The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on “Working Together… When Apart: As employees scatter around the globe, virtual teamwork has become crucial. Here are 10 rules for making it work” by Lynda Gratton (June 16-17, 2007). You can access the article on WSJ.com or Business Insight section of MITSloan Management Review.

After managing a large team of globally distributed developers, I also came up with my rules for making virtual teams work. So, if you have to play the hand that is already dealt, here are my rules for building high-performance virtual teams.

1. Align organizational values to support virtual teams — Just do it! might be a great slogan for encouraging employees to act, but not as effective when the goal is to improve teamwork and communication between your dispersed teams, especially at the early stages of team forming and storming (reference: Tuckman Model of Team Development). Along the same lines, e-mail might be your preferred mode of communication, but it can also be a challange for teams where English is their second language. You’ll be suprised to see how a simple phone call can improve team productivity, communication and morale.
2. Think local, act global — Not everyone can work productively in isolation, i.e. limited face-to-face contact, work is done mainly through e-mail, IM and some phone conferences. So, where possible look for ways to establish a small team working together at a given location. It will improve trust, build a sense of commitment and support the feeling of being part of a larger team. Also, support diversity by encouraging each of your locations to have their own culture. However, make sure they all share your common organizational values.
3. Practice transparency and objectivity — This is a good rule to follow regardless, but even more important if you are managing a virtual team. Remember, someone’s perception becomes another’s reality. Transparency enables interested parties to understand what and why, while objectivity brings facts, diverse perspectives and sense of fairness into the discussion.
4. Agree and enforce team processes — The last thing you need is an unexpected check-in right before a major build and release cycle. Make sure your team understand and follows the agreed upon procedures and tools.
5. Promote leaders with good facilitation skills — When bringing diverse teams and experiences into a new project, it helps to have a good facilitator that has everyone’s trust and respect. See my previous post on characteristics of a good facilitator.
6. Risk manage your project — Vacations, sick days, and unexpected issues are inevitable. However, these emergencies are ever more heightened when dealing with differences in time zones and communication gaps. With that, risk manage your project by identifying and assigning backup individuals to risky areas, or dividing up the work among different sites.
7. Rotate meeting times and locations — Working across different time zones and locations is disruptive to personal life. So, share the load by rotating meeting times and face-to-face meeting locations.
8. Mandate a day of silence — Although it is great to have a team that can virtually work 24×6, and maybe even 24×7, the overhead associated with working in a virtual environment can be wearying. So, depending on the intensity of the interactions, declare a day, such as every virtual Friday, as a quiet day. This will give everyone a break, and allow people to recharge their batteries.

So, what works for you?

Technorati Tags: Working Together… When Apart, virtual teams, building high-performance virtual teams

This is the continuation of my previous blogs on roadmapping:

• Roadmaps and Roadmapping: What and Why
• Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping
• How To Manage The Initiation Phase For Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping
• Get Down To Business: Developing Your Product-Technology Roadmap

Once the roadmap is developed, the next step in the process is its communication and implementation. If you thought the hard work is behind you, think again. This phase can be one of the most challenging activities for an organization, especially if the recommendations require complex cultural and leadership changes.

Conversant has defined a conversational model which they referred to as the cycle of value. The cycle of value promotes establishing a shared purpose, ownership, accountability and building a foundation for learning and improving. This model also fits well with the steps required for a successful dissemination of our roadmap.

The cycle of value has 3 distinct phases:

• Align — conversations are focused on building a shared purpose and understanding;
• Act — conversations are centered for successful launch of initiatives and clarification of accountabilities;
• Adjust — conversations are all about reviewing results, learning and improving;

Lets examine these phases from the perspective of disseminating our roadmap. You can read more about the cycle of value and other conversational tools in the Communication Catalyst: the Fast (But Not Stupid) Track to Value for Customers, Investors, and Employees by Mickey Connolly and Richard Rianoshek.

