Global Product Management Talk

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 056 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: Most companies talk about wanting to be more innovative, but few take the steps needed. In this discussion, I discovered the five steps organizations can take to be more innovative, from someone who has successfully executed the steps many times.

Michael Wynblatt - Innovator and Product ManagerRecently, Ingersoll Rand was ranked #9 for Innovation in Fortune’s Most Admired Companies 2015. They made the #9 ranking the very first year they appeared on the Fortune list – a great accomplishment.  Clearly something is changing at the company in terms of innovation, and this change is being driven by Michael Wynblatt.  He is the Vice President of Innovation & Emerging Technology at Ingersoll Rand. He has also led innovation at other companies, helping more than 40 technology-based products come to market. This includes serving as the VP of Innovation for Eaton Corporation and the VP and Chief Technology Officer at the Siemens Technology to Business Center. Throughout these roles he has learned a great deal about helping companies become more innovative and specifically how to create a culture that breeds innovation.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 055 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: Rich Mironov is a legend in the world of product management. He is the founder of Product Camp, a collaborative unconference for product managers and marketers that has spread across the world. He also is the author of the book The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator. Today he provides full-time and short-term product management direction to technology companies.

While our discussion is in the context of software product management, much of the insights apply to product managers in any industry.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 054 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: Many organizations encourage employees, partners, customers, and other stakeholders to provide ideas for products, but only a few companies successfully manage organizing the ideas, selecting the best one, and executing well to turn ideas into valuable products.

Peter Duggan, a SVP and Head of Product Management & Development for Computershare Investor Services, has created a simple and effective 5 step process for selecting the best ideas for new products. He shared some of these concepts in a workshop at the Product Innovation Management annual conference and I am delighted to have him share the 5 steps with us.

After listening, you’ll know how to help your organization become idea-selecting ninjas through 5 simple steps.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 053 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About the Episode: Welcome to the one year anniversary of this podcast. I’m excited to review the key concepts I found most useful for product managers and innovators from the last 52 episodes. I heard Tim Ferriss do something similar on his podcast and thought it was really helpful and I think you will find it valuable for this podcast. Also, I want to share a product mastery roadmap I have been working on – a roadmap that tells you how to go from a product manager to a product master.

Before jumping in, I have some exciting news to share – thanks largely to this podcast, I was named a “Product Management Top 40 Influencer for 2015” on the Product Management Year in Review site. I’m honored and humbled to be on the list. I have had the pleasure of interviewing some of my fellow influencers. Others I have not yet interviewed but do follow, including Eric Ries, Steve Blank, and Guy Kawasaki.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 046 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: When it comes to innovation, there are significant distinctions between startups and large enterprises. Startups have the advantage of agility and ability to rapidly change directions because they are not encumbered with legacy systems and organizational constraints. Large enterprises have access to greater resources and an established brand but also have erected barriers to innovation over time and inertia to change has set in. Such enterprises often reach a point where they realize that their existing culture, processes, and structure have limited their innovation to the point of harming the organization. I frequently have conversations with leaders of companies about these very issues.

What should large companies do that wish to be more innovative? A place to start is benchmarking the actions Caterpillar is taking to overcome innovation barriers they created over many years and turn the organization into an innovation machine. To explore their actions, I had the sincere pleasure of talking with Ken Gray, Caterpillar’s global Director of Innovation. Ken has worn many hats at Caterpillar, including mechanical engineer, product manager, global product manager, and leader. He is well suited for the Innovation role.

We discussed many aspects of creating an innovation group in a large established company, including the three innovation categories that structure their work.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 045 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: In this episode I’m talking with the creator of an entire category of product innovation – one that significantly changed how I think about the process of innovation. Clayton Christensen said his approaches “bring discipline and predictability to the often random process of innovation.” The category of innovation is known as ODI, Outcome-Driven Innovation, and it was created by Tony Ulwick. When ODI was published in the Harvard Business Review, they declared it one of “the ideas that will profoundly affect business as we forge ahead in today’s complex times.” Tony also authored the best-selling book What Customers Want, explaining how the jobs-to-be-done framework is transformed into practice with ODI.

