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Epic Innovation Failures and What to Do Differently (Part 2)

Last week in the blog, we talked about some epic failures.  Nokia, Sears, and Google all demonstrated huge failures by failing to recognize the competition and failing to understand customer needs.  This week we’re going to talk about what to do differently and how to learn from these epic failures. 

What to Do Differently

Hindsight is blessed with data and analysis, but as innovators we need to ask what can be done differently.  At the key decision points in product development what could Nokia, Sears, or Google have done differently?  These companies failed to innovate, and it cost them business.  In the case of Sears, the cost has spread to employees losing their jobs and impacting growth in other arenas.

#1 – Don’t Underestimate Changing Trends

Nokia, Sears, and Google+ experienced epic failures because they failed to recognize changing consumer tastes.  Moreover, these companies made a classic error of investing in sustaining innovations.  Disruptive innovation serves customers with new business models, not just new technology.  The iPhone offered conveniences in data transfer, no matter how clunky or slow, that Nokia devices did not. 

#2 – Scale of Operations Does Not Translate to Innovation Success

Sears had huge investments in department stores across the country.  The back-office operations were hefty in order to manage product purchases and distribution across nearly every household category.  On top of that, Sears’ own brands, like Craftsman, required intensive management. 

Sometimes, the scale of operations can add cost benefits.  If a factory can increase throughput, then the variable cost per unit declines and profits increase.  However, innovation suffers when the scale of operations becomes unfocused and the strategy moves to serving everyone all the time.  This is the core reason that sustaining innovations slowly drive a business into demise.  Focus is a key ingredient for long term innovation success.  Focus is something that Sears had lost along the way. 

#3 – Market Timing is Important

AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) still emerging, and we don’t yet know how markets and consumers will use these technologies.  Lowe’s has had some success to help do-it-yourselfers with AR.  Google Glass was probably launched too early in the product life cycle, while Google+ was launched too late to be competitive.  Market timing means having deep customer insights and understanding the competition.  Innovation depends on understanding technologies, products, customers, and the global marketplace.  These skills require that a company look outside-in rather than inside out.  Before launching a radical new product, like Google Glass, testing of features, attributes, and end-user acceptance need to be completed in a thorough fashion.  Market research data is far less expensive than a failed product launch!

Epic Failures and what to Do Differently

Last week we looked at some major product and brand failures.  But failures are only useful to study if we learn from them and then approach future projects with new knowledge.  To prevent epic failures and take advantage of the benefits of disruptive innovation, companies need to do three things well. 

  1. Understand market needs and consumer trends. 
  2. Focus on what you do well and don’t scale outside your focus area. 
  3. Time product launches based on customer needs rather than technology availability. 

How to Innovate Differently

Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it are two very different skills.  You know the stories of epic failures and now you need to implement innovation best practices.  Join me for the July online New Product Development Best Practices Training and our August Innovation Master Mind Q&A webinar.  Best practices training teaches you how to innovate effectively and the Innovation Master Mind makes you accountable for long-term innovation success.  For more information please contact me at info at Simple-PDH.com. 

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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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Design Thinking Tools

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting to the South Texas Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (STS AIChE) for the professional development hour.  I love to help people learn how to solve problems more creatively, so we discussed and practiced several different design thinking tools for innovation.  My thanks to Babak Rafienia (pictured here with me) for his high-level organizational skills, despite torrential rains and flooding in Houston on the night of the event.

Design Thinking Model

Design thinking is a collaborative and creative problem-solving methodology that helps individuals and teams find the best solutions by focusing on customer empathy.  The model is simple – two steps – identify the problem and solve the problem. 

However, we do iterate between a Discovery Stage and Define Stage to correctly identify the problem, and we cycle between creating multiple solution alternatives and evaluating them in the solving phase.  No new product development (NPD) team should ever go to the lab without clarifying a customer’s problem.  It is fun to invent new things, yet unless there is a market need for the technical solution, developers are just playing. 

