Innovation Talks

Paul O’Connor is the Founder and Managing Director of The Adept Group, an organization focusing on product line velocity to improve innovation in mid-size and large companies. He has led innovation initiatives at Johnson & Johnson, Exxon, Pfizer, WL Gore, and Procter & Gamble. Paul is a consultant, advisor, and author of The Profound Impact of Product Line Strategy: Your Guide to Highly Productive Innovation and Product Management. He was a contributing editor to R&D Magazine and is widely published in business journals and publications, contributing to PDMA’s Handbook of Product Development and writing PDMA’s 2004 ToolBook. Paul holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and an MBA from Babson College near Boston. He also teaches master classes in creating and carrying out smart product line strategies.

Paul joins me today to discuss single versus multi-product mindsets, revealing the differences and why they matter. Paul shares how most companies have a foundation of single product line thinking, with a perspective that overlooks how multiple products complement each other in the market. We discuss the corporate hierarchy, the core parts of systems, and strategies that link high-level aspirational thinking with those working in the trenches. Paul shares the three components of product line velocity and systems thinking and explores how these can help a company achieve its defined attributes while supporting product innovation.

“Even though we learn all these best practices about how to take one product and move it through a company, the bigger deal is about how the whole set of products work together and how to make them deliver more than just one-off developments.” - Paul O’Connor

This week on Innovation Talks:

• Why most companies have an operational foundation based upon a single product mindset and the shortfalls of a single-minded approach
• Why it is vital to set up multiple products and position them in the market so they complement one another
• How independent product-line thinking makes innovation, moving into new business models, and pivoting a challenge
• Corporate hierarchy and the missing link between the high-level aspirational business strategy and the product line roadmap
• The three dimensions of the product line velocity: cashflow, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction
• The systems viewpoint and the three core parts that drive most of the desired attributes
• Taking stock of where you are and how to get to the next level of performance

Connect with Paul O’Connor:

• The Adept Group
• Book: The Profound Impact of Product Line Strategy: Your Guide to Highly Productive Innovation and Product Management
• The Adept Group on Twitter
• Paul O’Connor on LinkedIn

This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

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For additional information around new product development or corporate innovation, sign up for Sopheon’s newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly! The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.

Dr. Huub Rutten serves as the Vice President of Product Research and Design at Sopheon and is one of the company’s founding members. He holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Literature, Theory of Science, Sociolinguistics, Speech Act Theories, and Language Teaching from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Nigeria and has worked in the linguistics and language management sector for over 20 years. Prior to working at Sopheon, Huub has worked at several higher education institutes teaching linguistics and communication, including as an adjunct professor at the European Institute for Public Administrations.

In today’s episode, Huub joins me to share his predictions on how governance will affect the market. We discuss why you should shift from being engineer-driven to becoming market-driven and how your company’s governance impacts every aspect of your business. We discuss the importance of creating a governance system and why it’s critical for your governance policies to fit your company’s culture. We discuss the impact of the CEO signing the policies and why it’s crucial for employees to commit to the policies with their CEO. We also discuss how Huub is helping companies create a governance system for their organizations while allowing room for flexibility and agility.

“The system is the face of the governance. Then, you work within the governance.” - Dr. Huub Rutten

This week on Innovation Talks:

• Shifting your company from being engineering-driven to market-driven
• How governance impacts every aspect of your company
• Creating a governance system to ensure your company is following your governance policies
• What the Observer's Paradox is
• Why it’s crucial for your governance policies to fit your company’s culture
• How Huub is helping companies create a governance system for their organizations

Resources Mentioned:

• AI and Machine Learning in Innovation with Huub Rutten
• The Agile Mindset for Innovation with Huub Rutten
• Challenges with Developing Smart Products with Huub Rutten
• Book: The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper

Connect with Huub Rutten:

• Huub Rutten’s Website
• Email: [email protected]
• Huub Rutten on LinkedIn

This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | GooglePlay | Stitcher | Spotify | iHeart

Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more listeners, like you.

For additional information around new product development or corporate innovation, sign up for Sopheon’s newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly! The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.