At IBM, Tony worked on the PC Junior as a manufacturing engineer. The team was very excited to launch the product but within a day the Wall Street Journal declared it a flop! It turned out that they were right and the cost to IBM in a failed product was over $1B. This got Tony thinking about the metrics to determine what makes a good product – a product that customers want. This was the start to Outcome Driven Innovation, which has matured over the last three decades.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 044 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: Brian Lawley is the CEO and Founder of the 280 Group, a company that provides product management and product marketing solutions. Brian has a long history in product management, including product manager for the Apple Macintosh OS. He is also the author of “The Phenomenal Product Manager: The Product Manager’s Guide to Success, Job Satisfaction and Career Acceleration.” Brian and his 280 Group team recently conducted a research project titled the “Challenges in Product Management 2015.” We discussed the key findings from the study.

How is the role of product manager viewed in companies?  61% are viewed as leaders in their company but 57% are too tactical and not strategic enough. The challenge of product managers is to free up at least 30% of their time to work on strategic activities. Product managers spend too much time managing feature lists and requirements instead of holistically managing the product to optimize value for all stakeholders.

What did participants say about improving the product management process their company uses?There was clear recognition that improving processes would increase product success and organizational profitability.

How do product managers feel about their competency in the role? Most product managers receive no formal training in their discipline. Across teams, product manager skills vary greatly. Some product managers have very advanced skills. Most respondents shared that their knowledge was average or below.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 043 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: Allan Anderson was a keynote speaker at the 2015 Product Innovation Management conference. For the past 20+ years he has been refining his skills in product development and change management, gaining three perspectives as practitioner, academic, and c-level leader in companies. He earned a PhD in Product Development from Massey University in New Zealand, where he is also a professor.

There’s been a tendency for companies to adopt a product development process found in books or provided by a consultant without really understanding why the process was chosen and considering if it is best suited to them. Allan refers to this as a paint-by-numbers approach. Instead, he encourages companies to develop processes that are specifically created for their culture, structure, and needs. Organizations should develop their own product development process built around a model with three components: (1) do the right things – choose the right products to work on with the right focus for the organization, (2) do the right things right – choose the processes and practices that are appropriate for what you wish to achieve and measure their success, and (3) create a culture and working environment that helps you to be successful. The key objective is learning what works for the organization.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 042 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: Larry Marine is a User Experience expert that has helped many companies improve their products as well as design new products. I met Larry Marine at a coffee shop - a great place for innovation. I heard him discussing product design and started talking with him about the innovation research I was doing at the time. We later co-authored chapter 5 in the PDMA Toolbook 3 titled “Integrating User Observations with Business Objectives to Drive Product Design.”

Larry redesigned the user experience of ProFlowers– the website for selecting and ordering flowers. The design was different than all the other online florists at the time. The web developers actually didn’t implement the design because it didn’t “look” like the competitors. The ProFlowers leadership team had the developers implement the new design. Their sales surged and ProFlowers.com has been one of the top performing websites for conversions. The other example is a medical device that performed blood screenings. Users were complaining about its use and Larry was asked to redesign the user interface. After investigating how the machine was used in a laboratory, the actual problem was with the lack of integration between five machines. It was a manual process to move from one machine to the next, data had to be reentered, and blood samples could be mixed up. The solution was a new screening control system for the entire laboratory.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 041 of...

The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD.

The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.

About Our Guest: Mark Zeh was already developing products using a methodology that was very similar to what IDEO was doing when he joined them. The approach has since been coined Design Thinking. He views the use of storytelling coupled with prototyping as the keys that make Design Thinking work so well.

Mark started his design career in the US creating custom mountain bike frames in Minneapolis that carried his name. He worked for product design giant IDEO in the US and helped to lead the office in Germany. He also consulted independently to numerous companies, applying Design Thinking, and is now at Bose, the audio technology powerhouse. In addition, he leads the Entrepreneurship program at the Munich Business School. I invited him to share his insights on using Design Thinking, which he recently wrote about in the PDMA Essentials book titled Design and Design Thinking. His chapter is The Key Role of Stories and Prototypes in a Design Thinking Product Development Process.”