It’s important to realize that in our system, we separate “Filtration” from “Evaluation.” We believe strong, well-thought-out filtration significantly reduces the burden on R&D organizations to evaluate or even develop products or technologies that never should have entered the new product development process in the...
One of the concepts we use to help get the right innovations into the development process easily and quickly is something I call an innovation platform. An innovation platform defines your product and customer vision precisely enough to use as a filtration model and focal...
I have a question – a question that you may have as well: How can you, as a manager, marketer or an innovator, tell if you’re really customer connected? Sure, it’s easy to feel customer connected – you’ve done your market research, sat in on the focus groups,...
Think holistically about the customer experience. As you’ve probably picked up I’m not a fan of incrementalism – the “paint it blue, call it new” style of innovation that seems more directed to satisfying the need of new product development departments who want to proclaim...
It’s not enough just to provide for carpet time – you must work at it to make it effective. Simply spending time with customers alone won’t do the trick. Regardless of what kind of “carpet time” you choose to engage in, there are some guiding principles...
As the widely quoted axiom holds: “The biggest cause of failure is the fear of failure.” It’s an unbelievable cosmic truth that so many forget. Fear is the most insidious of all human emotions. Yet, organizations often try to use fear as a tool of...
“Would the Apple iPod have ever gotten through your new product development process? If the answer is “no,” the process is probably too risk adverse and cumbersome; it should be scrapped and reinvented, “zero-based” style. If the answer is “yes,” then your process has the...
Greater problems of focus and leadership inherent in an organization, just like the daily meteorological phenomena called “weather” are really driven by climate. Weather describes dynamic conditions that can change day-to-day, challenging and often defying prediction and control. Climate, on the other hand, is constant;...
In my consulting practice I help my clients license technologies. I have found that in the medical market, oftentimes the person in charge of evaluating new technologies is not compensated for bringing in new profitable technologies – but they’re punished if they bring in a...
One of the biggest problems with crowdsourcing, however, is that the crowd is very, very big. As a result of that, the crowd typically isn’t “vertical” enough to solve a problem; it is hard to get to the depth necessary with any part of the...
