Business Strategy, Marketing, Innovation, Technology, New Product Management



New Product Management

EM-770 MSOE Use this category for anything related to Knowledge-centric NPD.

Photos of the New Product Management from our Flickr group

Genesis of Sixth Sense with Pranav Mistry

Sep 4th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, New Product Management, Technology

Thanks Naif

These two videos have Pranav Mistry explaining how the Sixth Sense Came to be at TED India.

Pranav Mistry ONE

Pranav Mistry TWO

What do you think?



YouTube Category Killer over iTunes?

Aug 4th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Breakout Topics, General, Information Technology, Innovation, Lean Product Development, Marketing, Technology Strategy

From Fast Company

Check out the graphs and trends.

State of Internet Music

From the article “Interestingly, it wasn’t Apple that Garland viewed as the most important name in music, even though the company’s iPods, iPhones, and iTunes indicate otherwise. “YouTube is increasingly the category killer,” argued Garland. “When people ask me what is the biggest name in music in my opinion, they want me to say Apple. I usually answer: YouTube.”

The music business is shifting.  It is setting the stage for our business models in “everything” to change.  Products?  Services?  Can you have a product without a service, or, for that matter, a service that does not somehow connect to the web?  There are lessons to learn in marketing, product development, strategy, information technology, and just about everything community and commercial.

From the article ” Pandora now represents 1.7% of all radio listening–really a shocking figure to think about.”.   Wow, FREE service, possibly paid service overtaking the ad space?   Lessons to be learned here?

Choice rules.  Custom selection of music is killing “album” sales.  From the article,  ”The music business historically has been built around albums,” explained Silverman. “This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don’t listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs.”

What are the Lessons to be learned from this article?



Knowledge Workers and Bitsmiths

Jul 12th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Breakout Topics, Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, Knowledge Management, New Product Management

From Harvard Business Review Blog

Do your Knowledge Workers have a Bitsmith?

This post presents a wonderful concept that points out the need for specialized tools for the knowledge era.  That of a “Bitsmith”.   Bitsmiths, according to the post ” are people who have deep knowledge of both the work content and the tools used to support the work. In other words, they are almost as expert in derivatives or computer design as they are in computer-programming languages. Because they understand both the domain and the tools, bitsmiths can take an idea from concept to implementation quickly .”

The article makes the case that high performance teams need to have a “bitsmith” just as many towns in the “old west”  had blacksmiths to create the tolls they needed.

What do you think of this concept?



Managing Customers’ Dreams

May 17th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, New Product Management, Operations Management

From Managing Automation Blog — Chris Chiappinelli

Managing Customers’ Dreams

This blog post plus video sums up the business challenges and requirements of the design-build (Continuous Product Development) business for industrial automation well.  http://www.enhancedautomation.com

A focus on the customer requires a focus on quality, cost, specification and reality; often many of these concepts clash.

Are there other challenges?



Product Portfolio Management (PPM) Research

Apr 25th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Leadership, New Product Management, Technology Strategy

From PDMA Visions

Portfolio Pain Points

This study, once again points out how poorly we manage our NPD Projects.  We do not seem to think of the collection of projects as a portfolio and do not manage them as such.  If we are to achieve our strategic goals for NPD as well as our objectives for each of the projects we have in process, we need to manage them as a portfolio.

Too many projects and poor decision making is at the root cause of poor success rates for both strategic and tactics objectives.

This research connects to a previous post regarding an article by Robert Cooper   Cooper Article

What do you think?  Am I overly concerned?



FORD to use Web to Harvest Product Ideas

Apr 25th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: General, Innovation, Knowledge Management, New Product Management

Thanks Peter for the article suggestion

From Detroit News

FORD Product Idea Website Article

From the website “Ford Motor Co. is creating a “idea portal” on its Web site, to give consumers the opportunity to suggest new features, allow others to critique them and vote for which ones should be considered by Ford’s product development team.”

Seems like a great idea.

Article on FORD Site About Idea Gathering

What do you think?  Should they allow ALL comments to be seen by everyone?

