This blog is all about making product developers, managers, and innovators more successful and their organizations successful with them. 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 – and sometimes controversial ideas.

Around the Web

The toughest thing innovators must learn to do – get people to believe in something they can’t see. “It is not enough to come up with next great idea. To turn that idea into a reality you have to influence people and gain their support. You must do that in the face of vast forces arrayed against innovation within an established organization, which include inertia, resistance to change, fear of failure, financial disincentives, and the tendency of people and organizations to favor what has worked in the past.” Read more from Harvard Business Review http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/getting-people-to-believe-in-something-they-cant-yet-imagine/

Want to know what the promising new mobile products are? Product Hunt will tell you. “Product Hunt launched last November with the mission of helping people find new mobile and web applications every day.” Read more from Mashable http://mashable.com/2014/10/11/ryan-hoover-product-hunt/

Innovation Judo for navigating organizational roadblocks. “That’s where innovation judo comes in. Like the martial art that “doesn’t hurt people, it just disables temporarily,” the idea is to find ways around the workplace obstacles to innovation.” Read more from Pittsburgh Post http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/10/12/Workzone-5/stories/201410120007

The 18 hard-earned pieces of advice for product managers and leaders. “Five years of experience as CO-CEO and Head of Product @HowAboutWe boiled down to a numbers list that every PM should print out and tape to their desk.” Read more from Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/3036982/18-aphorisms-for-the-product-leader

Inexpensive promotions to help your product launch. “Because how you market or promote your product launch is going to affect its sales, marketers must employ a variety of marketing techniques to ensure that the right message is communicated through the right medium, and to the right audience.” Read more from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/10/14/5-inexpensive-ways-to-promote-a-product-launch/

Get more useful customer feedback and put it to better use for your product development. “Ensuring you effectively leverage good feedback will help make sure you’re pulling on an easy — but important — lever in your customer acquisition strategy. Below are some tips on how to do so…” Read more from Entrepreneur http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238161

Surprise – Leaders give innovation low marks. Find out why. “Recently, my firm Zenger Folkman did a study with 700,000 participants to rank the importance of innovation among 15 other competencies.  If you look at the table below you will see it ranked as number 13 out of the 16  in order of importance.” Read more from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/joefolkman/2014/10/16/why-leaders-give-innovation-low-marks/

One group innovates while another doesn’t – making innovation work across an organization. “Creating cohesion between teams with different workflows and methodologies is one of the most daunting tasks for innovative companies, particularly at an enterprise level.” Read more from Innovation Excellence http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2014/10/16/how-to-maintain-innovation-across-multiple-teams-and-methodologies/

Looking at crowd funding to finance your next product? Read these 5 tips. “Here are a few insider tips that aren’t typically discussed in most crowd funding how-to guides…” Read more from Inc. http://www.inc.com/aaron-aders/5-insider-tips-for-successful-crowd-funding.html

 

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