maintain relevance in the marketplace.  Customers and other stakeholders view innovation as driving new features and functionalities that ultimately support profitability for a firm.

Just as customers and clients are diverse, innovation teams need to be diverse.  An interesting paper in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM, Vol. 35, 2018) describes four different categories of diversity related to new product development (NPD).  And it may surprise you that what we typically consider as measures of diversity can actually hinder innovation team effectiveness.

Job-Related Diversity

in their paper, Weiss et al., define “job-related” and “not job-related diversity”.  In the first category are team member differences regarding education, work experience, and organizational functions.  In contrast, not job-related diversity includes demographics, geographies, and value systems. Much of the general literature on teamwork has focused on not job-related diversity; however, research on creativity and innovation has examined job-related diversity to a greater degree.

Surface versus Deep Levels of Diversity

Diversity traits are also categorized by the ease with which another individual can view or discern them.  For example, demographic diversity is a surface characteristic since we can usually discern age, gender, or race easily.  Likewise, education and organizational function are readily determined for most team members and is often part of socialization, forming a team, or standard team-building activities.  

Deep diversity traits, on the other hand, require interaction in relationship with another party to be fully revealed.  And in some work situations, a person’s closely held values may be strictly guarded and not revealed to others.  These characteristics include personality and preferred working styles such as openness to experience, degree of introversion/extroversion, or level of power and achievement.  Deep personal values are not job-related yet strongly impact how an individual behaves and interacts with other team members.

Deep job-related traits include cognitive diversity and interaction styles such as knowledge, skills, and thinking and communication styles.  A brief encounter or low-level working relationship cannot reveal deep job-related diversity characteristics.  However, on an innovation team with open and honest dialogue, these deep diversity traits, such as thinking and communication styles, may be revealed over time.

Which Traits Lead to Innovation

According to the review by Weiss et al., surface level, not job-related diversity traits can hinder innovation productivity.  People may immediately form stereotypes when thrown together into a team composed of people based on demographics alone, for example.  Here, the differences outweigh the benefits and people will drift toward others more like themselves.   This can lead to intra-team conflicts since there may be a lack of goal or purpose for the diversity of the team toward a working relationship.

For benefits of diversity to be captured, innovation teams need to build on job-related diversity more than just surface characteristics.  While geographic diversity (a surface trait that is not job-related) can enhance local market understanding for an innovation team, job-related diversity plays a larger role in team productivity.  Cross-functional teams face challenges in communication due to jargon, terminology, and norms.  If not addressed properly, diversity in function can actually harm the efficiency and productivity of an innovation team.  However, when team purpose, knowledge sharing, and conflict management processes are established through training and application, team collaboration is supported.

Of course, this doesn’t surprise me.  In my chapter on Virtual Team Models in PDMA Essentials 3, I describe key practices for the team leader to reinforce the common purpose of the team, communication methodologies, and tools for knowledge sharing that enhance gaps for dispersed teams.  It is only with deliberate attention to, and understanding of, individual and cultural differences that a team can build a cohesive group working style to achieve innovation success.  

Working Styles

Finally, much work has been done to help individuals raise their self-awareness in working styles.  The DiSC® assessment, for instance, allows people to learn about their preferred working style and to test interactions with team members of different working styles.  Of course, when dealing with a deep, job-related diversity trait, team members must learn to trust one another, compromise, and forgive mistakes.  Another great starting point for innovation teams is the Team Dimensions Profile which looks at the team members’ focus on possibility versus reality and the desire to interact or analyze.  The Team Dimensions Profile then shows the distribution of working styles to build communication, collaboration, and conflict management strategies that improve innovation outcomes.

Why is Diversity Important to Innovation?

Innovation relies on satisfying customers with different wants and needs.  Marketing messages must balance functional characteristics of a product with the emotional needs of end-users.  An NPD team with diverse perspectives can best identify with the broadest set of customer needs and is well-suited to designing and developing products for the highest levels of customer satisfaction.  