Discovery

In the discovery stage we use tools like a customer journey map and a customer empathy map.  These design thinking tools help us to understand how consumers know that they have a problem, what they think and feel about the problem, and how they identify product and service solutions.  The customer journey map also involves following end-users past the point of purchase to understand how they feel about the product during use and at the end of its life cycle. 

Define

The define stage of design thinking clarifies the customer’s needs into a simple statement.  At the STS AIChE meeting, we practiced defining problems using noun/verb matching.  This tool increases collaboration and also encourages creative solutions.  It’s important to differentiate between complaints and problem statements.  You may never make a whiner happy, but you can design product solutions that address clear and simple problem statements. 

Example Affinity Diagram

Create

A fun and useful design thinking activity for an NPD team is to collect the problem statements from the define phase and categorize them using a mind map or affinity diagram.  In our practice exercise at STS AIChE, we used the example of disrupting airline travel by employing a variety of design thinking tools, including customer journey maps and noun/verb matching.  Our affinity diagram showed some key categories of improving the waiting areas before boarding a flight and enhancing seating on the airplane itself.  The next step (Evaluate Phase) would be to generate and test simple prototypes of say, larger and lighter standing seats (one idea from our session). 

Design Thinking Tools

You can use design thinking tools to address a lot of different situations and problems.  The benefit of design thinking tools is that they are fast and easy to use, they build collaboration, and enhance creativity.  You focus on the end-user’s needs from a qualitative perspective ensuring that you build empathy for the customer. 

Act now

Our discount rate for Life Design Master Mind ends on 17 May 2019.  In Life Design Master Mind, you will learn how to apply design thinking tools to your own situation – whether that is growing the skills of your NPD team or to making a decision to go back to school or change jobs.  Give me a call at area code 281 phone 280-8717 if you want to review the Life Design Master Mind Q&A webinar recording from April.  Sign up here for Life Design Master Mind 17 May 2019 to get the upfront discount! 

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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 info@simple-pdh.com for more information.  

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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 info@globalnpsolutions.com or area code 281, 280-8717 for more information or questions.

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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.

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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 info@simple-pdh.com 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 info@simple-pdh.com 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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Happiness and Innovation Work

Recently, I listened to two different business-oriented podcasts on happiness.  The first one discussed happiness as a form of contentment, while the second one addressed how we can better manage our time in exchange for happiness.  Working more hours was not an element of happiness (of course) yet working better and providing for others through our work did lead to greater degrees of happiness, according to these experts.

Happy kids with their hands up outdoors

Moreover, happiness is a part of our work as new product development practitioners and project managers.  Our new product designs are successful when the features and attributes product feelings of happiness in our customers.  And with the wealth of our society today at large, we are often seeking happiness as consumers more than we desire simple, functional solutions.

What is Happiness?

Dictionary.com defines happiness as “the state of being happy,” and happy is defined as “delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing.”  This implies that happiness is a transitory mood as much as it is a continuous state of mind.  I feel happy when I learn new tools for my favorite hobby, and I feel happy when I’m on vacation with my husband.

I prefer the term content over happy.  Dictionary.com defines contentment as “satisfaction, ease of mind”.  This definition feels more long-term and deep to the soul.  Contentment may be reflected as a sense of happiness and joy, a feeling that others can see and know that you are satisfied with your life circumstances.

Each of us has our own definition of happiness, contentment, and satisfaction.  We know when we have these feelings, whether they are in-the-moment or are deep and in our souls.  And, if you’re like most human beings, you want more happiness, deeper contentment, and greater satisfaction.

The Role of Innovators

As innovators and new product development practitioners, our role is to bring products and services to people so they can increase their happiness.  This might be done by simplifying their lives, minimizing steps to complete a task, or bringing leisure to their lives.  Understanding our customers’ motivation is paramount in designing and developing satisfying new products and services.

For example, innovations that decrease the time consumers spend doing household chores can free their time to pursue activities that bring them happiness and contentment.  Products and service like flushable toilet cleaning pads, home grocery delivery, and robot vacuums all help us accomplish dreaded tasks quickly and easily.  Then, we can invest our time in more satisfying activities.