Align

The goal of this phase is to create a shared purpose and vision for our roadmap: know-why, know-what, know-how and know-when. With that, it not only requires communication of the roadmap, but also the validation and critiquing by all stakeholders. The communication methodology should enrich the roadmap by enabling collection and processing of the insights gathered during discussions. In addition, this phase should also include:

• Evaluation of risk vs. return;
• Deciding among the alternative strategies;
• Agreement on the prioritization of activities and projects;
• Plan for change;

Act

Once the alignment is achieved, next step is to put in motion the needed projects and activities as agreed by the roadmap. This includes:

• Initiation of relevant projects and partnerships;
• Commitment of resources and budget;
• Agreement on the performance measures, targets and key milestones;
• Announcement of clear owners and accountabilities;

Adjust

The value of your roadmap is directly correlated to whether its information is kept current and up to date. However, keeping the roadmapping process alive is one of the challenges that an organization faces. As such, investigate ways to incorporate your roadmap review/update process to your business strategic planning or budgeting cycles. Also, identify clear owners, frequencies and method of review/update cycle that will be used for keeping your roadmap current.

Adjust phase should include concise summary of accomplishments, challenges/disappointments, new insights, changes in the competitive landscape as well as the review/status of the critical success factors for successful roadmap implementation that were previously identified. Based on the review, any needed updates to the roadmap should be initiated and followed with dissemination of the roadmap as discussed. Below is the visual summary of the roadmapping process steps I have laid out: initiation, development and dissemination.

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, product-technology-roadmapping, roadmap, cycle of value

This is the continuation of my previous blogs on roadmapping:

• Roadmaps and Roadmapping: What and Why
• Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping
• How To Manage The Initiation Phase For Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping

The development phase of the roadmapping process involves building an action plan and clearly answering why-what-how-when questions for achieving the objective that was defined during the initiation phase. As I mentioned before, roadmapping is a flexible process and it can come in many different forms: market, technology, product, service, capability, science/research, product/technology, etc. This blog specifically focuses on product-technology roadmaps and roadmapping process.

The product-technology roadmapping process may start with the needs of the market and customers, customer/market focused roadmap, or maybe focused on identifying markets and customer segments that could be served with a specific product or technology, product/technology focused roadmap. Regardless, product-technology roadmapping is a needs-driven planning process, where key technologies are identified and linked to the product or product lines to satisfy the strategic intent of the firm over a given period of time. The strategic planning activity links three critical elements: customer/market needs, products and technologies.

Given the intensity of the roadmapping activity, it is important to define and manage the process accordingly. I have outlined a generic process based on my experience that you can customize to your needs. Finally, keep in mind the 9 critical success factors as you launch into the development phase.

Say “no” to paralysis by analysis

The research portion of the development phase is focused on gathering data on market, customer and technology within the scope and boundaries defined during the initiation phase of the roadmap. SWOT, Porter’s 5 Forces, STEEP, forecasting, and ecosystem mapping are some of the tools that can be utilized for information gathering and organizing. There are many sources available in the public domain including marketing data, patents, industry standards, industry publications and analyst reports. Where applicable, research adjacent markets, emerging technologies, collaboration sources and value networks. The goal is to build deep understanding of the market, customer and technologies by investigating the trends, drivers, needs, and noting relevant specific and quantifiable targets.

Information collected during the research stage is then processed during the brainstorm portion of the development phase. The goal at this stage is to sift through all the data to identify and align key needs, benefits, drivers, features, products, customer segments, partnerships, and technologies that can support the strategic intent of the firm. This is also where strategic opportunities and strategic problems are captured. Scenario planning can be useful for discussing alternatives, trying out different approaches, or to just get the creative juices flowing. At this stage, it is important to look beyond the data and challenge known assumptions, as it will lead to more creative and innovative ideas for the analysis stage.

During the analyze portion of development the goal is to develop hypothesis, paths, options and determine the critical solution requirements for the product-technology roadmap in question. Ideas need to be analyzed for strategic fit, core competency alignment, and implementation feasibility; checked to see if fits within the boundaries; and prioritized. To be most effective, asking questions and challenging assumptions is most needed for this aspect of the process. Here, scenario planning can also bring flexibility into the roadmapping process by establishing alternatives that would drive the decision making for things such as technology selection, patent protection or standards compliance.

