Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers, developers, and innovators be heroes.
Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators annual report. “The Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators program, now in its fifth year, seeks to celebrate this spirit of innovation by recognizing organizations around the world that have most successfully embraced innovation. They are shaping the future, improving processes and technologies, and generating commercial return to drive more innovation, more jobs, more revenue.” Read more at State of Innovation http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/honoring-today%E2%80%99s-alchemists-%E2%80%93-the-2015-top-100-global-innovators
4 reasons onshore product development is increasing. “Yet while the offshoring of product development is still significant, a small but growing reverse movement is happening, as product development activities are being redirected to domestic locations. There are four key drivers for this trend…” Read more at Design News http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?doc_id=279059§ion_id=1386
Don’t make these 3 product marketing mistakes. (1) Features are more important than emotions in purchase decisions. (2) Execution is more important than strategy. (3) We can underspend on marketing because the sales team will pick up the slack. Read more at B2C http://www.business2community.com/product-management/3-deadly-sins-product-marketing-01367079
Ask a product manager anything – interview series. Learn what product managers think of their jobs, how they got their job, and more. Read about it at Outbrain http://www.outbrain.com/blog/2015/11/ask-a-product-manager-anything-part-5-amit-erental.html
The steps for continuous product improvement using the Product Kata approach. “The key to Continuous Product improvement is the Product Kata, which is based on the Toyota Kata method of Continuous Improvement. This practice makes the entire company’s job to improve the way they work. Everyone, from the CEO to the janitor, figures out how they can further the company and reach a common goal. This is what made Toyota so successful.” Read more at InfoQ http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/11/continuous-product-improvement
5 predictions on disruptive tech from KPMG’s 2015 Global Innovation Survey. “Tech leaders predict the greatest potential revenue growth for IoT in the next three years is in consumer and retail markets (22%).” Read more at Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/11/08/5-insights-predictions-on-disruptive-tech-from-kpmgs-2015-global-innovation-survey/
A 3 dimension product roadmap. “Throughout my career, I’ve used a three-part framework: customers, innovation, and market opportunity. These are collectively exhaustive. Think about them as ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ axes in three-dimensional space.” Read more at EBN http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3849&doc_id=279137
A brief history of Disruptive Innovation. “Christensen’s initial work was done during the 1990s when a group of scholars, many at Harvard Business School, were studying why established companies, like Polaroid or DEC, struggled to adapt to technological change despite ample resources, talented engineers, and admired leaders. For more than a decade, this community chipped away at the question — applying different frameworks, studying different industries, and generating a set of insights that deepened our understanding of why good companies go bad.” Read more at HBR https://hbr.org/2015/11/where-disruptive-innovation-came-from
4 guidelines for determining to preannounce your innovation or not. “However, the potential benefit of preannouncements needs to be considered against four main risks isolated by researchers: (1) competitive reactions, (2) cannibalisation of existing products, (3) inability to deliver preannounced product specifications on time, and (4) antitrust concerns.” Read more at Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/insead/2015/11/11/should-you-preannounce-your-innovation/
A great explanation of disrupters and incumbent difficulties. “New-Market Disruptions are particularly difficult for incumbent firms to spot because they emerge in a new plane of competition that competes on different measures of performance than the original plane. To the incumbent, this often doesn’t look like disruption at all, and that leads many incumbents to make mistakes that allow entrants to build substantial businesses or even topple the incumbent.” Read more from Harvard Business School https://medium.com/@HBSfgi/confronting-a-new-market-disruption-when-disrupting-the-disruptor-is-the-only-way-to-succeed-90c228620e22