Global Product Management Talk

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 031 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: I am bringing back my guest from episode 17, which was about creating the ProdBOK – The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge and how Greg Geracie led that effort. I also shared on that episode that he is a co-author of the annual Study of Product Team Performance and the 2015 report is now available. Greg joined me to share the key findings from the study and help all of us better understand team performance and changes that could improve performance of product teams. Highlights from the discussion include… 4 new factors were added in this year’s study that are associated with product team  performance. Strategic decision-making — product teams that develop their capacity for strategic decision-making and following strategic objectives are aligned with higher performance. Standup frequency – teams that regularly and frequently hold standup meetings are much more likely to be higher performing. Quick problem recovery – teams that are nimble and can adapt to unforeseen issues quickly are correlated with higher performance. UX collaboration – active and early participation and product development with user experience professionals leads to more successful product teams.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 030 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Nir Eyal has been a startup co-founder, a CEO, and now helps product teams build habit-forming products. He is also the author of the book “Hooked,” which tells you how to create products that capture the attention of consumers and create engagement. Highlights from the discussion include… The “Hooked” model applies best to products that require repeat engagement. This is clearly appropriate for many software applications (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google) but can also be incorporated in the service aspects of other products. The 4-step hook model is: Trigger: a cue to action  that tells the user what to do next (e.g., “You got to see this video!”). A trigger leads to an action. Action: the simplest behavior done in anticipation of the reward (e.g., clicking on the link to see the video). Variable Reward: satisfies the customer’s curiosity or need for taking action. Adding a bit of variability creates surprise and enhances anticipation that keeps customers returning (e.g., mailing video updates weekly but varying the day they are mailed). Investment: for customers to be truly hooked, they must have some investment in the product themselves – some work they perform that helps create attachment to the product (e.g., enhancing or completing their customer profile).

