Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers, developers, and innovators be heroes.

 

Product teams more effective with just the right amount of rules. Too much structure and innovation suffers, but a free-for-all anything goes environment also stifles innovation. Get the balance right to enable innovation. http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/effective-people-think-simply

4 tips for successfully completing team projects. (1) Do your homework, but don’t over-brainstorm. (2) Consider team culture. (3) Start early and small. (4) Create, modify, and reuse. And here are three bonus questions to ask when beginning a project: Why are we doing this in the first place? What are our current capabilities for doing it? What are the milestones we’ll need to track our progress? Read the descriptions of each at http://www.fastcompany.com/3059125/your-most-productive-self/how-to-finish-team-projects-successfully-and-on-time-every-time

For real innovation, first frame yourself as an innovation leader. The three shifts needed to reframe yourself as an innovation leader are to embrace responsibility, ambiguity, and possibility. Read the details of each at http://www.forbes.com/sites/brianquinn/2016/04/28/reframe-to-innovate-recognizing-youre-an-innovation-leader/2/#24a77de278e7

Thinking Agile is new? Think again – learn the history. I was at a meetup recently where a speaker shared the role of Product Manager is 10 years-old. Actually the formal roots are traced to work at Proctor and Gamble in the 1930s. I hear similar thinking about Agile – how new and fresh it is and how it will extend beyond software development to other industries. Once again, its roots can also be traced to the 1930s with the start of the Quality Movement and Lean. Learn the history in this HBR article https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-secret-history-of-agile-innovation

An example that “innovation” is everyone’s job – no more innovation job titles. A quote from this article is “It’s not about having wacky ideas but a culture where people can look at the bigger question and can try out new things even if they aren’t successful.” Is it time to get rid of “innovation” titles? This company has… http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/carat-drop-innovation-job-titles-team-names/1392053

10 guidelines for what product managers should do. #6 is my favorite – don’t love what you loved building. Read the other 9 at http://yourstory.com/2016/04/tips-product-manager-build-companies/

6 skills to help product managers drive innovation. (1) Avoid the assumption that current gifts will keep on giving. (2) Be alert to “weak signals” of non-linear shifts and trends. (3) Create the future as a day-to-day business process. (4) Sponsor experiments and measure like new investments. (5) Constantly build new skills to be resilient in the face of change. (6) Invest more energy in the “horse you can control.”  Read the details at http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2016/04/27/6-leadership-behaviors-drive-continuous-innovation/#1ed955ca4d19

2-step decision-making process to help access innovative ideas. How many great product ideas got shot down before actually receiving any reasonable consideration?  Too many, including when Kodak developed the first digital camera and then chose to ignore it. Learn the simple 2-step process from this article http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/how-managers-accidentally-squash-innovation/