Yet, as researchers have learned, team diversity is not just an observable surface trait.  An effective innovation team must tackle diversity from a deep level of job-related traits such as knowledge, skills, and working styles.  Understanding our differences allows us to generate communication patterns that yield improved efficiency and productivity for innovation.

Learn More

I love to help innovation team succeed.  If you want to learn more about the Team Dimensions Profile, view a sample report, or learn more about Workplace DiSC, please contact me at [email protected]  I’m also offering a 15% discount on a standard bundle of Design Thinking and Agile NPD courses for the 22nd to 24th of April 2019.  Use code “bundle” at checkout.  Design Thinking provides a fabulous set of tools to increase diversity in communication with your end customer in mind.

If you want to learn more about developing a strong virtual team, you need to register for one of the Virtual Team Model courses right away!  Some other tools for leaders of innovation teams include the Situational Team Leadership group activity and assessing the creativity of your team with a Team Dimensions Profile.  Contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717 for more information on innovation, project management, and leadership training or coaching.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

Stop by and Say “Hi”

Are you attending the Texas Open Innovation Conference in Houston on 28 March?  I’d love to chat with you.  Also, I am speaking on open innovation and design thinking at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Spring Meeting in New Orleans on 1 April (Management Division).  And, I’ll be at the Bay Area SHRM Conference on 4 April 2019 in Friendswood, Texas.  And, get ready for the PDMA conference in Orlando in November!  I’ll be sponsoring a booth at the conference and would love to meet you in person!

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple.

This was first published on the blog at www.Simple-PDH.com. o

Spiral Development for NPD Projects

New products are the lifeblood of any organization.  You can’t stand still, or you will quickly be overcome by the competition.  Customers not only expect, but indeed they demand, that products and product lines are frequently refreshed and revitalized.  Brands that fail to do so end up with financial issues and serious questions about their viability, like Sears and Payless Shoe Source.

How do successful companies maintain relevancy and prominence in a globally competitive and ever-changing marketplace?  Designing new products that delight customers and generate long-term revenue is a surefire bet to success.  Businesses also need to manage operations with processes like Six Sigma, yet continued growth and increased market share rely upon periodic new product launches to expand product lines and meet customer needs.

NPD Processes

New product development (NPD) processes are significantly broader than those of Six Sigma or traditional project management.  NPD starts with the organization’s mission and creatively builds customer demand through the product life cycle.  Conventional NPD processes are called “waterfall” since the steps in the design and development of a new product fall in a given order and cascade from one to another.  The most commonly instituted waterfall NPD process was developed by Bob Cooper and is a staged and gated system.

Traditional Staged and Gated NPD Process

In a classic staged and gated NPD process, work is done in stages and project decisions are made at gates.  The system design is optimized for risk management in whicheach stage of work requires greater investment than the previous one.  Gate decisions are made by cross-functional management teams of higher rank as the project moves forward.

There are many benefits to a traditional staged and gated NPD process.  First, the system is designed to proactively manage financial and market risk.  If the work in a particular stage does not provide the new product concept, then a “No” gate decision will halt further development.  In this way, risk is minimized.  Another strong benefit of a staged and gated NPD system is that the work required for each stage is clearly delineated, and NPD team members understand gate requirements in advance and in detail.

However, as implemented, many organizations fail to take advantage of the full capability of a staged and gated NPD system.  Cooper intended for frequent customer interactions and that both customer needs and customer satisfaction would receive positive marks in order for a new product project o advance at a gate decision to the next stage.  Instead, many firms fail to involve the customer once the initial project charter is drafted.  Moreover, many gatekeepers err to measuring past progress rather than validating the effectiveness of future project plans.  (See Gatekeeper Training to read more about this topic.)