Innovators can identify new product features and services by observing customers.  Observation and ethnographic research are important tools for new product development practitioners to fully understand customer needs.  Interviewing consumers during or after task completion can help identify their pain points.  For instance, a person would express a pain point of taking a dripping toilet brush or rag to a storage area after scrubbing the commode.  The flushable toilet pads eliminate that pain point for customers.  Minimizing both the time and mess involved in an undesirable, but necessary, chore can increase a consumer’s happiness. 

You can start to brainstorm ideas for products and services by asking customers what makes them happy and what tasks they really dread.  On what tasks do they spend their time when they’d really rather be doing something else?  What are chores that have to done on the weekend when they’d rather spend time with family and friends?  Answers to these questions can guide you and provide insight to identifying valuable customer pain points.  Then, you can begin to design products and services to address these pain points and usage issues.  Innovation must start with the problem first!

Increasing Happiness with Innovation

Not all innovations automatically increase our happiness.  New product developers must watch out in designing products with lots of features and products that are all-encompassing solutions.  Too many features and options can make a product or service too complicated and many people will choose to continue with their current solution rather than spend time learning how to use a new product.  It is frustrating to exchange precious time to master a product with many features when the consumer only needs a few, basic functions.

Construction worker with machines at the background looking happy

As we consider our own happiness and contentment, we can also consider what makes our customers happy and satisfied.  I think this is what makes innovation such an engaging and dynamic career path. We get to help others save time and solve problems, and in doing so, we find self-satisfaction and contentment.

Learn More

If you want to learn more about designing and building products and services for happy customers, please join me in an innovation best practices workshop.  Prepare for your New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification with self-study, facilitated online, or classroom courses.  You will immediately impact the success of your innovation efforts by iden3tifying strategies and tools to bring happiness to your customers.  Feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com 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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Visualizing NPD Solutions

Successful new product development (NPD) links many perspectives from the end-user or customer, designers, manufacturers, and marketers.  No single entity can develop a new product solution that meets customer needs and profit objectives by itself.  Yet, incorporating and balancing these various viewpoints is often a challenge for innovators.

Design Thinking

A set of tools that have become popular in the last few years are those in design thinking.  Design thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that systematically expands the potential ideas to address a given customer need.  The following figure illustrates the design thinking model.

In discovery, an NPD team uses tools like observation and ethnographic research to study potential problems.  Customers are an integral part of the design thinking model because they show the NDP team how they approach problems today and which solutions, or workarounds, they employ to address those issues.  The discovery phase of innovation is tremendously important since it sets the stage for all subsequent phases of work. 

In the define phase, the NPD team uses design thinking tools to clarify the problem.  While there might have been several challenges and customer needs noted in the discovery phase, carefully defining the problem is crucial to solving it.  We recommend the ITEM Method of Problem-Solving in which the problem statement is initiated, tuned, evaluated and measured.  The ITEM Method can be used as a standalone problem-solving tool or as a subset of tools within the design thinking framework.

Once the NPD team feels they have a concise customer need defined, the team will move to solution generation phases of work.  This includes creating lots of potential solutions and testing them quickly.  Rapid prototype testing is an important tool for innovation so that poor concepts can be eliminated.  Moreover, customers are involved in the solution generation process in successful innovation ventures.  You can include end-users and consumers in brainstorming sessions and certainly they should be included in evaluating prototypes. 

Visualizing Solutions

In his book, “Product Design and Innovation,” Carlos Rodriguez identifies three types of analytical thinking within the framework of design.  These strategic viewpoints can help an innovation team expand their solution sets to successfully identify options to address customer needs.

Deductive Reasoning

In the first category of problem-solving tools, deductive logic is used to test product solutions.  In deductive testing, we already know the expected outcome or result, and we are measuring whether the new product will deliver that value.  This type of problem-solving uses the argument of “if-then” and accepts conclusions justified by the hypothesis.

