• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Product Mastery Now

Helping product managers move to product mastery

  • Home
  • Podcast
  • Training
    • For Groups
    • For Individuals
    • Certification for Individuals
    • PDMA & AIPMM
  • Login
  • Schedule a Discovery Call

By Chad McAllister

Ask the Right Question & Design Thinking: Product Development and Innovation Lessons from the News

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • Reddit

Product Innovation Training:  Design ThinkingSince innovations seem to be coming at us at an increasing pace – from the trailblazing iPod-iPhone-iPad products, to smart phone apps for TV, wellness, and just about anything else, to the latest 3D printers – each week I look for lessons and insights about product development and product innovation from recent news articles. Keep reading to see what caught my attention this week.

Recent tips about successful product development and innovation leads to two pointers:

  • ask the right question, and then
  • apply “design thinking.”

 

Ask the right question

Just this past October, the Wall Street Journal reported being impressed with the approach to innovation by Nest, founded by ex-Apple employees. They have developed a web-based thermostat and a web-based smoke detector – innovative ways to use old products. Their approach? “With both its products, Nest exemplifies what has become an especially promising path to invention in Silicon Valley…. First, find the most annoying, obvious problem that millions of people deal with every day. Then ask if things really have to be that way.”

This WSJ author bundles the creation of the mobile credit card processor, Square, Inc., into the same approach. After all, arts and crafts shows and food trucks didn’t accept credit cards before Square came along, since that would have meant traveling with a cumbersome credit card processing system. In this case again, the right question was asked: does it have to be this way? Once smart phones and apps became available, the answer could be different.

Those are examples of how an innovative idea can come about. Equally important is how to transform the idea into a successful product.

 

Design thinking

“Design thinking” is one recent approach offered in Business Week.  The author lists cases of the road traveled to achieve a transformation. Here are two.

IBM had an idea that it could transform its stale approach to trade show marketing. It decided to seek out “conversations with a diverse set of outside experts (from Montessori’s founder to neuroscientists)” and then test-market the new approach at a financial services show. It proved highly successful. The lesson: ask end users how they would prefer to have IBM introduce new products.

It’s not just technology that benefits from breakthrough thinking. Business Week’s next case takes place in Holstebro, Denmark, where seniors weren’t eating government-provided meals. A group of gerontologists, public officials, chefs, nutritionists, and seniors who were clients designed a new meal service with higher quality, more flexibility, increased choice, and better communication between the elders and kitchen workers. Problem resolved. Note that here, too, the end users were included in formulating the solution.

At Fortune’s recent Most Powerful Women Summit, Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group, echoed the idea that successful innovations include end-user input: she shared that Disney now employs social media to promote programming and to solicit feedback on programming.

Business Week’s article underscores that design thinking “can bring a set of processes and tools” that “emphasize attention to developing deep user-driven insights as the basis for envisioning new possibilities, engaging a broader group of stakeholders in co-creation, and then prototyping hypothesized solutions and testing these in small-scale experiments.”

Once you have transformed your product or service, a key step is piloting a small test run before a major rollout is launched.

Asking whether things really have to be the way they are, and then turning to end users for ideas and/or feedback truly can lead to innovative products or services.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • Reddit

Filed Under: Concepts, Uncategorized

Primary Sidebar

Product Mastery Roadmap

Double (and more) your product success rate.Product-Mastery-Roadmap-for-OptIn_300 Go from product manager to Product Master.

Get the Product Mastery Roadmap

About Me

Chad McAllister, PhD - Product Management Guide

I'm Chad McAllister, the host of The Everyday Innovator™ podcast, author of Turning Ideas into Market-Winning Products, and founder of Product Mastery Now. I am aTop 40 Product Management Influencer and a Top 10 Innovation Blogger.

I help product managers become Product Masters. I have trained product managers at Microsoft, Kind Snacks, Level 3, Kohler, John Deere, J.D. Power, GHX, FedEx, Cummins, Compassion, Clorox, Cisco, Mastercard, SAIC, Thomson Reuters, Xerox, and many others.

Product Masters create more successful products, gain influence throughout their organizations, and accelerate their careers. See how, with the Product Mastery Roadmap.

Footer

HOW WE HELP PRODUCT MANAGERS

We help product managers become product masters - influential drivers of product strategy - so they can consistently create products customers love without getting overwhelmed putting out fires. Learn about it in the Product Mastery Roadmap.

FOUNDER

Chad McAllister - Product Management and Innovation TrainingThe primary responsibilities for an organization are product management and innovation. They deliver value to customers. They're also exciting responsibilities for those properly equipped. That is my job - equipping product managers and innovators.
Read More...

SEARCH

MORE

Contact

About

Product Mastery Roadmap

IDEA Framework

Quotes

Innovation Stories

Innovation Roundup

 

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Disclaimer

Copyright © 2008–2023 Product Mastery Now and The Everyday Innovator™ · All rights reserved

Return to top of page

Product Managers and Innovators!

Product Master Roadmap for Product Managers

Get the Product Mastery Roadmap

And become a Product Master:

    • - Develop the right products more often - as much as 5X
    • - Get the influence you want
    • - Drive product strategy, creating products customers love
x