Spiral NPD

To counteract the negative implementations of a traditional staged and gated NPC process, a Spiral NPD Process has been designed by Bob Cooper and associates as an update to the original water system.  In a spiral process, increased iteration is introduced to each stage of work.  These increments incorporate rapid testing and customer feedback, much like a sprint in an agile project management framework.

bobcooper.ca

Spirals allow the work of a stage to be broken into smaller, more manageable chunks.  These iterations also encourage NPD team members to test ideas, concepts, and prototypes with customers to gain their feedback.  Steps within a stage cycle through Build-Test-Feedback-Revise functions in order to ensure the product under design will meet customer needs.

Other areas in which Spiral NPD adopts agile practices include the daily stand-up meeting and sprint retrospectives.  The daily stand-up meeting encourages NPD team communication and collaboration via a quick. 15-minute meeting.  Typically, the dedicated team members gather in their designated work area (often called a “war room”) to briefly outline their efforts and challenges.  Each person addresses only three questions and detailed discussions are taken offline and with only the parties directly impacted by this issue.

  1. What did I accomplish yesterday?
  2. What do I plan to do today?
  3. Do I have any challenges to completing my work?

Benefits of Spiral NPD

Using a hybrid agile-staged and gated system for innovation, such as Spiral NPD, can accelerate product development.  With its iterative customer feedback loops, Spiral NPD is more responsive to customer needs.  In addition, Spiral NPD enhances the productivity of the NPD team and of the organization as people work on the right things at the right time.  Feature, product, and business objectives are better prioritized since the voice of the customer is intimately woven throughout each new product development cycle.

Implementing Spiral NPD

In my observations, the biggest challenge for organizations transitioning from a traditional waterfall planning process to an adaptive innovation ecosystem, is a change in culture.  Management no longer dictates top-down directives and project leaders no longer set out aggressive schedules and budgets.  Instead, NPD team members are self-organizing and self-directing.  The NPD team itself will decide how to work each iteration and stage in the product development life cycle.  The sprint retrospective drives learning and behavior change immediately into the next Build-Test-Feedback-Revise cycle.  Project managers also transition into servant leader roles, adopting transformative skills to drive change and flexibility focused on customer expectations.

Learn More

To learn more about Spiral NPD, we are holding a special workshop on Agile NPD on 23 & 24 April 2019 in Houston, Texas, USA.  Register here for the 2-day Agile NPD workshop and save on a full 3-day experience including a one-day pre-workshop course on Design Thinking.  Use code “bundle” at checkout and save 15% on both courses.  Contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717 for more information on innovation, project management, and leadership training or coaching.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

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Agile in New Product Development

For some time now, agile project management methods have been a hot topic.  The agile philosophy emerged in 2001 as a group of software developers tried to find a better way to launch completed products.  Until then, they had struggled with severely delayed schedules and rampant budget overruns.

So, what is magical about agile?  Really, there is nothing mysterious or bewitching about the agile approach.  Instead, the philosophy encourages a development framework that forces a team back to the fundamentals of new product project management.  And in innovation, those fundamentals are the customers and their needs.

The Agile Philosophy

The agile philosophy is built on a set of four values that favor customer interaction and activity over planning and contract negotiation (agilemanifesto.org).  Traditional project management frameworks, including the staged-and-gated decision process in new product development (NPD), can become document-heavy.  Especially large and risk-averse organizations tend toward adding processes, procedures, and policies to reduce project failures.

Instead of adding documentation to a project plan, the agile methodology adds more communication and testing.  The research to create more detailed plans does indeed make the team more aware of project risks, but it does nothing to actually address those uncertainties.  Brainstorming alternatives to implement IF a risk is triggered is a good practice but testing those alternative solutions in a trial will reveal the best answer in a clear and unconditional manner.

Thus, agile supports close customer interactions, lots of prototype testing, cross-functional (vs. sequential) project tasks, and collaborative communication.  These values are foundational in a successful NPD program, especially if the team is targeting a radical or disruptive innovation.  This is why software products served as an early demonstration of agile implementation.

It is very difficult to document the various cases in which a software tool will be used before the code is written.  It’s also next-to-impossible to know which features customers will use and how they will use them.  Agile allows the development team to build and test to generate information rather than preparing plans with assumed requirements.