The drafting of the roadmap is the process of distilling the needed information into a format that is ready for communication and sharing. I have captured the minimum set of information that should be on your roadmap report as part of your checklist.
You should also visually represent your roadmap in whatever form best meet your needs, as long as you keep in mind to show the integration of key pieces of information in a multi-layer format with a time-line.

Finally, before launching into the dissemination phase of the roadmap process, you need to verify & validate your draft roadmap. This includes checks for completeness and validation of the roadmap through reviews with various stakeholders and groups, and hopefully agreement for the implementation and ownership of the roadmap.

Cartography of roadmapping

At a minimum, the draft roadmap report needs to include relevant information and assumptions used for developing the roadmap.

• Analysis and synthesis of market, customer and technology trends, drivers, challenges and opportunities;
• Relevant information on historical data about enabling/inhibiting economic and social dynamics: learning curves, adoption curves, inflection points, …
• Critical solution requirements, where applicable include specific and quantifiable targets;
• Key competencies and skills required for success in the future and identification of existing gaps;
• Key opportunities for innovation and differentiation;
• Critical success factors for a successful roadmap implementation;
• Options and alternatives for technology commercialization and technology diffusion including make/buy recommendations;
• Prioritized recommendations, including implementation recommendations;
• Key takeaways from the sessions in regards to short-term, mid-term and long-term directions;

The idea of integrating key pieces of information in a multi-layer format with a time-line is quite simple. However, actually putting that on a piece of paper, such that it can be easily communicated and maintained can be another story. There are many roadmapping software products in the market, however I have not personally used any of these tools. If you have experience with these tools, please share your observations. However, here are two basic layouts that you can customize for your needs.

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, product-technology roadmaps, strategic planning

This is continuation of my previous blog: Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping.

The initiation phase of the roadmapping process basically involves identifying team members, establishing executive-level sponsorship and defining scope and boundaries of the activity. As simple as these sound, I have seen time and time again activities come to halt when team doesn’t have the right skills, or is confused on the scope of their responsibility and does not have a sponsor who is able to remove the barriers that they are facing.

Team… Which team?

First and foremost, you need to identify a good facilitator to help drive the activities. This could be the person that is in the leadership role, or someone from outside the team, or maybe a set of individuals that rotate the facilitation responsibilities. However it is done, the chosen facilitator needs to exhibit certain characteristics:

• should have some level of experience as a group leader;
• recognizes that it is about the goals and accomplishments of the group, and objectively separates her personal opinions;
• continuously drives shared responsibility and ownership in the group, but not afraid to jump in to get the ball rolling when needed;
• quite comfortable with different personality styles, and not afraid of tension and conflict;
• understands the processes, and utilizes available tools when needed to help the team with idea generation, creative exploration, consensus building, team building, …
• effective listener, careful observer, good communicator, and motivator;

The Tuckman model of team development highlights 5 phases that teams go through: forming → storming → norming → performing → adjourning/transforming. It is the facilitator’s role to efficiently and effectively move the team through each stage.

The development phase of the roadmapping activity is intense. It requires knowledge and experience in the industry, market, customers, competitors, products, and technologies, as well as skills in analysis, problem solving, critical thinking and planning. Given that, you need a cross-functional team, subject matter experts, and individuals with diverse backgrounds and styles. Studies have shown that there is an inverse correlation between the team size and team effectiveness: the larger the team, the more complex communication, coordination and collaboration becomes. If you end up with less than an ideal team size of 5-9, experiment with different team structures, such as core vs. extended team, sub-teams, steering committee, advisory councils, etc. Your ultimate goal is to ensure that the collaborative roadmapping activity will result in shared ownership and accountability.

Did someone say sponsor?

Executive sponsorship and management commitment is crucial for a successful roadmapping process. For product-technology roadmaps, this is usually the business unit manager. However, in technology driven firms the activity is quite often sponsored through the R&D Director.

