new product development

Defining Innovation Leadership

Posted on 12.17.20

Innovation is inherently risky. Yet, the old adage “innovate or die” requires leaders to continually invest in new product development (NPD). Success depends on rigorous processes, committed resources, and confident leadership. Transformative innovation programs include a clear vision for today and for the future. Innovation leaders guide and govern an ecosystem for NPD success.

The Innovation Framework

At the heart of innovation is strategy. An organization needs to clearly and succinctly describe its vision, mission, and values. The strategy of a firm drives its decision-making processes based on risk tolerance and a chosen business model.

Executing an innovation strategy with efficiency builds short-term and long-term success. Product portfolio management (PPM) comprises a set of executive decisions to select the highest value-added innovation projects for the organization to implement. (Please join our hands-on implementation of 100 Days to PPM in 2021 here – you will transform your innovation program! Use discount code goodbye 2020 before 20 December 2020 to save 20%.)

Hand-in-hand with project selection is the NPD process by which an individual project moves from idea to commercialization. A great number of project management tools are available today to streamline project execution in parallel with the innovation strategy. If your firm is not already using PPM software, you should resolve to find an appropriate system in the new year!

Of course, all products and services have a limited lifetime. Customer tasks and market forces change the demand curves for new products overtime. Product life cycle management matches innovation and marketing strategies with the maturity of a product. Innovation leaders are successful when their life cycle decisions align with the organization’s strategic direction.

Next, these critical elements of innovation are supported by both internal and external organizational functions. Teams and leadership are the people that do the work of innovation. The best leaders understand different working styles while engaging and motivating teams with autonomous project work. Check out a case study of success from the Team Dimensions profile in the podcast here.

NPD tools and metrics provide supporting frameworks to ensure implementation of best practices and continuous improvement. Successful innovation leaders adopt and adapt NPD tools from a variety of industries to enhance idea generation, customer interactions, and process improvement. The emerging WAGILE product development process is a way to integrate a hybrid NPD process with Design Thinking tools for active customer engagement. Register here for the February 2021 WAGILE short course.

Finally, market research directly links customer satisfaction in a feedback loop to the business strategy. Market research teaches an organization about customer needs, emotional drivers, and transient competitors. You must have both primary and secondary market research tools in place to gather customer insights for existing and new products.

Why You Need to Define Innovation Leadership

First, 60 to 80% of CEOs believe that innovation is crucial to the long-term growth of their business. Yet, key stakeholders have marginal opinions of the new products and services offered in the marketplace. About one-quarter of customers do not believe new products are innovative. Executives and senior leaders struggle with repeatable innovation that drives top line growth.

Defining innovation leadership is based on our Flagship Innovation Leader program that transforms individuals and organizations from struggling individual contributors to a high-performance innovation machine. Understanding and acting upon your organization’s innovation health will breathe new life into your NPD programs. Take the Innovation Health Assessment™ here and benchmark your performance with industry.

For anyone wanting to learn more about innovation best practices, please check out our full list of courses including NPDP Certification and Innovation Best Practices starting on 14 January. Please use discount code goodbye 2020 for a 20% discount on any single course at Simple-PDH.

Another important resource for you as you define innovation leadership is The Innovation ANSWER Book. This book has simplified the content from the PDMA Body of Knowledge so that you can use The Innovation ANSWER Book both as a study guide for NPDP certification and to guide practical industry implementation of innovation best practices. Get your copy at Amazon (paperback or Kindle).

What Are Your Plans for 2021?

To define yourself as a transformative innovation leader, you need to sustain continuing education. Innovation is learning! For more information on open courses and customized learning for innovation best practices, please contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281, phone 787-3979.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Wagile Leadership

Posted on 10.29.20

I became interested in leadership when I was first appointed to a supervisory position. My first exposure to leading a team was negative – from my perspective – but my management saw a different view. I thought that being a manager meant I was not smart enough to continue on the technical ladder. Little did I know that most technical answers are easy compared to motivating a team toward a common goal.