As an example, my favorite hobby is scrapbooking, and I make greeting cards for friends and family.  In fact, if I skip a holiday, they are still asking for a handmade card.  I have been subscribing to a scrapbook/card-making magazine for several years to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and to find inspiring, creative ideas from other artists.  I like to take copies of the magazine with me on trips as it is easy to thumb through while in queues or at the airport or in the evening at a hotel.

The publisher began putting a one-page ad into the magazine a couple of years ago about developing a mobile app.  The mobile app would let you view the card photos on your phone or tablet.  Now, keep in mind that the full magazine content includes photos of cards, supply lists, vendor information, and instructions to duplicate the art exactly.

Unfortunately, the publisher moved forward to develop their mobile app without consulting readers (customers).  They spent a lot of money to develop the new product (the app), but it is not differentiated from other, free sources of photos of greeting cards.  In designing a mobile app, the publisher moved away from what made their print magazine special (supply lists, instructions, and grouping of product examples).  I found out recently that the publisher is out of business – losing their base product (magazine) at the cost of a new product (the app) built without customer input.

How Do You Implement Agile in NPD?

Because agile methodologies were originally designed for software, companies working with tangible products sometimes question whether the approach is right for them.  The answer is a resounding, “Yes!”  Remember that the agile framework for project management is a return to fundamentals – what do customers need and is what we are designing meet their needs?

Some of the core principles within agile are very easy to implement.  For example, the idea of rapid prototyping to gain real customer feedback is a step that any NPD team can incorporate to any process immediately.  Talking to and observing customer when they use your product or try to solve a particular problem is inexpensive and drives the agile value of customer interactions.

Other aspects of agile are more difficult to put in place at a firm.  In particular, the agile framework changes the culture of the NPD team and changes the way we do design and development work.  First, teams will learn how to work together collaboratively rather than doing R&D, engineering, or marketing work in sequential silos.  Next, the development effort proceeds much faster – in sprints – with the concepts of time-boxing and delivery of working features at the forefront.  Finally, old forms and templates, and especially directive management, are replaced with transparent and interactive measures of project status.

Scrum

Scrum is the most common implementation of the agile philosophy in new product development.  Scrum utilizes short, but intense, work periods that create usable deliverables.  For example, while a software project might product a few lines of tested code at the completion of a 1-week sprint, an NPD team may product a full customer journey map at the conclusion of a month-long sprint.  Neither deliverable yields a fully integrated working product, but each sub-system is completed and ready-to-go in a short period of time.  Each deliverable is independently tested and validated with customers.

In addition, Scrum utilizes three important roles in implementation.  First, the product owner represents the voice of customer.  This ensures the close interaction with both customer and business needs throughout the life of the NPD project.  The Scrum Master is not a traditional project management but acts to facilitate work and communication among team members and business interfaces. 

Finally, the Scrum team is a cross-functional, collaborative group that does the work of the project.  They remain focused on the project throughout the development cycle.  This team is small enough to make critical product design decisions and is diverse enough to address product development issues across the engineering, operations, and sales spectrum.

Agile NPD

Agile has moved beyond a hot topic to a way of life for many companies.  By re-focusing on the fundamentals of new product development, an agile project management approach can speed time-to-market and increase the quality of the products launched.  Moreover, the very nature of an agile approach to NPD drives more creative and disruptive innovations.

Learn More

To learn more about agile in new product development, we are holding a special workshop on Agile NPD on 23 & 24 April 2019 in Houston, Texas, USA.  Register here for the 2-day Agile NPD workshop and save on a full 3-day experience including a pre-workshop course on Design Thinking.  Use code “bundle” at checkout and save 15% on both courses.  Contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717 for more information on innovation, project management, and leadership training or coaching.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

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Innovation Ecosystem

Innovation is hard work.  While we often imagine a really clever guy in his garage creating the next big thing, reality teaches us that discipline is a far more important trait to successful innovation than is imagination.  Discipline supports creativity and frames the context of an innovation ecosystem.