It is one thing to have an executive sponsor and another to have an effective working relationship with her. A sponsor can be a great benefit when steering through political and organizational waters, refining scope and boundary, removing barriers, identifying stakeholders and providing general guidance and coaching to the team. To build that relationship, agree on regular meetings for status updates and to raise and resolve issues. Anyone that had the pain of scheduling meetings for many busy senior-level managers will certainly appreciate getting help from your sponsor, such as using her staff meetings for regular team updates.

What is my box?

Before launching into the Development Phase, the team needs to clearly define the scope and boundaries: what is in and out, where does the activity begin and end. Developing a solid scope and getting an agreement with the team, sponsor and stakeholders is critical to the success of the team, and it is a negotiation and validation process.

The executive sponsor is ultimately responsible for stating and approving the need and timeframe for the roadmapping activity. This could be anything from achieving market leadership in 3-5 years, to building a competitive position with existing resources and budget in a new market in 3-5 years. However, this objective is what drives the activity, deliverables and analysis of alternatives.

To help define your scope and boundaries, here are some starting questions to think about:

• What products and technologies are included in the scope of the activity? What markets, customers and technologies are off the table?
• What organizational value chain processes (support, sales, services, manufacturing, …) are not included in the scope?
• What are the organizational and cross-organizational boundaries that should be considered?
• Are there any unspoken assumptions that needs to be clarified?

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, product-technology roadmaps

No doubt you have seen some technologies, products or how people are using them that made you wonder: what were they thinking?. Well, technology gone wild is about those cases where the technology and resulting products do more harm than good, and where the cost is greater than benefits.

• technology is clearly misused, misinterpreted or misapplied either by people or technology/product itself;
• technology has unintentional side effects, usually due to poor implementation;
• technology is used where it shouldn’t be used at all, basically an overkill;

TechDirt recently had a post: When In Doubt, Blame It On Technology. Apparently, in UK people are blindly following GPS directions, even if it leads them off the cliffs, or in some cases “right into the path of a speeding train”. Maybe it is time to rephrase the saying to would you jump off the bridge if your GPS told you?. Turns out authorities are starting put up “ignore your sat nav” signs at places, but how about adding a warning to GPS unit that repeats every 5 mins “use caution and common sense following directions”.

About the Google map directions mentioned in the comments section, it really does instruct to swim across the ocean: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi

Frankly, I like GPS technology and Google maps, and rely on them heavily when traveling. However, I also recognize the imperfections of the technology, like with Spring being the season of sprouting road construction work all around the City. At the same time, we need to build technologies for the lowest common denominator of our target users. So, how do you build automatic problem prevention in to your system? How about in the case of GPS, provide warning signals to mark railroad crossings, cliffs, or map areas of high uncertainty, and incorporate latest road conditions in regular map updates. Either way, thinking about our lowest common denominator target user will surely lead to development of better products.

Technorati Tags: technology gone wild, GPS

There is an interesting article in BusinessWeek (Special Report, May 4, 2007; The World’s Most Innovative Companies) regarding the innovation fatigue that CEOs are starting to feel, perhaps from innovating harder, not smarter. It is an important reminder for internalizing that innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. With that, it requires different training methods, tools and perspectives. Roadmapping is one of the strategic planning tools that will help with your innovation journey, identifying capabilities and assets that are required for success.

As I mentioned before, there are many types of roadmaps. This blog specifically focuses on the product-technology roadmaps and roadmapping process. Product-technology roadmaps lay out the evolution of a product over time, and articulate vision, product strategy, and strategic intent that the firm wants to achieve at a future point in time. The planning activity links three critical elements: customer/market needs, products and technologies.