Innovation leadership takes many forms. In all cases, there must be a follower for a leader to exist. Leaders engender willing followers. We want to learn from others who have been successful. We want to take direction from someone who has demonstrated skill at problem-solving. We want to mimic the behaviors of inspiring people.

What is a Wagile Leader?

Before we discuss Wagile leadership, I want to take a quick detour to define Wagile. Wagile is a product innovation process to create and launch groundbreaking new products and services. The word Wagile comes from a combination of the terms “waterfall” and “agile”. Waterfall approaches to project management use upfront planning while agile project management acts on an evolving scope of work.

The Wagile philosophy thus integrates the best of both project management approaches.

Move fast
Practice discipline
Understand risk
Engaged customers
Provide autonomy

Wagile Roles in Leadership

Each Wagile role serves as a leader. Being non-hierarchical and flexible, Wagile does not specify one person, one role, or one organization as a primary decision-maker. Rather, all roles act as leaders to ensure customer satisfaction with new product development (NPD). As described in detail here, the Wagile roles include:

Project leader,
Customer representative,
Team leader, and
Cross-functional team.

Wagile leadership characteristics focus on engaging customers to deliver high-quality products and services that meet market needs while generating profit for the firm. Servant leadership traits of putting the team before self are important as are elements of Emotional Intelligence (such as self-awareness and self-control). I have observed that the most successful teams are mission-oriented to create a common good rather than egocentric to promote a manager’s self-interest.

In my practice of innovation teaching and coaching, I often used work style assessments to drive the leadership conversation. An important starting point for product innovation teams is the Innovation Health Assessment™ to benchmark your organization’s NPD maturity against industry standards. (Take your complimentary Innovation Health Assessment here.)

Another work style assessment I use is called the Team Dimensions Profile. As a DiSC-certified management facilitator, I prefer the language of Team Dimensions for innovation team growth. We identify individual working preferences as Creator, Advancer, Refiner, or Executer. Note that these are not the same as ingrained personality because each of us can stretch to different work roles as needed to accomplish the project goals. (Learn more about Team Dimensions here where I spoke with the Everyday Innovator podcast.)

In fact, it is the capability of team members on a Wagile project to stretch and serve as generalist-specialists that make each of us leaders. Generalist-specialists are people who have a deep knowledge and expertise in one arena (specialist) but also a desire to learn and help across the board (generalist).

Learn More

If you want to know more about Wagile and how to apply it in your own organization, join me for a short seminar on 10 November 2020 (2-4 pm CST). Upon completion of this course, you will be equipped with a set of tools to speed product to market for innovation success. Register here. To investigate and expand your personal development style, please join me for the Life Design Master Mind Q&A on 11 November 2020 at 11 am CST (free), followed by subsequent in-depth workshops over the next six months. Register here for the free webinar. Contact me at info@Simple-PDH.com with questions about these workshops.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

What is Emotional Design?

Posted on 07.23.20

Watch the ultra-short video and then read on for full details.

I am a DiSC-certified facilitator. There are four primary work styles: “D” for dominance, “i” for influence, “S” for steadiness, and “C” for conscientiousness. My own work style is CD, meaning I prefer to focus on data to make a decision and I will generally take action quickly once I have the data analysis in hand.

People with “i” and “S” work styles tend to focus more on the needs of other people and will make decisions based on emotion even with little or no data. And while people with strong “C” and “D” work styles might puzzle over such behaviors, as product innovation professionals, we all know that customers make decisions based on emotion (to some degree or another).

That’s why the theory and practice of Emotional Design is important.

Emotional Design

Emotional design is part of specifying product requirements within the product design process. You can learn more about the overall product design process in another post (click here). Designers use the emotions that customers associate with product usage to identify and prioritize product features. When customers express positive emotions about a product, they tend to demonstrate more trust and loyalty to a specific product or brand. This often results in increased revenue.