Key Components of Innovation

Innovation certainly requires discipline and creativity – as well as flexibility – for new product development (NPD) team members and leaders.  An innovation ecosystem requires pertinent processes, tools, and metrics to lead to repeatable success.  Some of these elements are:

  • A well-considered innovation strategy,
  • Product portfolio management and knowledge management,
  • An NPD process, and
  • Ongoing team and leadership training.

Let’s take a look at each element in turn.

Innovation Strategy

Every company, large or small, has a strategy.  Usually, the strategy is documented and reviewed annually.  A corporate strategy describes why the business exists and how it expects to accomplish its mission.  An innovation strategy is a subset of the organizational mission and specifically describes the details of the new product development programs.

For instance, I worked with a company that wanted to be viewed as “Number One” in an organic food category.  Their vision included customers choosing their brand over all other competitors because the food was healthy.  The innovation strategy, therefore, built on the vision of delivering healthy products to the marketplace, yet also had to strike a balance between customer tastes, product features, and the labels of “healthy” and “organic”.

Thus, the innovation strategy breaks down the corporate strategy into specific goals and objectives for a new product development program.  Healthy foods must be tasty and have textures and flavors that consumers enjoy.  The innovation strategy includes, then, a focus on customer needs and definitions (what does “healthy” really mean?) and on technology development (can we manufacture a low-fat, high fiber product?).

Product Portfolio Management (PPM)

Product portfolio management (PPM) is the system to identify in which projects to invest.  Knowledge management (KM) captures technical, product, and market data for future use.  Both PPM and KM are critical to long-term success of an innovation ecosystem.  Yet, historically, both PPM and KM fail in implementation.

PDMA studies show that only about half of companies have a well-functioning PPM process.  This is a disappointing statistic since PPM is how we make decisions regarding which NPD projects to advance and which to halt.  PPM provides an evaluation and comparison of all innovation projects based on competitive advantage, market attractiveness, technical feasibility, and profit potential.  An effective innovation ecosystem uses PPM to guide data-driven project decisions.

Likewise, an effective knowledge management system captures the tacit knowledge of customers, subject matter experts, and key stakeholders and translates these disparate bits of information into explicit knowledge.  It is inherently difficult to ask a customer what features they want in a new product, but KM allows us to save and share customer challenges, desires, and feelings about product usage.  KM goes hand-in-hand with PPM by supporting clear definitions of customer needs.

NPD Process

Established NPD processes are also critical to an organization’s long-term success with repeatable innovation.  An NPD process needs to be formal and structured with key steps, roles, and responsibilities determined in advance for all innovation projects.  However, the specific NPD process deployed by a company should fit its culture, scale of operations, and degree of innovativeness sought.  The standard NPD processes that my clients use include traditional staged-and-gated processes, Scrum, and hybrid processes.

A traditional staged-and-gated NPD process follows a linear pathway through a project.  Designed by Robert G. Cooper in the late 20th century, the NPD team will set project requirements early in the process and will build the product according to this pre-determined feature set.  Cooper recommends – as do I – to continually test the product assumptions with a wide range of users throughout each stage of the NPD process. 

A Scrum process follows the Agile philosophy by adapting the work in a short sprint (e.g. two to four weeks) to the highest priority feature or feature set.  Customer involvement is intimate in a Scrum NPD process as the customer both sets sprint priorities and approves the incremental product output from each sprint. 

Finally, hybrid NPD processes are becoming the norm in innovation as neither a traditional staged-and-gated process nor an agile/Scrum approach is ideal.  Hybrid NPD processes support the innovation ecosystem through continuous communication with the customer while utilizing a formal requirements design and development methodology.  Keep in mind that no NPD process is perfect, and an NPD process should be updated regularly to reflect organizational, market, and technology needs.

Team and Leadership Training

A successful ecosystem relies on a clear strategy and established practices and procedures (PPM, KM, and NPD processes).  To make the cogs turn, however, people must be motivated and inspired to do creative work while at the same time understanding organizational boundaries and limits.  Team and leadership training is the last, but perhaps most critical piece, of the innovation ecosystem puzzle.