The roadmapping process is an organizational commitment: the process is iterative, requires patience, and takes an average of 3-6 months. It should be driven by a clearly articulated business need. You should consider developing a product-technology roadmap when you need to:

• Integrate your market, product and technology business and investment decisions;
• Make the transition to customer or market focused product development from technology-driven development;
• Expand into new markets, explore platform strategies and identify alternative technology investments;
• Explore new business models, markets or customer segments by leveraging existing assets and capabilities;
• Discover ways to leapfrog your competitors, establish barriers to entry, and identify sustainable competitive advantages to build upon;
• Develop project plans to ensure that required technologies and partnerships will be available when needed;

The process should answer the why-what-how-when questions: Why are we doing this? What do we want to achieve? How will we get there? and When do we need it? Your process should be designed to answer these questions effectively and efficiently. The roadmapping process can be broken into 3 phases: initiation, development and dissemination. In follow-on posts, I’ll dive into each of these three phases in more detail.

• Initiation — This phase is your foundation and it is critical to the successful outcome of the roadmap initiative. Critical success factors for a good foundation are to build the right team and team structure, establish executive sponsorship and commitment, and clearly define scope and boundaries of the initiative. At the end of the phase, the team should have a well defined operating model, a good understanding of expectations, boundaries and timelines, and an established communication plan to enable the collaborative process within the organization and with partners.
• Development — The development phase is all about answering the what-how-when questions. The process deep dives into analysis of market, customer and technology trends and drivers, and outlines differentiation opportunities, key products and technologies, partnerships, dependencies and risks. The roadmapping may start with the needs of the market and customers, customer/market focused roadmap, or maybe focused on identifying markets and customer segments that could be served with a specific product or technology, product/technology focused roadmap. The outcome of this phase is a product-technology roadmap that is ready for dissemination.
• Dissemination — This phase is all about communication and implementation of the developed roadmap. Roadmaps and implementation plans should be regularly reviewed and updated. As a roadmap extends in time, associated uncertainty also increases. The review and update cycle provides adjustments to a roadmap and its implementation plan based on the latest available information. The review cycle may be based on the organization’s planning cycle.

As they say, that’s all folks. In summary, roadmapping is a flexible process that can benefit your firm greatly. However, before you dive into the process, please keep in mind the following 9 critical factors for successful roadmap outcome.

• Clearly articulated business need.
• Committed sponsorship, senior management participation and dedicated funding.
• Accountable, competent, dedicated, cross-functional and diverse team that is also objective.
• Time commitment and focus of everyone involved.
• Good facilitation to drive the process, coordinate interaction among the team and guide deliverables.
• Collaborative process that drives ownership within the organization.
• Access to the needed information and knowledge: market, customer, technology;
• Skills, experience and expertise in planning, analysis, processes, technology and product areas.
• And finally, don’t short-cut the communication and implementation plan. This is just as important as the actual roadmap development.

Technorati Tags: strategic planning, roadmapping process, product-technology roadmap, critical factors for successful roadmap

In a previous blog, I discussed the various barriers to innovation that you might have experienced or will experience at one time or another. Although the roadmapping process will not address cultural or organizational issues, it is a flexible approach that when combined with other strategic planning tools will help drive focus, alignment and understanding for your innovation portfolio.

A firm’s strategic intent is its vision of what is possible and what it plans to achieve in the long term. As Porter stated, essence of strategy “is not doing something better than your competitors but doing something different - choosing a unique and reliable position that is rooted in systems of activity that are difficult for others to match.”

Roadmapping provides a structured framework for exploring and defining potential paths and gaps that will aid in achieving the future state the firm desires. If the strategic vision is the general direction with a destination in mind, roadmapping is a process that aids in a step-by-step plan that shows how to get there, with the roadmap as the output. Basically, roadmapping is a strategic planning process that:

• aligns and communicates the business need: know-why;
• outlines actionable steps and interdependencies between the steps: know-what;
• drives an understanding of the alternate routes and tradeoffs to optimize resources and risks: know-how;

Roadmapping is a flexible process that integrates various views of a business (product, technology, market, capabilities, …) as a multi-layer time-based presentation. It was first used in the semiconductor industry in the 1970s to align technology, market and product directions. Today it is used quite widely in industry as it delivers many direct and indirect benefits to the organization. In summary, roadmapping and roadmaps:

• Organizes and integrates cross-functional views (market, industry, customer, R&D, …) as well as business and technical issues;
• Documents complex decisions and dependencies in an easy to digest form;
• Gives a long term direction by combining different planning horizons (product, market, technology, operations, processes, …);
• Requires multi-disciplinary, cross-functional effort which can result in better teamwork, shared ownership and communication, thereby generating alignment and engagement across sites;
• Establishes clear understanding of what needs to be done, by which order, and forces to firm to prioritize investments and make the needed tradeoffs;
• Helps identify gaps and competencies that need to be developed to be successful in the future;
• Offers an effective communication tool to be used with customers, suppliers and partners to gather reactions, and establish synergies;
• Provides continuity in strategic planning process by integrating planning and vision phases;
• Enables the firm understand and fund the capabilities and assets needed tomorrow to be successful today;

Roadmapping is an effective process that will help identify key synergies, dependencies and gaps within a strategic plan. It also aids in effective decision making and enables better communication and alignment, especially across disparate teams and organizational boundaries. This is a process where the journey, i.e. roadmapping process, is just as important as the output: roadmap.

As roadmapping is a flexible process, it comes in many different forms: market, technology, product, service, capability, science/research, product/technology, … You can represent your roadmap in whatever form best meet your needs, as long as you keep in mind to show the integration of key pieces of information in a multi-layer format with a time-line. Following Porter’s guidelines on strategy, your roadmap should answer the questions to: how your firm will compete, how your firm will deliver a unique value, and how your firm will maintain that unique position in the market.

You can get a glimpse of a firm’s roadmap, even when it is not explicit. Basically start with the firm’s vision/mission statement and strategic intent, and analyze its past and present product, service and technology offerings. This will give you a good idea where the firm is today and where it will most likely explore tomorrow. Here is a quick look at Motorola, Dell and Google, as examples.

Motorola is one of the pioneers in utilizing technology/product roadmaps. Given that, it is baffling to see how they got caught without a 3G phone, and didn’t recognize the changes in their end-customer tastes and desires. I previously blogged on Motorola’s product line, and what looks like a single minded focus on their innovations. An accurate, non-biased roadmapping process should have clearly highlighted these risks and shifts in the marketplace. However, based on a recent WSJ article (you’ll need a subscription), in-fighting might be the reason behind their problems. Motorola also indicated the challenges of achieving bottom line growth as they mainly focused on new product development, without focusing on the process or operational improvements. Again, the roadmapping process can help integrate and align market, product, technology and process activities and investments across the firm’s innovation portfolio.

Dell’s mission “is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve”. Their 2006 strategic corporate initiatives are: “driving Global Growth, achieving Product Leadership, enhancing the Customer Experience and developing our Winning Culture“. Given this, coupled with challenges of the direct sales model in emerging markets, it is no wonder to hear the rumors that Dell is considering channel sales. However, Dell will need to do more than just another cheaper PC, or Linux bundled laptops, or more customized/personalized color options on their systems to yet again achieve the most successful computer company in the world. What do you think will be the next business model innovation in the computer industry?

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. With that, Google’s Office Suite (Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and now Google Presentations), and other collaborative products seems out of place, as they are about collaborative content creation. However, looking at the fact that Google is mainly known for its global presence, collaborative tools could provide the leverage Google is looking to create virtual groups, and organizing information along that vector. Although today, these tools work only online, given the growth in emerging markets, and customer desire for maintaining local data, it is quite likely to see a future architecture that would combine the local data with online content, perhaps building on top of Google Desktop. On another tangent, one of the biggest challenges for Google is the low switching costs associated with search engine. With that, integration of analytics, better and more targeted search technologies, and APIs increases the switching costs for customers, so I would expect to see more targeted and personalized search results, as well as additional products along the lines of analytics and SEO in the future. At the same time, there is a growing concern towards Google for knowing and collecting too much information about anyone and anything. Given that, what are potential products, customer services or business models Google might bring up in the future to combat that concern?