Three Types of Emotional Design Information

Emotional design is based on the level of emotion and how individuals process information. We call thee levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Let’s take a quick look at what these mean to product innovation.

Visceral Emotional Design

According to Dictionary.com, visceral means “characterized by … instinct rather than intellect”. This is our “animal brain” taking charge. We process certain emotions using a low level of basic motor skills and senses. So, visceral design is associated with physical senses, like the aesthetics or color of a product.

Consider, for example, a red sports car. It appeals to our basic senses and emotions because the styling is generally pleasing and implies speed (something that humans have craved throughout all time). Red as a color, in most societies, is associated with power. Therefore, on a visceral level, a red sports car represents a strong emotional design.

Behavioral Emotional Design

At a mid-level of emotional design are customers’ responses to an innovation according to memory and learning. Thus, the behavioral level of emotional design emphasizes the functionality and usability of a product.

Let’s use the red sports car as an example again. Many sports cars use a manual transmission to increase performance and to give the driver more control. However, very few Americans know how to drive a manual transmission. In order to be satisfied with the design, they would need to learn a new behavior. Yet, a car enthusiast already knows the skill of driving a stick shift and finds the design even more appealing.

Reflective Emotional Design

Finally, the highest level of emotional design is related to self-identity. The reflective level deals with feelings and emotions that determine understanding, reasoning, and interpretation. A wealthy bachelor feels that the red sports car reflects his personality. It is an extension of his “self” by showing power, strength, and speed. On the other hand, a mom with five kids would view the sports car as frivolous and not serving her important tasks of driving to school and soccer practice.

Why is Emotional Design Important?

As indicated, customers rarely buy a product based on data sheets and specifications alone. Emotion – whether explicit or subconscious – plays a role in all of our purchases. I’m not a fan of the color brown, personally, and I prefer bright colors for clothes and home decorations. My visceral emotions drive me away from earth tones. These are deep internal perceptions that have no explanation but are in parts of my subconscious brain (or soul).

Yet, I love learning new things. For my hobbies, I will test and buy products that I think will make my life easier or tasks quicker to finish. I am seeking functionalities for to improve behaviors. I want to use products and services that are easy.

What complicates product innovation at the behavioral and reflective levels is differentiating between a desire to learn and the status quo. Oftentimes, new products that add simplicity or convenience for a customer require a level of learning or new behaviors that require too much change. Customers will only accept a new level of features when the learning curve is a low hurdle.

Lastly, products that make us feel good are those that can command a price premium. (More information on pricing strategies is found here.) Experiences and luxury items appeal to our personal sense of self and identity. Reflective emotional design builds emotions and personality into product development. While basic aesthetics and form can be tested for broad market acceptance, reflective design often focuses on narrower target customer segments who share similar values. You may want to consider a segmentation strategy when your product innovation depends on reflective emotional design.

Learn More

Check out where I’m speaking next (click here). You can book me for speaking by contacting me directly or through Innovation Women.
Get your copy of The Innovation ANSWER Book. Available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle version.
Reference the new PDMA Body of Knowledge, available at Amazon.
Do you know your strategy? Is it time to narrow your focus or expand to serve more customers? Join me for the two-part Reset Your Strategy workshop on 18 and 20 August. Register here – special discounts for the unemployed.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Product Design Process

Posted on 06.25.20

New products do not magically appear overnight. Despite our collective image of a lone scientist working over a smoldering beaker of neon-colored fluid, most innovations are born of a rigorous process. In fact, studies show that firms with flexible product design processes generate repeatable new product success more than their competitors who approach innovation in an ad-hoc manner.

Watch the short overview video and then read the full blog for details.

Often called the new product development (NPD) process or product innovation process, a product design process takes the innovation team on a journey. We must first identify what strategic needs our customers have, what problems trouble them, and how we can help them solve those problems efficiently. The product design process delivers both steps to advance innovation as well as a set of tools to understand and quantify customer needs.