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 029 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Steve Pierz is a serial innovator at Caterpillar. A serial innovator is often on the cutting-edge if not the bleeding-edge, in mature organizations. They are the problem-solvers that substantially contribute to their company’s financial value. Highlights from the discussion include… Innovation is looking at things differently and questioning traditional wisdom. Innovators can be irritating to experts in the organization who do not welcome having the way things work being questioned. Serial innovators’ reputations for discarding old ideas and promoting new ideas can create uncomfortable first meetings. Steve often receives an “Oh, I have heard about you” when meeting people in the organization for the first time. Innovators fail – just don’t fail spectacularly. Quickly run experiments and learn. Steve started a weekly webinar for anyone at Caterpillar to learn more about innovation, called Friday Morning Coffee and Disruptive Technologies. Each week attendance has dramatically grown. Participants are from a wide variety of functions, not just engineering. Frequently, external experts join the webinar to present ideas and processes.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 028 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Jeff Honious is the VP of Innovation at RELX Group, which you may know as Reed Elsevier, a multi-billion dollar international publishing and information company. To provide some context for this, the company bio shares that it helps scientists make new discoveries, lawyers win cases, doctors save lives and executives forge relationships with their clients. Jeff’s background is in technology and web-based product development. Previous to his innovation role he also contributed to his company adopting agile development practices. Jeff's innovation team has two primary responsibilities: (1) build innovation capability across the business by helping groups set up their innovation process, provide training, and use tools. (2) provide resources for strategic projects with specific expertise and added capacity for developing products.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 026 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest:  I have the pleasure of interviewing people in all types of roles that can help product managers, developers and innovators. And today I get to bring you a discussion with the Chairman of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), Charlie Noble. I’ve been wanting to do this interview because PDMA is the professional association that first opened my eyes to the discipline of product management. Charlie is also an award-winning professor at the University of Tennessee where he teaches design, innovation, and new product development. He has helped many organizations with product development and marketing issues as well as contributing to research in these areas. How do you create meaningful products for customers? Some tools and steps include: Identifying cultural trends and movements. Consider the driving forces impacting the target market using environmental scanning (such as PESTLE analysis). Reviewing social media content is helpful for identifying emerging trends and themes. Interviewing customers and discussing what cultural trends are important to them and how they feel about the context of a product. Creating market segments based on customer mindsets, attitudes, and the information collected from environmental scanning and customer interviews. Designing the product to a specific segment.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 026 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: If you have listened to other episodes of this podcast, you likely have heard me say that the challenges with product management and creating products customers love is not actually development – while it’s not easy, we generally know how to get a product developed. The real challenge is knowing what product to develop. This is the realm of designing for the user, and specifically, the user experience. Consequently, I’m pleased to interview Mark Capper, an expert in designing user experiences.  Mark has over 20 years of experience refining his craft of user-centered product development and innovation across the spectrum of organizations from startups to several Fortune 100 companies, including PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft. He is the founder of Kompas Strategy, an innovation agency located in Santa Monica, CA. How do you create meaningful products for customers? Some tools and steps include: Identifying cultural trends and movements. Consider the driving forces impacting the target market using environmental scanning (such as PESTLE analysis). Reviewing social media content is helpful for identifying emerging trends and themes. Interviewing customers and discussing what cultural trends are important to them and how they feel about the context of a product. Creating market segments based on customer mindsets, attitudes, and the information collected from environmental scanning and customer interviews. Designing the product to a specific segment.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 025 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: This episode is different from others and well worth listening to.  It is the story about the class I helped to organize for eight students who were 9-12 years of age. As I normally teach university graduate courses, this was an entirely new realm for me. We called the class FIL – Future Innovation Leaders. The premise for the class was seeing the connection between the digital world and the physical world. For example, creating a computer program that controlled the actions of a robot, or making a 3D model in software and being able to touch the model and hand it to friends after 3D printing it. We met for 3 hours once a week for eight weeks. The class was constructed around three piece: robotics, 3D design and printing, and communications.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 025 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: This episode is different from others and well worth listening to.  It is the story about the class I helped to organize for eight students who were 9-12 years of age. As I normally teach university graduate courses, this was an entirely new realm for me. We called the class FIL – Future Innovation Leaders. The premise for the class was seeing the connection between the digital world and the physical world. For example, creating a computer program that controlled the actions of a robot, or making a 3D model in software and being able to touch the model and hand it to friends after 3D printing it. We met for 3 hours once a week for eight weeks. The class was constructed around three piece: robotics, 3D design and printing, and communications.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 024 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: If you are involved in product innovation, you likely already know about the website Innovation Excellence, home of the global innovation community that provides connection and conversation among its nearly 200,000 visitors each month. The site was co-founded by my guest, Braden Kelley. Braden is also a speaker and executive trainer as well as an author with a growing list of innovation publications. Highlights from the discussion include... the 5 keys to developing an innovation culture: Learn the basics of culture change, such as the 8-step Kotter change model or the Leading Change Formula.  Build a common language of innovation. Define what innovation means for the organization.  Create a connected organization. Design the organization to apply the additional talents and skills employees have but are not used in their primary role. This “overhang” of capabilities can be applied for innovation by connecting people with the work that needs to be done.  Identify those who care about innovation. Recognize that some employees are most comfortable in day-to-day operational roles and maintaining the status quo while others are constantly looking to change things for the better.  Make innovation a team sport. There is no such thing as a lone innovator. 

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 024 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: If you are involved in product innovation, you likely already know about the website Innovation Excellence, home of the global innovation community that provides connection and conversation among its nearly 200,000 visitors each month. The site was co-founded by my guest, Braden Kelley. Braden is also a speaker and executive trainer as well as an author with a growing list of innovation publications. Highlights from the discussion include... the 5 keys to developing an innovation culture: Learn the basics of culture change, such as the 8-step Kotter change model or the Leading Change Formula.  Build a common language of innovation. Define what innovation means for the organization.  Create a connected organization. Design the organization to apply the additional talents and skills employees have but are not used in their primary role. This “overhang” of capabilities can be applied for innovation by connecting people with the work that needs to be done.  Identify those who care about innovation. Recognize that some employees are most comfortable in day-to-day operational roles and maintaining the status quo while others are constantly looking to change things for the better.  Make innovation a team sport. There is no such thing as a lone innovator. 