Next time, I plan to dive into building roadmaps, specifically in the context of technology/product roadmapping process.

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, strategic planning process, roadmaps

There are many reasons that stand on the way to our ability to innovate. Here are some of the more frequently cited challenges and barriers to innovation. Unfortunately, I have experienced most.

• Organization and environment not supportive of innovation
• Traditional top-down management discourages front line empowerment and innovation
• Short term focus on execution with no time to think for the future
• Lack of resources, leadership and inadequate funding
• Organizational focus and value is on risk avoidance
• Lack of systemic innovation process
• Lack of end-to-end processes for bringing ideas to fruition
• Focus on immediate and unreasonable financial returns
• No incentives to innovate
• Inappropriate measures for managing innovations
• No common definition of innovation and how to measure success
• Lack of effective communication between individuals, managers, various disciplines, …
• Lack of understanding and interaction with the customers, market and industry
• Too much specialization, and lack the ability to cross-pollenate ideas or make connections
• Lack of focus, vision and direction from management and leadership ranks
• Lack of focus and support on innovation by senior management
• No infusion of new ideas, new problems or learning opportunities
• Resistance to change

Innovation is associated with growth, and technology advances are seen as having the most impact on growth and innovation. In today’s competitive global market, innovation and differentiation is a necessity for every firm. Innovation and technology management is focused to increase productivity by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of research and development, decreasing the time needed to realize a return on investment, and optimizing current and future technology investments. Without a structured process unmanaged innovation can be not only expensive, but also unpredictable.

So, where to start your innovation and technology management journey? As Sun Tzu recommends, that the starting point for any endeavor should be knowledge: knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of others (The Art of War: The Denma Translation).

Knowing the other and knowing oneself,
In one hundred battles no danger.
Not knowing the other and knowing oneself,
One victory for one loss.
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself,
In every battle certain defeat.

So, here is a list of questions to contemplate on. If you are looking to improve your innovation process, read through the list, think about it, process it, take an inventory, visualize the ideal, internalize gaps, and start building an action plan. I plan to write more about these areas in the upcoming blogs. Send me a note on things that you see missing from the list, and I’ll continue to expand it and eventually turn it into a survey.

Think through your innovations and technology ideas. What are the sources of those ideas, how would you breakdown the internal vs. external idea rates? What is the process to take these ideas to market? Where do you start, and how do you proceed? How would you categorize the various innovation types: mostly incremental, process only, yet another better mouse trap?

How would you describe and rate your innovation capability? Think about your processes, leadership, funding, know-how, organizational ability to learn and explore… How are the teams pull together — multiple disciplines, backgrounds, experiences, or mainly specialized groups?

How well does your team work together, and with internal and external partners: marketing, sales, support, universities, technology partners, vendors, … How do the new ideas are born and nurtured?

How well do your innovation and technology directions support overall business goals and objectives? Does everyone in your team understand how they contribute to the top line and/or bottom line? What are the key attributes used for project prioritization, selection and funding, and how well are they aligned with the objectives of the business?

When was the last time your team came up with an idea that challenged the status quo? How was it nurtured and handled by the firm and senior management? What became of that idea? Does your organization have a immunity defense to new ideas that challenge status quo?

How is your innovation funnel and innovation portfolio performing? What are your key metrics and how are they performing against the baseline and the targets? How are you monitoring, measuring and communicating the innovation progress? How is risk defined and managed in your organization? Do you have a risk adverse culture?

How well do you understand your customers, market, industry and competitors? Do you have structured processes to regularly scan the environment and determine opportunities and threats? What do you do with those new learnings and insights? Would you say the organization is focusing on the most critical problems and exploiting the biggest opportunities?

How do your customers and the market react to your new products? Do they love them, hate them or are they neutral? What are the internal reactions and feedback from your customer facing teams: support, sales and services?

How well are you executing on your projects? Are projects performing on-time, on-budget and on-quality? Can you tell at any given point in time how the project is performing? How are the decisions being made? How well are the stakeholders identified and informed?