Steps in The Product Design Process

Most product development processes focus on the deliverables. In Stage X, you must have a fully fleshed-out business case. At Phase Y, you need to have built a functional prototype. What’s different about the product design process is that it focuses on actions that lead new product innovation from rigorous ideas to commercial products.

Step 1 – Ideation

Ideation is a creative process to generate, develop, and communicate new ideas. It involves searching for customer problems and defining the problem space. The two categories of tools deployed in ideation are divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

Divergent thinking tools seek to expand the question and derive alternate concepts. Sometimes we misinterpret a customer’s problem through our own biases (please see the blog on Optimism Bias). Other times, we jump to solutions without considering the whole scope of the problem. This can make products overly complex while they do not satisfy customers most basic needs. Consider the long list of micro-print included with prescription drugs. The warnings might be justified, but an 80-year old patient with macular degeneration cannot possibly determine appropriate dosage.

In convergent thinking, we take the creative ideas and solutions generated by cross-functional teams and collate them. The purpose of this step in the design process is to find common themes or concepts that will address large market segments so that we can move forward in the product design process. It is impossible – and fraught with risk and expense – to pursue all ideas.

Step 2 – Concept Design

Concept design introduces clarity and alignment for the product. It provides a way to explain what the product will do, how it will function, and how it will solve the customer’s problem. Often the concept design is a simple narrative description or sketch. This yields high-level feedback from customers to validate that the problem definition is correct. When organizations skip this step, they end up designing and selling products that only almost solve a customer’s problem. Unfortunately, this leaves a big gap for competition to fill with a better product that satisfies customer needs with better quality.

Step 3 – Embodiment

As a product moves from concept design into more detailed design, a product innovation team accounts for technical and economic feasibility. Customers will exchange hard earned money for products that offer convenience, simplification, or luxury experiences. The embodiment of the product must balance the features and attributes of the design against cost of manufacturing and, ultimately, the selling price.

Conjoint analysis is a common tool used at this stage of the product design process. This tool allows customers to rank and prioritize a select set of features against prices. The outcome of a conjoint analysis provides the product innovation team with a list of the most important features that must be included in a final product. Results of the study are important since it links desired features and quality levels with willingness to pay.

Step 4 – Draft Product Specifications

At this point in the design process, the “what” and “why” of the product are well defined. The next step is to determine “how”. The initial product specifications lay out physical dimensions and manufacturability. A key tool in this phase is D4X, or Design for X, where X may represent assembly, maintenance, or usability.

The expected outcome of the draft product design specification stage is to quantify and clarify the product design. Communication of the purpose of the product, quality levels of individual features, and the cost/benefit of the product are also important outcomes. Since the next stage is determining final product development and manufacturing methods, the draft product design specifications should be complete and reflect all key characteristics that the product must deliver.

Step 5 – Detailed Design

A primary tool in the detailed design process is QFD (Quality Function Deployment). This methodology converts the draft design specifications into specific manufacturing and engineering criteria. In other words, QFD translates the customer needs into measurable requirements. QFD is a sophisticated tool with matching, prioritization, and scaling of customer needs, competitive responses, and design attributes, combined with cost to create engineering metrics for new product manufacturing. QFD originated in the automotive industry and uses a graphic called the House of Quality. (Read more in the blog post Innovation Tools: What is QFD?)

Step 6 – Final Production

Sometimes called “Fabrication and Assembly”, the last step in the design process for new product development is manufacturing and producing the product. This includes prototype testing, market testing, and systems integration. Prototype testing ensures that the product works as it was designed to work and meets customer needs. Companies should test a variety of prototypes from those with just a few relevant features (e.g. the minimally viable product, MVP) to a high-fidelity working prototype. It is less expensive to modify the manufacturing and distribution process is before finalizing specifications and production moves to large scale.

The Product Design Process

The product design process does not replace a traditional or emergent project management process (like Stage-Gate® or Scrum). Instead, product design lies parallel to the project management decisions. Product design forces enhanced communication and interaction with customers resulting in better overall product designs and reception in the marketplace. While we have only briefly touched on some of the important product design tools here, you can read about them in depth in the comprehensive text, Product Design and Innovation by Carlos Rodriguez. He includes a lot of very thorough examples to lead you through the entire product design process.

How Do You Use Product Design?

Every industry, company, and product is different. You may know your market well, so that a new product simply needs limited design and testing. Or you may be developing brand new technology and need to conduct extensive testing with potential and existing customers to ensure strategic alignment. In this case, you will want to explore more of the product design phases and tools with more depth.

The most important part of any product innovation processes to ensure strategic business alignment. Developing product strategy precedes the product design process. Start with our Reset Your Strategy workshop in August 2020. Pre-register here. Contact me at info@globalnpsolutions.com for more information.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Identifying Your New Innovation Workflow

Posted on 05.21.20

In a recent blog, we discussed how to Use SWOT to Reset Your Business and Innovation Strategy. As has been said, execution overrules strategy any day. Strategy is important because you have to know where you’re going and to explain why you’re headed there. But how you get there and when you get there is even more important.

I often think of strategy as a destination. An analogy is found in planning a vacation. The destination (for me) is often a National Park (where I’m going) so I can go hiking (why I’m going). The SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) yields insights to help in the decision-making process of laying out a business destination and innovation goals that will increase revenue and lead to customer satisfaction.

How I get to a National Park and the timing of vacation are related to workflows. I could fly to a nearby city and rent a car or drive to the park directly from home. Driving usually takes longer but allows me to easily carry bicycles and camping gear. In the end, flying or driving achieves the same goal – hiking in a beautiful place – but the execution of the plan is quite different for each case.

What is a Workflow?

We often don’t think a lot about workflows. Somehow work just gets done. If tasks or activities are behind schedule, someone calls a meeting to figure out why. But it is more efficient to establish processes upfront and follow a standardized path – a workflow – to achieve repeatable success. A workflow is thus a system or process.

Even for tasks and activities as unpredictable as developing a new product or service, we need a process that informs the project team how to convert an idea into a saleable product or service. The workflow illustrates a series of steps with assigned roles and responsibilities. The system also includes decision-making criteria to indicate whether a particular initiative should continue to advance. These decisions are particularly important for product innovation as trends in customer needs, markets, and technology can change during the development life cycle.

Workflow is NOT a Schedule

As good project managers, we always prepare project schedules. These include key milestones and deliverables. Innovation systems often use gate reviews to establish the continued attractiveness of a product idea through design and development. Product portfolio management reviews determine strategic alignment and value-add for innovation projects. The workflow captures these hand-offs and decision points as well as responsible team members to accomplish the work.

A schedule is different than a workflow in that it shows (often as a Gantt chart) which tasks must be done and in what order. A schedule shows overlaps in activities and highlights the critical path that determines the earliest possible completion date for a project. Project managers are held accountable for delayed schedules. In my vacation analogy, the airline has a specific schedule and if I miss the flight, my entire vacation is delayed.

Designing an Innovation Workflow

First, remembering that a workflow is not a schedule, list all the tasks that must be done to transform an idea into a product innovation. The list should include direct tasks (such as prototype testing) as well as indirect activities (such as applying for a patent). Next, as shown in the figure, order and prioritize these tasks to optimize the project goal. Remember that activities like concept testing can be conducted in parallel with technical development and production testing.

Innovation Workflow, copyright Global NP Solutions

As you begin to order the required tasks and activities, you will find that some are dependent on others. This is not unlike putting together a project schedule but as you create a workflow, you can identify methods to optimize your resources when you recognize a dependency. In scheduling, we must increase the time if Task A must be fully completed before Task B starts. Yet in a workflow, or systems analysis, we can collate certain dependent activities or decisions for a management council or portfolio review.