For example, deductive logic is applied to an automotive innovation.  The hypothesis is that “consumers want faster cars.”  Design thinking tools and the ITEM Method of problem-solving identify ways to increase acceleration through engine and transmission improvements.  Deductive testing then proposes that “if the engine has more horsepower, then the car will accelerate faster.”  Note that deductive testing is easily measured and describes “what” the design features do.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive logic will extrapolate beyond the measurable deductive testing.  Instead of designing around the “what” of the innovation, NPD teams use inductive testing to evaluate “how” to accomplish a product solution.  This necessitates a broader viewpoint of the customer problem and back tracks from the solve stages of the design thinking framework to the identify stages.

For instance, instead of jumping to designing a faster car, inductive new product development will as the question of “how can people travel faster”.  In this case, the solution space is expanded from faster cars to high-speed rail, airplanes, and maybe even a hyperloop.  Inductive reasoning will generate more potential solutions using brainstorming and promotes solutions strategies beyond a given product feature.

Abductive Reasoning

Finally, abductive reasoning drives disruptive innovation by exploring both the “what” and “how” of a solution space.  In this context, we are focused on delivering the most customer value by utilizing skills and competencies of a cross-functional NPD team that includes the customer.  Abductive problem-solving in NPD includes design activities like observation, creating customer journey logs, and customer empathy maps. 

Continuing our example of faster travel, abductive design will go back to the discover stage of the design thinking model to identify the true customer problem.  We ask:  “Why does she want to travel faster?” and “What does he accomplish with faster travel?”  The answers may lead to NPD solutions that are disruptive or radical.

In our example, wd find that people want faster business travel so they can minimize time spent away from home and family.  This leads to a product solution that has nothing to do with the person leaving home – instead, we implement a telecommuting option and hold a virtual meeting via webinar.

Visualizing NPD Solutions

Design thinking tools offer a broad approach to new product development that helps identify the best solution for customer problems.  Using deductive testing in design and development, we can improve product features and characteristics.  This helps maintain and sustain a product or brand through the maturity stages in the product life cycle.

NPD teams can use inductive design to broaden the scope of the problem.  Rather than assuming an improvement of an existing product, inductive testing challenges the NPD team to design alternative approaches to solve the customers’ problems.  Inductive testing involves design thinking tools like rapid prototyping and concept testing to ensure that customer needs are met.

Finally, radical and disruptive innovation can be achieved when the innovation team steps back to observe customers’ problems with the broadest perspective.  Instead of improving existing product solutions or creating tangential new products, abductive reasoning allows the NPD team to craft delightful and unique products and services that truly address end-user challenges.

Learn More

Feel free to contact me for more information design thinking.  I can be reached at info@simple-pdh.com 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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Launching and Landing a New Product

A lot of new products fail in the marketplace.  In innovation, we analyze the data and our systems to try to prevent another failure in the future.  Yet, success of new products and services in meeting goals and objective continues to be an ongoing problem across industries and corporations.  What is going on and how can new product development (NPD) practitioners improve success rates?

Launching vs. Landing

A key concept in NPD is the difference between launching and landing.  Most NPD systems focus on the end goal as the product launch.  A lot of companies use a staged and gated process for innovation, with the final stage identified as “Product Launch”.  Unfortunately, launching a product is not enough.

The obvious analogy is air travel.  I certainly don’t want to fly with a pilot who only knows how to launch the aircraft.  To arrive safely at my destination, I trust that the pilot knows how to land the plane.  (Image from one of my favorite comedy movies – Airplane.  My husband can’t stand when I start reciting lines from the film when we are traveling… but that’s another story.)

Likewise, product launches are only the start of the customer relationship.  Launching a new product includes a marketing campaign to build awareness of the product, its value, and its benefits.  A product launch might include education and training as well as demonstrations and integrations.  The point of the product launch is to show the world the new product.

Landing the product is what really counts for successful innovation.  I have long been an advocate for post-launch reviews (PLR).  The lessons learned in a PLR allow the NPD team to learn and grow and allows the sales and marketing teams to make adjustments in targeted areas as needed.  PLRs focus on revenue and volume for new product sales as well as net profit.  Thus, the PLR measures the landing of a new product.