Dr. Huub Rutten is one of the Founding members of Sopheon and is currently the company's Vice President for Product Research and Design. After gaining a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from Radboud University in the Netherlands, Huub went on to work for several academic institutes teaching linguistics and communications.  An adjunct [...]

The post Challenges with Smart Product Development with Huub Rutten appeared first on Sopheon.

Dr. Huub Rutten is one of the Founding members of Sopheon and is currently the company's Vice President for Product Research and Design. After gaining a Masters in Applied Linguistics from Radboud University in the Netherlands, Huub went on to work for several academic institutes teaching linguistics and communications.  An adjunct [...]

The post The Agile Mindset for Innovation with Huub Rutten appeared first on Sopheon.

Dr. Huub Rutten is one of the Founding members of Sopheon and is currently the company's Vice President for Product Research and Design. After gaining a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from Radboud University in the Netherlands, Huub went on to work for several academic institutes teaching linguistics and communications.  An adjunct [...]

The post AI and Machine Learning in Innovation with Huub Rutten appeared first on Sopheon.

I'm sure you have heard yourself, or a friend say they have a great idea for an invention. Or maybe just an abstract idea of a 'need' for something – an observed gap in the market, if you will. But then, somewhere along the way, you see that gap filled, and [...]

The post Innovation Isn’t Just Ideation appeared first on Sopheon.

You might have heard the phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so it goes with Innovation Management. Collaboration across various manufacturing industries can give birth to solutions through sharing ideas, research, and strategies. Understanding the ecosystem of innovative solutions around your production can achieve a lot [...]

The post Holistic Innovation Management appeared first on Sopheon.

Dr. Huub Rutten is one of the Founding members of Sopheon and is currently the company's Vice President for Product Research and Design. After gaining a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from Radboud University in the Netherlands, Huub went on to work for several academic institutes teaching linguistics and communications.  An adjunct professor at the European Institute for Public Administration (EIPA), he then became a permanent advisor to the European Commission, counseling them on IT and policy development. Huub is instrumental in Sopheon’s development of linguistics and knowledge management technologies and continues to lead Sopheon into solutions for Innovation. He currently resides in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands.

Today's episode is part three of our four-part conversation with Dr. Huub Rutten, where we close off by discussing smart product development challenges. He reveals one of the common problems companies face is recalls and the huge cost associated with them, financially and in terms of a brand's reputation. He discusses the changes in the market over the last 70 years and why we can no longer take the attitude of post WW2 product engineers, and his fears that Agile is a framework encouraging a reversal in production ideas. We also expand on the importance of a sound governance system and how it should go hand in hand with its software system.

"If you engage the production - the manufacturing engineers - with the product engineers and the feature engineers as early as possible and they are integrated in that process, partly then you will avoid recourse. Then you will avoid quality problems." – Huub Rutten

"You have all these recalls, it's also bad for your reputation in the market. It's also bad for your, let's say, relationship with your retailers, for instance, and you will lose shelf space in the shops, and that is killing." – Huub Rutten

"Take the Boeing thing as a big example. The problem was the software engineering, and that was a small team. And they made a mistake - it as designed the program; the wrong software. And of course, it cost billions at Boeing." – Huub Rutten

"If you were to sell the product, if the plants don't agree up front that they will help to launch a new product on a certain date that is important for the company, they simply won't make the room in their plan to test it - to do the trials. – Huub Rutten

"What I'm afraid of is that Agile wants to go back to 50 years ago when the engineers were completely empowered." – Huub Rutten

This week on Innovative Talks:

• How product recalls pose economic and reputational damage to a companies brand
• How a big decision by a small software team cost Boeing billions of dollars
• Why corporate goals and capacity distribution are two essential mechanisms
• Why product management needs to be aligned with their production plants when planning a product launch
• How the buyer’s market has become more 'market pool driven since the 1990s
• The meaning of governance in product development

Huub Rutten:

• Huub Rutten Sopheon Website
• Huub Rutten on LinkedIn

Connect with Paul Heller:

• Paul Heller on LinkedIn

This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more listeners, like you.

For additional information around new product development or corporate Innovation, sign up for Sopheon’s newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly!

The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.