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 023 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Sam Froggatte is a golf gadget guru! He is the CEO of EyeLine Golf, a company that specializes in creating and selling training aids for anyone to improve their golf play. Their training products are used by weekend leisure golfers as well as hundreds of PGA players. Sam’s route to becoming a product innovator in the golf industry started in sales and marketing at IBM and then as an independent sales rep for golf equipment. Highlights from the discussion include... 3 principles Sam uses to create successful products: Fundamentally sound – the product has to do the right things, built on sound principles and not faulty assumptions. Intuitive – products must be simple to use and require little to no training to use. Un-embarrassing – products that golfers will carry and tell their friends about. A real example of how Sam created a product… The problem was trying to improve putting alignment He created a rough prototype in his basement He field tested it by taking it to golf ranges and showing it to others and getting feedback He revised the prototype until it was a viable product, including being ready to manufacture

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 023 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Sam Froggatte is a golf gadget guru! He is the CEO of EyeLine Golf, a company that specializes in creating and selling training aids for anyone to improve their golf play. Their training products are used by weekend leisure golfers as well as hundreds of PGA players. Sam’s route to becoming a product innovator in the golf industry started in sales and marketing at IBM and then as an independent sales rep for golf equipment. Highlights from the discussion include... 3 principles Sam uses to create successful products: Fundamentally sound – the product has to do the right things, built on sound principles and not faulty assumptions. Intuitive – products must be simple to use and require little to no training to use. Un-embarrassing – products that golfers will carry and tell their friends about. A real example of how Sam created a product… The problem was trying to improve putting alignment He created a rough prototype in his basement He field tested it by taking it to golf ranges and showing it to others and getting feedback He revised the prototype until it was a viable product, including being ready to manufacture

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 022 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guests: I have not one, but two guests to discuss product innovation for this episode. The first is Kimberly Johnson, who I met through the Global PMI Innovation Practice Area. I learned that Kim had recently co-authored a chapter for an upcoming book, and the chapter is titled “Triggering Innovation Through Organizational Development.” Her co-author is my second guest, AB Reynolds. Highlights from the discussion include: The concepts are synthesized from a powerhouse of interviews with 3M innovators, organized around 3 themes that foster organizational innovation: Conditions must exist to allow individuals and teams to create innovative products. Leaders must spot, support, and invest in valuable innovations. As the product matures, leaders must optimize the innovation and eventually harvest the business or choose to renew the organization with a new set of products. To overcome resistance to incorporating innovation into the culture, create an organizational conversation about the future to engage people – get people excited about trends taking place and how the organization should participate.   A simple tool is to put a question in a shared area to begin discussions, such as, “How can we …” If you are an innovator, team up with others that can influence the right people to make change occur. In organizations, innovation requires teams to make things happen.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 022 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guests: I have not one, but two guests to discuss product innovation for this episode. The first is Kimberly Johnson, who I met through the Global PMI Innovation Practice Area. I learned that Kim had recently co-authored a chapter for an upcoming book, and the chapter is titled “Triggering Innovation Through Organizational Development.” Her co-author is my second guest, AB Reynolds. Highlights from the discussion include: The concepts are synthesized from a powerhouse of interviews with 3M innovators, organized around 3 themes that foster organizational innovation: Conditions must exist to allow individuals and teams to create innovative products. Leaders must spot, support, and invest in valuable innovations. As the product matures, leaders must optimize the innovation and eventually harvest the business or choose to renew the organization with a new set of products. To overcome resistance to incorporating innovation into the culture, create an organizational conversation about the future to engage people – get people excited about trends taking place and how the organization should participate.   A simple tool is to put a question in a shared area to begin discussions, such as, “How can we …” If you are an innovator, team up with others that can influence the right people to make change occur. In organizations, innovation requires teams to make things happen.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 020 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in developing and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Eric P. Rose, NPDP, MBA, has developed new products in many sectors including consumer, healthcare, and industrial safety. He is an inventor with over 80 patents, teaches innovation at Pepperdine, and is certified as a New Product Development Professional – the NPDP certification.