For example, a new product may be specially designed to meet the needs of a target market, but these customers are not exposed to the product.  Imagine the breadth of products that are designed to help manage incontinency.  If all the advertising is on YouTube and smartphones, a large target market (elderly folks who may not be internet or phone savvy) may be completely missed.  The PLR helps to land the product with the right audience through sales data analysis leading to a successful television marketing campaign.

Customer Satisfaction

Landing the product is all about customer satisfaction.  And honestly, the PLR can be a last-ditch effort to save a product.  Customer needs (both known and unarticulated) must be met with the features and benefits of the product.  Needs assessments should be conducts long before the product launch – ultimately, a new product project is not undertaken unless there is a right-sized market potential.

Agile project management and lead product development offer tools and techniques within a structured ecosystem to help new product practitioners learn customer needs.  I also really like the tools within Design Thinking to help the NPD team retain a focus on the customer from idea to development to launching and landing.  Design thinking asks us to first discover customer needs.  Once we fully understand and build empathy for another person’s challenges, then we can define the problem in traditional NPD terms and processes.

Design Thinking Tools

Design thinking follows a cyclical model of Discover–>Define–>Create–>Test–>(repeat).  Again, discovery involves intimate relationships with customers and potential customers.  Market research is often qualitative at this stage because we are seeking to understand the exact challenges that our customers face.  It is important to listen to people closely as their emotions will help the NPD team discern their most pressing problems.

After concluding listening sessions, shadowing, and customer journey maps in the discovery stage, the NPD team moves to defining the problem.  Sometimes the real problem is unstated or buried below the surface.  Tools like customer empathy maps and affinity diagrams can help to sort out the biggest customer challenges that we think we can address through new product and service development.

Next, we switch to more traditional NPD process techniques to create potential solutions to address the defined customer needs.  Here, tools like brainstorming, brainwriting, and A/B testing are used.  It is crucial to maintain customer involvement in this stage of work.  The NPD team needs to be assured that features they design and develop will delight the customer, setting the framework for landing the product.

Finally, the design thinking cycle moves to prototype testing.  Depending on the complexity of the product and its newness to a market, prototype testing may be simple or sophisticated.  Product improvements and extensions may test a simple feature with a one-time product use test.  New-to-the-world products require multiple prototypes and tests to ensure a selected feature set is beneficial to a potential customer and that all product attributes integrate across the product platform.

Of course, you’re not done at the testing phase.  Design thinking teaches us to go back to customers to discover continuous needs and to cycle through the steps to ensure alignment.  Customer satisfaction with the features and benefits determines the value of the product.  This value ties to our measures of revenue and profit, tracked in the PLR.  A product that is highly valued in our target market means we have successfully launched and landed the new product.

Landing Customer Satisfaction

New product launches often fail because the NPD team is isolated from the customer, focusing on an end goal of just releasing the new product.  Landing the product follows the launch, with corrective actions measured in post-launch reviews, to ensure customer satisfaction.  Satisfied customers are repeat customers and will share their delight with friends and neighbors.  Nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing for a new product!

The only way to successfully launch and land a new product that benefits customers and brings long-term value to the organization is through intimate customer relationships.  Design thinking employs a set of tools within a cyclical model to ensure customers remain at the forefront of new product development.

Next Steps

First, innovation leaders must take action to ensure new product development is focused only on the customer.  Second, innovation teams should use the post-launch review process to determine corrective actions if a product launch does not land customer satisfaction.  Finally, NPD leaders will build a toolkit spanning customer interviews and prototyping from design thinking to encourage intimate customer relationships and leading to higher success rates in new product development.

To build your skills and address your toughest innovation challenges, please contact me about membership in the Innovation Master Mind (IMM) group.  IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers.  I also offer one-on-one coaching and New Product Development Professional (NPDP) training to help you target specific innovation knowledge areas.  So, feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717 to learn more.  I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations reach higher strategic innovation goals!

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

© Simple-PDH.com

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC