Inspired by David Letterman, here is my Top 10 Signs You Need Help With Innovation Management.

Number 10. Just like a neurotic dog chasing its tail, you seem to be caught chasing a tail. You just can’t tell whose tail you are chasing: yours or your competitor’s.

Number 9. Your managements’ version of thriving on chaos feels more like the final hours on Titanic.

Number 8. Your company wrote the book on bureaucracy: the corporate barber offers volume discounts on pointy hairdos.

Number 7. You missed so many product launch windows that you are thinking about installing garage doors.

Number 6. Your product roadmap has taken its cue from NASA. You retired your core product without a replacement in the works, leaving your customers lost in space.

Number 5. Your data sheets read like John Kerry’s campaign speeches…

Number 4. Your employees refer to your idea management system as the roach motel. Ideas check in, and nothing checks out.

Number 3. Your strategic planning process resembles contestant elimination on a reality show.

Number 2. To reduce casualties, you erect a wall with security checkpoints between your R&D and marketing departments. Remember to use the buddy system: no one crosses the line alone!

And finally, Number 1. You are reading this blog

Happy weekend everyone!

Our world is full of slogans, so why not use them for our customer-focused initiatives? Unfortunately, slogans are just words and they do not provide the essence of what is needed to build a customer-focused organization. Frankly, just saying something doesn’t make it so.

Every business wants happy customers and strives to turn them into best customers: ones that provide repeat business and becomes your biggest advocate. They work to ensure that the correct employees are in customer-facing positions, put in place reward systems to drive their customer-focused strategy and share customer feedback and stories with the organization.

In-depth customer knowledge is also a key requirement for innovation, commercialization and business success. It boils down to how you are contributing to the success and growth of your existing customers, and how you are positioning yourself for the success and growth of your new customers. So, what you share with your employees about your customers is crucial to your customer-focus strategy. Next time, spice up your team meetings with discussions on the following items.

Define your ‘value’ from the perspective of your customer

Businesses exist because they deliver value to customers through their products and services. Your customers do not buy your product; they buy what your product and firm offers them: a solution to a problem, improvement from their current solution, better performance and quality, feeling of comfort, security, image and overall value. The price premium that your brand commands and your competitive advantage is what your customers value and are willing to pay extra for. How are you incorporating that value into your product development process, your firms services and offerings?

Lifetime value of your customers

We are all human, and our natural tendency is to relate, personally and socially, and build lasting relationships. Your customers are not interested in one-time transactions: they want to know that they can trust you, that you will treat them fairly and that there is a mutual respect. At the same time, with globalization and the Internet, they also know that they have choices.

Lets say a new customer walked through your doors. Do you know the average lifetime value of that customer to your business? How about the cost of acquiring that new customer? Think about it, how many new customers has your business lost over few dollars, bad customer service experience, unintuitive website or misrepresentation of your product capabilities? More importantly, how do you share that knowledge with your employees?

Go beyond requirements

It is all too familiar: marketing requirements, functional requirements, architectural requirements, … But customers don’t buy requirements, they buy products and services to get a job done. They measure the benefits of your product and service against how well, how fast, how cheaply, how profitably and how reliably that job is done.

In What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services, Anthony W. Ulwick outlines that for an innovation process to be successful, firms must understand what jobs/activities/tasks are the customers’ pain point, what outcome they are wanting to achieve and the potential constraints that stop the customer from using your product and service. Aligning this knowledge with your firm’s brand value is the foundation for creating loyal customers. To obtain this intimate knowledge, one needs to go beyond the ‘voice of the customer’ and actually walk a mile in your customers’ shoes.

Know how your customers judge your value

Your development team needs to know your product and service’s performance measures to design and test the product against. Your customers may not be able to articulate this beyond some standard measures: Megapixels? I dunno, just want to take quality pictures with an easy to use camera. But, how do you define and measure image quality or ease of use?

I enjoy working with customers throughout the development process. Alpha and beta tests are also great way to collect and understand what customers value, how they use and interact with your product. However, they are late in the development cycle and can be a challenge on schedules. With that, how you incorporate and learn from your customer research is even more important for your learning organization.

Know all your customers

Do you know all your customers? How well do you understand their jobs, pain points and what keeps them up at night? Just think back to the last time you were at Staples looking at purchasing a printer. Even though those products are targeted to consumers, the distribution channel partner is also a customer. The lack of readily available information about these products in the store is amazing, considering how much this literature will help make a sale. Yet, the store should be concerned about making quick sales and providing good customer service without increases in staff or training costs.

The distribution channel partner is an obvious example. Your customers may vary between obvious, unobvious and opportunistic ones. Examples could include the kids that are buying products for their elderly parents or companies that want to utilize your services for their promotional needs, such as advertisement placements on buses. Think about all customers of your products and services, and address and balance their needs and pain points.

Grow with your customers

Life is about change. Stay connected with your customers and continue to deliver value as their needs, desires, values and tasks change and evolve. If you don’t, your competitors will.

Technorati Tags: customer knowledge, innovation

Lets say that your Product Marketing manager stopped by for a quick chat, and as she is leaving she drops a bomb: “Lets implement CIP4’s JDF in the next product release.” Thankfully, you have enough self-control and can resist the urge to let numerous four-letter-words fly out of your mouth… Instead you nod your head and respond, “That’s an interesting idea. Let’s make time to talk about it more.”

Throughout my career, I had opportunities to interact with standards at varying degrees: leading the definition, and implementation or usage in my products. Though each one was fun, challenging and unique on its own way, my JDF experience definitely makes to my top 3. You see, JDF is an immense 850-page (about 3” thick) standard that covers anything and everything that relates to digital printing and the graphics art industry. So, when it gets dropped on your lap, you do take it seriously for various reasons, one of which is to keep your engineers from fainting (or quitting) on the spot.

Standards seem to trigger a love-hate relationship between marketing and engineering. This is mainly true for standards that are defined and sanctioned by a standards organization body vs. de facto industry standards. This tension can be better understood by looking at the benefits and challenges of implementing standards.

Benefits of standards:

• Standards enable interoperability among diverse and often competing products and services. Even though fax machines existed in the mid-to-late 19th century, it wasn’t until implementation of related standards (as well as reduction of cost of technology components) that they became popular in the 1970s.
• Interoperability helps encourage and build an ecosystem of complementary products and services. In many ways, it can also lead to the success of an industry. The examples span from AC outlets in your home, to the Bluetooth headset for your phone, to the USB connection on your printer.
• Customers value open standards. From their perspective, proprietary standards (or lack of standards) lock them into a product, service and/or a vendor combination. Their entire investment could be at risk if a product is discontinued, or as their needs change they may not be able to grow with the same vendor.
• Standards allow firms to focus their resources on what really counts and what differentiates them from the rest of the pack.
• Standards can drive commodization, which enable off-the-shelf availability of these technologies, tools and services. By leveraging this, you can reduce your time to market, improve overall quality and reduce your costs, such as in the case of first IBM-PC.
• Firms’ strategic direction and competitive differentiation can be built on standards, such as in the case of QualComm. Standards can help you drive your partnership approach to building an ecosystem of complementary products to enrich your technology and products.

Challenges of standards:

• Standards organizations are often comprised of competing firms, and as such the result can be viewed as just good enough, where it is built on the lowest common denominator of ideas and approaches.
• As it is a standard, it is difficult for a vendor to differentiate just on the standard alone. After all, standards are meant to level the playing field. The implementation may be limited by the standard, and lack the ability to incorporate innovations or to improve in any one performance vector. If a firm decides to add these performance vectors, such as using custom extensions, often they will break the standard, as in the case of Microsoft with Internet Explorer.
• Standards and the certification required to get your logo can be expensive. Often there are proprietary technologies that can accomplish the same task without this extra cost. It can be less costly to go with a generic RF transmission system than to be certified to the Bluetooth standard.
• The fact that a standard exist doesn’t mean it is useful or correct. Not all standards organizations take interoperability and the validation process very seriously. This does contribute to a reduction in the overall usefulness of the standard, and reduces the chances of follow on versions.
• Too often a standard is nothing more than a line item on a product data sheet. As a result, it consumes precious resources from the engineering department while not adding to the overall product competitiveness or functionality.

I personally appreciate standards as they contribute to solution ecosystem that can enrich my customers’ businesses. Here are some ways that I have learned to improve the overall standards implementation experience for the businesses that I worked in.

• Take time to educate your organization. Make sure every functional group understands what the standard means, how it enhances your product and service, what are the benefits that can be derived from the standard (benefit) as well as what it would take to implement it (cost). Too often the cost of implementation is underestimated while the benefit is over-exaggerated. So, use the education process to set appropriate expectations and align the organization.
• Analyze how the standard can be best incorporated into your product line. While the interoperability and automation may be your core competency, specific technology implementation may not be. Leverage existing resources and partners to improve time to market and overall quality of your implementation.
• Recognize that a given standard has a specific version, interoperability conformance specification and potentially other related implementation rules and guidelines. One of my pet-peeves is developing to a standard that is half implemented. Imagine putting on your product sheet “Supports standard abc version xyz, except for the following sub-sections: …..” If parts of the spec doesn’t make sense or are not useful, take it up with the standards body and improve it.
• In many cases, a given standard can open up opportunities for the overall business that didn’t exist before. In those cases where it can become a strategic differentiation for your business, such as building partnerships and alliances to enrich your overall product offering, push your organization to take advantage of it. You can also utilize these partnerships to validate the interoperability of your implementation. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
• Decide what your overall position will be in regards to this standard activity. Is it yet another line item, potential participation in the committee, active involvement in the definition of the standard or an opportunity to lead the standard’s definition. This decision can be especially important where you have a competing proprietary solution: do you compete against the standard with your proprietary technology, do you maintain both technologies in your product line, or do you incorporate your proprietary functionality into the standard and discontinue yours at some point in the future.

In summary, though standards can be an irritation for your organization, they also can represent a strategic opportunity for your technology, your products and your firm. As a technology manager you get paid the big bucks to determine how best to take advantage of standards and incorporate them into your technology and product roadmaps. Enjoy the ride.

Technorati Tags: standards, requirements, logo compliance, interoperability, ecosystems, standard vs. proprietary, level playing field, standards as strategy

One advantage of working for a large company is that they have all the resources, including a technology group that handles all the licensing activities. An advantage of self-employment is that I have the ability to dive into different interesting areas that I did not have the opportunity to before.

I talked about intangible assets before. Patents are one of the most quantifiable and perhaps most controversial forms of intangible assets. IBM is famous for its patent portfolio, and for maintaining the top slot for the number of patents issued year after year. Not to forget, their technology licensing revenue generates over $1B annually. If you are interested, check out IFI’s latest report on 2007 top patent owners.

Technology licensing can be a great revenue model for a small firm that does not have the resources to enter or effectively compete in its target markets, or where their technology is applicable to a number of industries. Technology licensing can also enable firms to derive additional revenues through their intangible assets, such as in the case with IBM, ARM, etc. Such licensing agreements can enable a firm to enter a new market quickly and/or reduce potential risks, such as with going into a foreign market. Technology licensing also plays a role in the establishment of industry standards, such as with Qualcomm and CDMA technologies. Through cross-licensing, firms can also gain greater freedom to develop new products and compete in new markets without worrying about potential litigation.

In simple terms, technology licensing is an agreement where one party (the licensor) owns valuable intangible asset(s), and gives another party (the licensee) the legal right to use, modify and/or potentially resell that intangible asset in exchange for some form of compensation. These valuable intangible assets, or intellectual properties (IP), could be patents, copyrighted materials, expertise/know-how, trade secrets, trademarks, and more. There are also many different types of IP licensing: patents, technology licenses, copyrights, trademarks to name a few. In summary, for an effective licensing agreement one needs:

• A licensor, who must have the ownership of the IP, and IP must be protected (or eligible for protection) by law.
• A license that indicates what rights are granted to the licensee.
• A compensation method (lump sum, royalty, cross licensing, …) that is clearly stated and agreed upon.

Technology licensing is certainly an untapped potential for many firms. It is a high margin business that can bring recurring revenue after the initial investment is made and development activity is completed. From a business perspective, building a technology licensing program should be strategically planned, carefully managed, aggressively marketed and legally protected. Below are some of the key building blocks relating to challenges of establishing a technology licensing program. In future articles I will get into some these in more detail. As always, drop me a note if any topics rings an interest with you.

View your technology licensing program as a business
IP, once viewed as a cost center, is now the focus of many firms as a potential revenue stream. However, to maximize their value, these intellectual assets need to be managed to become a profitable business. This process could be handled by establishing a licensing team (a combination of individuals who are intimately knowledgeable with the technologies, business people, product managers) that would have the responsibility to determine potential exploitation mechanisms for the technology. In addition to providing the IP rights, you may be required to develop a service business to support your customers. After all, if your customer is not successful, you are not successful. Whatever your strategy, make sure you establish a strategic intellectual property plan and process to maximize the value of your intangible assets.

Establish an effective organization structure to manage IP
Your organization structure will influence how effectively you can manage your IP. Smaller companies usually delegate the intellectual property asset management function to outside experts. Larger companies usually have their own departments for handling intellectual property asset management related functions, such as IP development, licensing and litigation. However, unless there is an integrated strategic plan and/or centralized management of all IP, it will be a challenge to maximize their potential value due to conflict of long-term vs. short-term focus. In addition to your organization structure, your organizational incentives will also determine how effectively you can build, support and grow your licensing business.

Utilize IP expertise
Licensing strategies differs from technology to technology, market to market, prospect to prospect, as well as US vs. foreign markets. In addition, your success depends on the successful outcome of the licensing negotiation. License terms capture conflicting interests between the licensee and licensor that require careful negotiation and trade-offs. So, get an expert to successfully navigate the unknown waters.

Know your legal protection rights
For your technology licensing business to be viable, you need to have technology that is legally protectable by law. So, whether you are utilizing patents, copyrights, trademarks or other methods, know how to protect them and what the process is in case of infringement. Also realize that litigation is quite expensive and takes time. So, do your homework and manage the risk.

Recognize you are in a marathon
You can’t just build your patent portfolio and stop. Technologies and markets move too fast. You need to build your innovation culture to keep churning new ideas and to build on existing ones to further improve their protection. Otherwise, it will be a short-lived business.

Remember to get paid
Licensing revenue leakage is lost revenue.Your license management program is the key part of your process to ensure you collect your royalties on-time. In addition, your program also needs to ensure that licensees are complying with the terms of the license and operating within the boundaries agreed upon.

Learn to value your intangibles
Putting a $ amount on your intangibles is perhaps the most challenging part of the process. How do you determine what the licensee would be willing to pay and under what payment terms? Understanding how your technology will benefit the potential licensee (cost reduction, competitive positioning, new markets, …) both financially and strategically, is an important starting point. Also, continuously evaluate your strategic market position and maintain your leadership status in the market to maximize your value.

Technorati Tags: technology management, intangible assets, intellectual property

TV pilots, especially the successful ones, are a great analogy for how to conduct product concept demos. At least, that is the insight I gained as I was watching the pilot episode of House M.D. You see, I am working with an early stage startup who’s getting ready for their demo to secure more funding. So, my goal is to get some creative juices flowing and get connected with my muses for more creative powers… So, lets take a look at how to build a successful product demo by dissecting a pilot episode.

First, you gotta start with a compelling concept. This does not mean you spend the next 20 minutes lecturing someone in the coolness of your technology. But, it is about focusing on the problem that you are solving, and succinctly explaining how your product solves it and why people will buy it. The key is to highlight your unique differentiation, your original angle, so it captures interest and makes people curious.

Once you got the interest, next is your story line. As you are putting your story together, keep the focus on what makes you and your product unique, as well as what its key selling points are. Remember, it is not about showing every single feature of your product, but more about incorporating your purpose and your compelling concept into your demo. If you say everything, you end up saying noting at all… So, build a story line around what matters, such as your users, and make it fantastic.

You also need to build in drama and diversity. Remember, to make it stick, you gotta make it simple, concrete, credible, emotional and bring unexpectedness with each story (Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.) What will make the show catchy so people will tune in week after week, season after season? So, talk about the state of the industry, where things are heading, who are your competitors, why they can’t copy you and how you plan to sustain your competitive advantage. Make it exciting as you talk about the commercialization potentials of your product, what you will leverage and how. Most importantly, make it stick!

What about the special effects? Certainly who you are, the brand and the image of your company and product, needs to come through loud and clear during the presentation. However, have you ever seen a pilot episode having a better special effects than even the first season release? Make the quality of your presentation (images, graphs, …) as great as possible, but don’t forget about what really matters the most.

Lets not forget your cast and crew. After all, chemistry and ability to work together on and off the set is just as important as the artistic credibility of the individuals. So, highlight your team and their background. Especially if you have exceptional skills and experiences in the team. Remember, you gotta be credible! Not to forget truthful and passionate about what your are doing. You can’t tell it; you have to show it and mean it!

Lastly, don’t forget to study your audience before the presentation. Think about it, pitching The Man Show to Lifetime Movie Network makes as much sense as Chewbacca living on the planet Endor. So, research the backgrounds of the individuals you are meeting with and tailor your presentation to deliver to their requirements. Be confident and comfortable with your audience.

This covers the key elements of building your demo. Now, your script also needs to deal with your business model. The amount of time you need to spend on it during your demo will mainly depend on two factors: 1) how far along you are in your business; and 2) your audience. For early stage startups, many investors look at the business model as a moving target. So, with that, your story, the problem you are solving, how you are solving it and what you have prototyped is far more important than any 5-year projections.

However, that doesn’t let you off the hook. You need to have a clear understanding of your business and be able to sell them on your elevator pitch. So be ready with an executive summary of your business plan that not only they can walk away with, but also compels them to take action. In a way, this is the rolled up summary of your presentation that is clear, to the point and exciting. And, not to forget realistic.

With that… Lights, camera, action!

Technorati Tags: business pitch, product demo, chewbacca

The article, “Tough CEOs Often Most Successful, A Study Finds“, was published in the WSJ.com last week. The research conducted by three University of Chicago business-school professors highlights that the ‘hard’ skills count more than ’soft’ skills when it comes to success.

In this research, hard skills refers to traits that “get things done”: persistence, efficiency, analytical thinking and setting high standards. Soft skills, on the other hand, include teamwork, creativity, persuasion, listening skills, enthusiasm and treating people with respect.

I have been chewing on these findings, and frankly I find the results conflict with my experience. I have found that innovation and technology management revolves around people: whether it is about motivating your team or pushing the diffusion/adoption of your new innovation and technology. Yes, to be successful one does need the hard skills mentioned here. However, I don’t believe it is possible to be successful nor establish a sustainable success without the soft skills, which are downplayed in the study.

Here are some highlights from my other postings on innovation and the need for soft skills.

• Innovation requires both sides of your brain — You can’t just be creative, but also need to be analytical to successfully exploit the opportunity. Think out of the box, look for connections even seemingly unrelated, be open to and seek new experiences and ideas, be observative and keenly inquisitive. Know that the future is unwritten and full of opportunities. Be positive, hopeful and optimistic, regardless of the current situation. But, while dreaming big, start small, simple and with focus. Iteratively build on your previous successes, and create your future one step at a time.
• Strategy and its execution requires ownership at all levels — This means everyone, from the CEO on down. Executive leadership must embed strategy in the organization: from its people, to its processes, to its culture and values. Any strategy, however brilliant, will fail unless people are emotionally committed to its success. In order to achieve unwavering commitment, people need to be involved in the strategy process early, they need to understand and believe in the strategy, and they need to feel included. The organization’s culture, values, incentives, people, structure and processes all contribute to how the existing internal environment will support its strategy.
• Innovation is change — In this case, change applies to all aspect of innovation process, not just the final output. Innovation is ambiguous and requires failures to achieve success. Innovation is also a change in behavior of customers, in how they work and produce something. Yet, market adoption and acceptance is a complex process where one rarely has the power to control or dictate.
• Innovation starts with people — Innovations do not occur by themselves: they are generated and sustained through the efforts of individuals and people. Creativity, commitment and persistence drives the innovation process. How well an organization cultivates and nurtures the creativity, knowledge creation and invention process plays into their innovation capability. Yet, it is important to note that these are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful innovation; but they do make up the foundation that innovations are built upon.
• Your organizational culture is linked to your firm’s success — Various studies and surveys indicate the link between organizational culture and firm’s success. Denison Consulting’s 2006 study links high performance in key areas of the organizational culture (adaptability, consistency, mission and involvement) to long-term financial performance and short-term sales growth.

Innovation and top line growth is a concern for today’s CEOs. Yet at the same time, many will admit that only a small percentage of their innovative ideas, products and technologies are getting commercialized. Maybe this should not come as such a surprise, given that these CEOs are focusing on hard skills. Maybe even the successful CEOs are missing the crucial aspect of what it takes to innovate and drive innovation in their firms, limiting their true potential. Perhaps a follow on study should be made which compares/contrasts the successful and innovative CEOs in areas of character traits and skills. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Tough CEOs Often Most Successful, innovation, soft and hard skills

“We cannot direct the wind,
but we can adjust the sails”
— Contemporary Western Proverb

Your firm is a living organism, a complex system. As with all living systems, it self-maintains, self-renews and evolves. The firms that recognize themselves as a living organism, a learning organization are aware of their environment, their place in the ecosystem and the shifts that are occurring. This awareness and sensitivity to internal and external changes gives them the flexibility to adjust and adapt.

“Adapt or die” is a common phrase that highlights the importance of survival for firms. As firms adapt and evolve, the organization determines and selects the traits necessary for the survival and through its culture continuously reinforces it. This continuous process of adaptation and evolution further ensures the success and survival of the successive generation.

The life-cycle refers to our knowledge and generalization of living systems, the principles and laws that govern life from birth till death. As businesses, we also go through our life-cycle stages. As always, these are guidelines and not definite steps. As with my son that skipped the crawling stage and went to straight to walking, firms can also skip stages. Here are the common stages of a business life-cycle:

• Seed: Similar to a plant life-cycle, the seed stage represents the germination of a compelling concept and the push for finding the first set of customers to validate the idea. The firm’s main challenge is market acceptance, and managing resources and time effectively.
• Startup: This stage is characterized as customer acceptance, where the focus shifts to obtaining new customers and delivering on the product’s promise. Usually at this stage, the firm has enough customers, are able to keep them satisfied and the focus is shifting from survival to managing revenues and expenses. The firms’ main challenge is to have checks and balances to ensure they are on track, and managing the burn rate. This is where you don’t want to run out of money…
• Growth: Congratulations, you have proven the idea, showed the market validity and are now acquiring many more new customers. The growth stage is a milestone that marks the validation of the idea, which also means increased competition. If the firm is focused on growth, it will strive for operational excellence, proper scaling of the product and the business, and will look at ways to expand into new businesses, markets and customers.
• Decline: This stage is usually marked by the reduced revenue and profitability. At this stage, there may be a crisis that calls for action and renewal. Or, the organization might be the frog in a pot of cold water, slowly being boiled, not realizing the situation they are in. All focus is now on managing negative cash flow and costs.
• Exit: The exit stage is all about closing the doors whether due to bankruptcy, selling the business, acquisition by someone, … This process mainly includes proper valuation of the company. There maybe psychological and financial impact that should be managed.

Just like a child growing up, each stage is a change, requiring different nurturing and focus areas for its survival. Yet, basics are needed for survival at every stage: basic management skills, basic financial knowhow, basic marketing competencies. In addition, there are also other factors to consider:

• Clarity on what you are and what you are not. This is important for your internal decision making, for your customers and your brand image. This continuous adjustment, explicit commitment and mutual adjustment from everyone is needed to achieve results.
• Know how you compete. Many new firms excel because they stress customer service and flexibility over what established firms can offer. This coupled with focus on high-quality products, flexibility in responding to customer needs and product customization gives them a boost in the market over competition.
• Innovate while managing your core business. It is too easy to put all your eggs in one basket or over commit yourself. Innovation and technology strategies correlated with growth, but need to be managed.
• Understand other life-cycles in motion, such as those of your customers. Where they are in their adoption curve drives their purchasing behavior and risk profile.

Technorati Tags: business life-cycle, business survival skills

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker

Innovation and risk goes hand in hand. Many initial attempts at trying something new fails. However, through those failures we learn, adopt and improve. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Part of establishing an innovation culture is about emphasizing importance of taking risks, trying new things and learning from each failure that comes with the territory. However, to be agile and be successful, you need to be quick at evaluating new ideas, and either moving them through the innovation funnel or killing them.

Tools and methods for performing quick validation of your ideas are the focus of this blog. Here, quick means anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days, and at most a couple of weeks.

One page project summary and/or press release

Start with refining and focusing your idea. A one page project summary and/or an imaginary press release are a great way to highlight your idea’s benefits and value. Your product pitch should include:

• Description of the product and service;
• Description of what customer problem it solves;
• Key customer benefits and features;
• Identification of key performance vectors;
• Positioning statement and value proposition;
• Indication of the logical customers and markets;
• Estimates of market potential, profitability and price;
• Fanciful customer comments and raves;

Your goal is to generate interest and excitement with your sponsors and potential customers. Any reaction less than an interest is a good indication of either needing to rework your product pitch or your idea.

Build your idea pre-screening criteria

Evaluate each of your ideas against your pre-screening criteria. The goal is to identify and ditch poor ideas early in the innovation life cycle process. You should evaluate all ideas based on business and technical criteria, such as below.

• How well the idea fits within the firm: vision, mission, objectives, core competencies, resources, …
• How well is the idea protected: IP, any barriers to entry to discourage competition, …
• What is the competitor landscape and do they have an alternative solution;
• What is the impact of the idea on existing technology and resources;
• What are the profit goals and metrics, what is the ROI;
• What is the market size and growth;

As a note of caution, you should monitor your pass/fail idea metrics here. Too many passes, i.e. ideas moving forward in the innovation funnel, could highlight a poor pre-screening criteria. Along the same lines, too many fails, ideas dismissed, could indicate you are dismissing potentially good ideas and being too conservative.

Prototyping and Fast Prototyping

Prototyping is a great way to explore the idea on hands-on way.

• Provides quick validation of the concept, and identification of risks and uncertainties;
• Gives insights into new competencies to be developed and cultural changes that need to occur;
• Enables a tangible way to explore the problem space with others;
• Becomes a vehicle for demonstrating your idea, possible product design and feature set with your customers;

Killer Innovations’ Phil McKinney takes this a step further and introduces the concept of fast prototypes: hours and at most days (vs. weeks). Please remember, these fast prototypes are not functional, as the goal is to get early feedback on the idea.

Tom Kelley in the The Art of Innovation has a great section on the value of prototyping and its application in real-life stories. He summarizes prototyping clearly:

“Prototyping is problem solving. It’s a culture and a language. You can prototype just about anything – a new product or service, or a special promotion. What counts is moving the ball forward, achieving some part of your goal.

Not wasting time.”

Get in the head of your customer

Focus on what problems you are solving with your product and how it benefits your customers. Does it save time or money, enable new revenue stream or improve the quality of their existing solution? Describe your ideal customer, and where possible engage in exploration and validation activities with them. You can explore through in-depth reviews and open-ended questions, or just observe them in their own environment doing day-to-day activities. These observations can help understand in what ways your idea would benefit the customer, as well as identify any unarticulated needs and problems.

If real-life exploration is not possible, create a storyboard of your typical customer through brainstorming, associations and role-playing. As crazy as this sounds, it will give you a sense of whom you are targeting: what they are worried about, what they care about and what they would pay for. In return, this becomes a platform for you to test your ideas: Would Susie pay extra for that feature?.

Co-Design with your customers

Involve your customers in your innovation process. Simple UI mock-ups, web-conference discussions on their impressions and insights can clarify any potential issues in advance. You can also rely on your customers to help make the needed tradeoffs in product functionality.

Connect with the experts: inside & outside the company

In identifying and understanding possibilities, risks and uncertainties, tap into the experts. Just like opinion polls, these experts could provide insights and observations based on their experiences and knowledge. They can also help craft scenarios and perform scenario analysis.

Note of caution, the inputs from the experts are their best guestimation and judgment based on what is known. To reduce the bias and improve the results you can utilize tools such as the Delphi method.

Final thoughts…

• Teams tagged for validation need to have the time to focus on this activity. If full time availability is not an option, enable the employees to spend 15-30% of their working time on innovative projects and research.
• Establish a cross-functional team. Technology is an enabler, and sole focus on technology will not ensure product success in the market.
• Nothing is certain in life, except death. So, if after all the validation a failure occurs (and it will occur) in another stage, that is part of life and the learning process.

Technorati Tags: idea pre-screening, quick idea validation

Today is the Blog Action Day and this year’s topic is the environment. As technology managers, we are in a position of influence to reduce our impact on the environment. How we develop our innovations and technologies have just as much impact on the environment as the type of innovation and technologies we are working on. Here are few ideas on how we can incorporate more environmentally friendly decisions into our day-to-day technology management activities.

• Design decisions: environmentally friendly material selections, architectures that specifically focus on less power usage, equipment selection that is energy efficient;
• Project management methodologies: reduce paper usage for reports, etc., invest in collaborative technologies to reduce travel as well as enable individuals to work from home;
• Development and testing tools: virtualization tools to help reduce the number of needed servers for development and testing;
• Programs and promotions: recycle older products and parts, reduce packaging waste, use greener materials for sales brochures;

Yes, going green and the environment requires a shift in our thinking. However, it is not an either/or type of question. Going green will improve your customer relationships, and ultimately save money for your firm and your customers.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is the familiar 3Rs focused on producing less waste by the environmentally aware consumers. As a family, we include a 4th R: Refuse: refuse to clutter the environment with unnecessary waste.

Apply the 4R philosophy (Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, Recycle) into your projects. Remember, every little step counts.

Technorati Tags: blog action day, blogactionday

I previously wrote about technology management, its definition and areas where a technology manager often struggles. In high-tech companies, especially startups, the technologist also plays the role of a product manager. Regardless, a firm’s success depends on how well its technology and products are managed.

The two functions bring opposing perspectives to the table. The technology manager believes that the technology will drive excitement, generate royalties and create new markets: technology push. The product manager believes that the market should dictate the product and technology directions: market pull. However, to be successful the firm needs both. It needs to effectively manage and bridge the gap from technology idea to product commercialization.

Note: product marketing and product management functions tend to be quite blurred depending on many factors, such as the size of the firm, if it is a startup, or a service vs. technology firm. For the purpose of this article, I’m focusing on product management as the aspect of defining a product and driving its commercialization process.

Dr. Jolly (Commercializing New Technologies: Getting from Mind to Market) defines technology as a capability that is embodied in one or more products. As a capability, technology enables the company to compete in different dimensions: higher value products, cost advantage, attract new markets and customers. Technology development and commercialization is multifaceted. It is not only about the product’s end-customer. It incorporates shareholders that are interested in embedding the capability to other products, or licensing the technology fully or componentizing and selling aspects of it to partners and in some cases competitors.

Products are targeted to an end-user (the customer), where it satisfies a market want or need. The main concern of product management is to identify the best way to realize value from the product’s commercialization process. It is also keeping the features at bay; saying ‘no’ to developers and sometimes the customers, that feature bloat is bad.

Product managers are a constant in the lifecycle of a product. They own the product completely from conception to market launch and beyond. As new projects relating to a given product are launched, the product manager continues to define the project goals and guide the cross-functional teams to achieve the business and market objectives. Ideally, they know their customers and market better than their customers know themselves. In a way, they are the soul of the product, keeping us true to its vision.

For both, change is constant. Managing change, selling new ideas, relieving people’s fears and managing risk is big part of the job. After all, opportunity lies between the cracks of the problem and potential solutions. And, the successful product manager goes beyond just answering the articulated needs/problems of her customers.

A firm drives competitive advantage from innovations that clearly deliver breakthrough value to their customers. However, in order to enable such breakthrough potential, the technology manager needs to have insight into not just technology capabilities, but its application, as well as customer and market needs.

At the end of the day, it is the job of the technology and product manager to turn what is complex into something simple, bringing value and benefit to its users. Unfortunately, through the process, what is extraordinary becomes ordinary. So, it is their job to keep the spark, the excitement and never ending possibilities going.

Technorati Tags: technology vs. product management, product manager, technology manager