NPD teams and innovation leaders benefit from New Product Development Professional (NPDP) and Best Practice Training.  In these public or customized workshops, team members safely learn how to clearly identify the innovation strategy, implement PPM and KM, and streamline the NPD process.  Moreover, teams learn the tools in market research to understand, test, and validate customer needs with concept tests, prototypes, and post-launch reviews.

Likewise, teams need to develop cross-functional and conflict management skills.  These are learned and practiced through Situational Team Leadershipand Virtual Team Training.  Virtual teams offer a huge advantage for innovators to tap into local market information while designing a product for global reach.

Finally, leaders need to approach innovation with flexibility, adaptability, and patience.  Leaders should be trained in situational leadership, virtual team management, and change management in addition to understanding the overall NPDP best practices.  Innovation leaders also need ongoing support since other the NPD function is often isolated from other business functions and requires special skills and business frameworks. 

I recommend an ongoing sharing and exchange for innovation leaders with a trusted group of like-minded product management professionals.  Having your own personal advisory board facilitated by an innovation expert can help you advance and accelerate your innovation ecosystem.  Check out the Innovation Master Mind as a way to rapidly improve your innovation programs through industry collaboration and problem-solving.  (Register here for a FREE pilot session of the Innovation Master Mind on 23 January 2019.) 

A Successful Innovation Ecosystem

I am constantly reminded of the delicate balance in nature’s ecosystem.  Rain, sunshine, and fertilizer allow plants to grow and thrive.  An innovation ecosystem requires feeding and nourishment to also grow and thrive.  Key elements of an innovation ecosystem are the innovation strategy, product portfolio and knowledge management, an established NPD process, and team and leadership skills development. 

Innovation is fun and exciting!  When we apply and formalize these elements in an innovation ecosystem, we realize both personal and professional success while delighting our customers. 

Learn More

Feel free to contact me more information on customized NPDP training.  I can be reached at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

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Using Design Thinking to Manage Your Time

A recent article in Harvard Business Review details that CEOs work, on average, 9.7 hours per day, conduct business on about 80% of weekend days, and work for almost 3 hours per day on 70% of their vacation days (1).  Yet, numerous other publications describe burnout as a major factor in declining performance of all workers.  Burnout results in decreased motivation, lower productivity, and poor-quality work.  Burnout manifests itself in lost time due to illness, poor health, and destabilized personal relationships.  All of us, not just CEOs, need to better manage our time so that we can sustain deep engagement with our work and live happy, joy-filled lives.

How Do You Spend Your Time?

As product, project, and engineering managers, we know that we cannot find a solution to a problem until we fully understand the problem.  Closing a budget or schedule gap first involves gathering data on the costs to-date and evaluating the work accomplished thus far.  Once we have historical data in hand, we can interpret the size of the gap as well as begin to formulate changes and corrective actions to keep the project on plan.

Managing time in our professional and personal lives is much the same.  First, we need to gather data on how we currently spend our time and then analyze that data to diagnose the need for change.  There are two elements to tracking how you spend your time.

Task Time-Tracking

First, it’s important to know how much time you spend on various tasks throughout the day.  In the HBR study discussed previously, the researchers used the CEOs’ executive assistants to track the CEOs time in 15-minute blocks.  If you have staff support that can help you with time tracking of your various work tasks, by all means, take advantage of this service.

Since I don’t have full-time, in-office administrative support, I use a cloud-based time-tracking app.  You can find dozens of free apps to help you track how much time you spend on which activities throughout the day.  Many corporations also have available the Microsoft “My Analytics” time-tracking tool to analyze your Outlook calendar for time spent in meetings, etc.

Regardless of the tool you choose, make sure the application is easy to use (no more than one or two clicks) and can later expand if you want to track higher degrees of granularity of how you spend your time.  However, make sure that you start with very simple task analysis.  We don’t want time-tracking to become an extra job in itself!  For example, I track teaching time, writing, specific client projects, and volunteer activities.  I can also match each category to related income streams as part of evaluation and gap analysis.