Where and how do you spend your time: in the present, fire fighting? Do you get the chance to think, plan and work for the future?

I’m sure that there are more to add. Drop me a note with your favorites.

Technorati Tags: barriers to innovation

The concept of technology goes back to ancient Greeks: online etymology dictionary states technologia as its origins:

• techné: meaning belonging to the arts, crafts or skill;
• logia: meaning sayings or speaking;

In the ancient times, technology was more than “gadgets”; it was mostly about the craftsmen passing their know-how, the art of doing things from generation to generation, and improving and innovating along the way. As the terminology evolved, it also acquired a scientific context: etymology of technology indicates that in 1859 the meaning “science of the mechanical and industrial arts” was first recorded, followed by the terms high technology in 1964 and high-tech in 1972.

Today, technology is more vital than ever to firms’ global competitiveness. Yet, technology is inherently difficult to manage with its constantly changing and unpredictable nature. As a result, the field of Management of Technology has emerged to help aid the technology managers through this complex maze by giving them the tools, processes, and the know-how they need to bring high-tech products to the marketplace. The U.S. National Research Council in Washington, D.C., defined management of technology (MOT) as:

linking engineering, science, and management disciplines to plan, develop, and implement technological capabilities to shape and accomplish the strategic and operational objectives of an organization (National Research Council, 1987).

In summary, technology management focuses on the intersection of technology and business, encompassing not only technology creation but also its application, dissemination, and impact. As technology managers, our job is to align the technology strategy with the firm’s goals and objectives, and to apply our know-how to manage the process and the results. As such, at a minimum a general understanding of technology and innovation, management, leadership, strategy, operations, new product development, project management, product marketing, organizational behavior, and product quality is needed to be successful in the role.

Technology management is a demanding and a rewarding job, as it requires the right balance of generalization and specialization, business and technology, big picture thinking and minding the details, as well as hard and soft skills. Here are some of my observations on where the technology managers often struggle. I would love to hear your experiences as well.

• Focusing mainly on a single aspect of the technology management process — Sure, we all have our strengths. However, technology management requires a multidisciplinary approach. Managing only one aspect of the project, such as technology, without much regard for other facets crucial to its commercialization success, is an early sign of failure. You can see this in products with poor maintenance and upgradeability, issues with overall usability, and failing when it comes to addressing customer needs, or costly manufacturing processes, packaging, etc.
• Executing the flavor of the month strategy — It is the job of the technology manager to ensure technology direction is aligned with the organization’s strategy. However, as Heraclitus stated, change is the only constant. If a change in strategy is not communicated effectively, and change management is not handled accordingly, the team will be left feeling as if they are executing the flavor of the month strategy.
• Failing at the know-how and not utilizing processes effectively — As I discussed in my other posts (Success is a Journey: How do you define it for your innovations?, Quantifying Innovation, or Your Golden Goose: Guidelines for Establishing a Patent Strategy) the process of managing technology will be different based on the type of innovation and where it is in its technology and product life cycle. Inappropriate application of processes will certainly hinder its success.
• Ignoring the softer side things — A big portion of the job requires emotional intelligence, and being able to manage change effectively and efficiently. Available tools and processes are not sufficient, and skills are required to maneuver the political landscape, and ability to manage bottom up as well as top down and sideways.
• Forgetting to wear the appropriate hat: leader, manager, strategist and technologist — A technology manager needs to be able flexible, and wear the appropriate hat as the context requires. We are the leader that communicates the technology vision and strategy, and many times the ones that rally the teams. We also need to strategize for the big picture, define the technology directions and also demonstrate proof of concept as required. Not to forget the fact that we also need to manage the day to day details with a multidisciplinary approach.
• Being oblivious to the influences of internal and external forces — It is too easy to stay focused on the day to day management of the details. However, as technology managers, we need to be mindful, and effectively and efficiently manage the opportunities as well as the threats. I have discussed this topic in detail in my previous posts: Single Minded Focus On Your Innovations? and How To Identify Forces Impacting Your Innovation.

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