The workflow considers roles and responsibilities, skills and competencies, and training needs of functional staff to complete activities. An effective workflow identifies cross-functional relationships as well as cross-training for various roles so that the project work progresses continually. Then, when hold times or transfers and hand-offs are unacceptable, resource allocation is optimized to eliminate overload (Step 5).

As with all innovation projects, the innovation system itself should be tested. Prototype the workflow on a “typical” new product development (NPD) project to identify bugs, holdups, or bottlenecks in the workflow. Then, as you implement the workflow across all projects and functions, relentlessly streamline the process. Continuous improvement and being aware of bureaucratic sand traps is key to successfully maintaining optimized workflows.

Innovation Workflows

Learn more about the innovation workflow matrix here. You will see many of the common project and innovation management systems categorized by serial or integrated teams on the x-axis and via waterfall or Agile philosophy on the y-axis. Learn more about product innovation in New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification self-study course. Then, join me on 18 June 2020 at noon CDT (1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT) for a free Q&A webinar on the Life Design Master Mind group where you will apply the Design Thinking workflow to current challenges for knowledge workers maintaining full employment. Register here and we’ll see you soon!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Mixed Skills for Work Today

Posted on 05.07.20

Watch the short summary (less than 1 minute) and then read the full article below.

At the Fall 2019 AIChE conference for chemical engineers, keynote speaker Matt Sigelman presented the importance of developing and supplementing skills forproduct development and leadership. He made the distinction of “jobs” as doing tasks while “work” is renting a set of skills. To succeed in a changing workplace, Sigelman puts forth that we must continue to grow and enhance our skills. I agree!

What are Skills?

Formal education gives us knowledge and some skills. As a chemical engineer, I have learned theories of math, chemistry, and physics. This knowledge is measurable in a quantitative way. There is a “right” answer to a calculus problem or to balancing heat and energy in a standard chemical stoichiometry.

Skills we learn in school or with work experience include analytical capability, writing, research, and creativity. These skills are not necessarily measurable but do differentiate success as innovation leaders. For example, the demand for team collaboration skills at work is in high demand for at least one-third of jobs today.

Mixed Skills

Sigleman defined “hybrid jobs” as work activities that require both specialized technical skills (e.g. math, chemistry, physics) and critical skills (e.g. people and processes). Job growth and education experience change at 1-2% per year, but skills change as much as 40% per years. Successful new product development (NPD) practitioners and product managers must not only maintain current knowledge in their field of specialization but also grow and enhance their leadership skills. This means learning and practicing sound project management protocols while also adopting and sustaining team development practices.

Today’s most important jobs require mixed skills. Data scientists cannot be content with analyzing a set of numbers. They must translate that data into information on which to base technology and market growth activities. Technical skills must balance against communication and decision-making skills. New Product Development Professionals (NPDP) use quantitative market data to estimate pricing and market capacity for product innovations. Yet, it is qualitative interpretation of customer knowledge that leads innovation leaders to product development decisions, profitability, and improved market share.

Building Mixed Skills

Lifelong learning and a commitment to growth are the fuel to build mixed skills for today’s job market. As noted at the AIChE conference, credential demonstrate expertise and mastery of mixed skills. Innovation leaders use NPDP certification as a stepping stone for product management career growth illustrating experience with product portfolio management and NPD processes as well as team management and leadership development.

You can learn more about NPDP certification here. Benchmark your own innovation maturity with the Innovation Health Assessment™. Take the complimentary Innovation Health Assessment here. Contact me at info@Simple-PDH.com for more information on developing your skills for a rewarding career in product innovation.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

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

Posted on 07.04.19

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.

Understand market needs and consumer trends.
Focus on what you do well and don’t scale outside your focus area.
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.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple. �Y�s”

Product Development Fundamentals

Posted on 06.06.19

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

Posted on 05.16.19

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.

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

Posted on 05.02.19

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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