Design Thinking Time Tracking

In our Life Design Master Mind Group, we follow the advice of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in Designing Your Life.  Here, we track our “flow” in different activities.  Whereas tracking the minutes or hours spent on various tasks allows us to evaluate cost-benefit, tracking “flow” gives us a sense of what work we enjoy and what activities motivate us to do more.

“Flow” is a concept in which are working on tasks or activities that are so motivation and engaging that we don’t even notice the passage of time.  These are often the activities we daydream about or find ourselves planning for free or quiet time.  Flow is “being in the zone,” sort of like Steph Curry hitting dozens of consecutive three-pointers from the half-court-line.  You feel connected to and inspired by the work.  You are so embedded in your work, you might forget to stop and eat a meal.  And while it is hard to describe “flow,” we’ve all been there and recognize the positive and rewarding feelings that come from “being in the zone”.

Therefore, in Life Design Master Mind, we want to identify the time we spend in flow.  A separate time-tracking exercise using design thinking will follow the tasks on which you work, the energy you apply to the activity, and your feelings of engagement with the task.

For example, when I look at my journal from about a year ago, I recorded “doing email” with energy of 10% and engagement of 10%.  Not surprising, as the CEO study by HBR described previously also noted that these senior executives preferred face-to-face contact with direct reports and customers.

During the same month, I recorded my energy level at 75% and engagement at 85% while developing new course materials for one of the university classes I teach.  And I recorded working out at the gym with 100% energy and 75% engagement.  (As a side note, my husband thinks I can get a bit too fanatical about my fitness regime sometimes…)

You’ll want to keep a Flow Journal for a few weeks so that you can capture the broadest set of activities in which you engage as well as to average out any anomalies.  During a week when I had a head cold, my energy level was low for all tasks.  But, again, that’s understandable when I move to interpreting how I spent my time and what I enjoy.

Next Steps to Manage Your Time

Once you’ve collected data on how you spend your time, you need to evaluate where the gaps exist between the current stat and desired future state.  In Life Design Master Mind, we delve into understanding the core of flow for each individual and use more design thinking tools to frame the context for prototyping and testing new paths in our careers and lives.

You also can use the detailed task time-tracking to eliminate or minimize the least value-added tasks.  For instance, we all have to “do email,” yet there is little profit gained in this task.  Based on Cal Newport’s advice in “Deep Work,” I typically check email only two or three times per day, and at times of the day when my motivational energy is already low (like after lunch).  In this way, I can preserve times of the day when my inspiration is high for “flow” activities (e.g. I do a lot of writing first thing in the morning).

How Do You Manage Your Time?

A lot of how we spend our day is rooted in habit.  Some of these are good habits and some are not-so-good.  We can only expect to change our lives and strive for the next highest level in our careers if we understand where we’re at right now.  Start today with a task time-tracking app.  Then, later add a Flow Journal to learn which of these tasks give you energy, engagement, and an acceptable cost-benefit ratio.  (You can download a template for your Flow Journal as part of the Life Design Master Mind Group.)

 

(1)      Porter, Michael E. and Nitin Nohria, “How CEOs Manager Their Time,” Harvard Business Review July/Aug 2018, pg. 42-51.

 

To Learn More

Join us in an introductory Life Design Master Mind group in Houston where we start with how you spend your time today.  Over the next 6 months, we will use design thinking tools to take a deep dive into professional and personal motivation to frame and test what next steps you can take to live a joy-filled life.  Check out our on-line tutorial on Design Thinking, too.  Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

 

Reading Recommendation

We discuss different project team structures in NPDP Certification Prep:  A 24-Hour Study Guide, and you can find additional references at https://globalnpsolutions.com/services/npd-resources/.   Some other books you might enjoy:

 

Speaking on Design Thinking

  • 15 August 2018 at Houston Organizational Development Network Meeting
  • 7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

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