This blog is all about making product managers, developers, and innovators more successful. As I do each week, below is a roundup of articles around the web with insightful product development, management, and innovation practices, tips, and examples.

Product Innovation Tips Around the Web

Experiment, experiment, experiment – it is the essential innovation skill. “There are two main reasons: One is risk and failure aversion. In a work or school setting, our brains are formatted to learn theory and what the outcome should be instead of experimenting through trial and error.” Read more from Innovation Excellence  http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2014/12/27/innovation-through-experimentation-is-key/

A synthesized innovation process: insight, problem, solution, business model. “We found that managers who help their firms create and maintain an innovation premium use a different set of tools than their more traditional counterparts — tools honed in start-ups and specifically designed to manage uncertainty.” Read more at Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2014/12/choose-the-right-innovation-method-at-the-right-time

A perspective on the growth of product management. “Reliable and supported principles, tools, and methods for practicing product management are mature and available. Highly capable and educated human talent is there. But something is curtailing the growth of product management and limiting its potential benefits for businesses.” Read more at LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-product-management-movement-gabriel-steinhardt

Correlation between long-term leadership and organizational innovation capability. “If innovation is the foundation to building the future, this focus should be reassuring. To overcome disruption and remain relevant into the future, companies need to build the businesses that will replace their legacy offerings. The only problem: Being excited about a new corporate commitment to innovation assumes corporate investments aren’t the equivalent of cash flushed down the toilet.” Read more at Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2014/12/the-most-innovative-companies-have-long-term-leadership

Evolution of design and manufacturing. “Design is entering its golden age. Now, like never before, the value of the discipline is recognized. This recognition is both a welcome change and a challenge for designers as they move to designing for networked systems.” Read more at O’Reilly http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/12/the-changing-nature-of-design-is-coming-full-circle.html

A case for when innovation needs to quit. “Innovation is awesome, but once you solve the problem, it’s OK to quit innovating. Time to move on to the next problem.” Read more at Fox Businesses http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2014/12/30/new-meaning-innovation/

Innovation requires interaction and sharing of ideas-most organizations don’t do this well. “The lattice is excellent at the letting the enterprise decide which ideas ultimately get pursued. Since setting up my consulting practice, I’ve found that this is not the case in most organizations. If fact, most organizations aren’t set up to aggregate and leverage collective intelligence. This is a shame, because the times we live in clearly call for innovative solutions to problems we face.” Read more at Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/great-work-cultures/opening-the-space-for-inn_b_6393220.html

Shopify’s incredible example of an open office environment to facilitate innovation and collaboration. “Not everyone loves the open-office trend, but Shopify’s new Toronto office may convince some doubters.” Read more at Mashable http://mashable.com/2014/12/31/shopify-toronto-office/

Lessons from the top technology failures of 2014. “Success means a technology solves a problem, whether it’s installed on a billion smartphones or used by a few scientists carrying out specialized work. But many—maybe most—technologies do not succeed, typically because they fail to reach the scale of adoption that would make them relevant.” Read more at Technology  Review http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533546/the-top-technology-failures-of-2014/

The product mindset is one of balance between techie and fuzzy. “The Product Mindset is the ability to bridge the gap between the left brain and the right brain, between the quantitative and qualitative.” Read more at Venture Beat http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/01/the-secret-of-great-product-managers-balancing-the-worlds-of-techie-and-fuzzy/

 

Still Important – Product Management Flash from the Past

Reasons why innovation is so hard for businesses. “Innovative thinking, like critical thinking, does not come naturally to most people. That’s one reason innovation is so hard.”  Read more from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/darden/2014/08/04/why-is-innovation-so-hard/

 

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