From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100413/AUTO01/4130330/1148/Ford-to-harvest-product-ideas-from-Web#ixzz0m9T8mjH4



Effective Gating — Gates with Teeth

Apr 25th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Innovation, New Product Management, Technology Strategy

This article is from Marketing Management — You may need to be a Member of AMA to Access all content

Effective Gating by Robert G. Cooper

Effective Gating ABSTRACT

This article is a great reminder that we have TOO many projects in our product development pipeline.

We have ineffective gates (and NPD Processes) that do not KILL bad projects.

We do not have effective (NPD) portfolio management systems and governance processes.

We have TOO many small, incremental projects to be an effective  (NPD) profit growth engine.

What do you think?



Concept “Roll Top” PC

Apr 1st, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Innovation, New Product Management, Technology

Thanks Frank.

Check out this video of a Roll Top PC

Rolltop PC



Knowledge Management — Case Studies Ba Based Companies

Jan 18th, 2010 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Innovation, Knowledge Management, New Product Management

From KM Edge

Referred by Evelyn of MSOE Rader School of Business MG-750

KM Edge (blog) from APQC presents a wonderful PPT which looks at three Ba Based Knowledge Management approaches in Japanese Companies.  As we study Knowledge Management, we learn more of the concept of Ba.  This presentation gives us some insight into the power of Ba.

Ba Based Knowledge Management Approaches

Comments?



Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Video

Dec 9th, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, Marketing, New Product Management

Thank you Wendy and Mike.

From The Today Show

Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Video

What do you think?



Application Programming Interface (API) Explained

Dec 9th, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Breakout Topics, Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, New Product Management

Thanks Shawn.

From Wired

API explained with examples.

Geeks to Music Industry: APIs Can Set You Free

From the article ” Behind every mashup of two or more online services, there’s an API. That’s short for application programming interface, a set of commands that lets programmers write new code that controls an existing piece of software. Many APIs are proprietary, but the net is full of open APIs that let anyone, say, play a YouTube video on their own web page or overlay bike routes on a Google map”

When will you suggest that your company build an API?



Spending on Innovation

Dec 5th, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Innovation, New Product Management, Strategy, Technology Strategy

From Strategy and Business

Profits Down, Spending Steady: The Global Innovation 1000

“Booz & Company’s annual study of the world’s biggest corporate R&D spenders finds that most companies have stuck with their innovation programs despite the recession — and many are boosting spending to compete more effectively in the upturn.”

My take: Innovation should ALWAYS be a priority. R&D for New Products, a priority.

What do you think?



Digital = Free

Nov 23rd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, Marketing, New Product Management

From Wired Magazine

Chris Anderson “The Future of Free”

This article and and 37 minute video gets you thinking about disruption and the future of free.  Is everything that is digital eventually free?

Is “free” a marketing tool or something else?



“Good Enough” Product Development

Nov 23rd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Innovation, New Product Management, Technology Strategy

From Wired Magazine

The Good Enough Revolution

Craig’s List?

Twitter?

Kindle?

Should we be designing products that are “good enough” (good enuf) but not great?   Is there a “good enuf rvlutn” going on?



Portable Ultrasound from GE Healthcare

Nov 22nd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, New Product Management, Technology

Thank you Sanghomitra

From YouTube

Check out this video of a Portable Ultrasound

What do you think of that?  Cool, eh?



Robots in Healthcare

Nov 22nd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Innovation, New Product Management

Thanks Mick.

From MSNBC     Send in the drones

Robots Standing in for Docs

So, what do you think, would you be ok with being seen by a “robot” as described in this article?   Will this disrupt our healthcare system?



Global Virtual Work Environments

Nov 22nd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: General, Innovation, Knowledge Management, New Product Management

From Talent Management Magazine…..

Virtual Teams: Narrowing the Performance Gap

This article talks about how virtual teams are becoming more common, however, there are problems with cohesion, collaboration and focus.  The article offers some suggestions to deal with these problems.

The article describes the “work revolution” as:

“From local workplace to global work webs: People used to travel to a workplace, but increasingly the work is traveling to them, wherever they are. Freedom from “place” also means we are collaborating more often with customers, partners and colleagues in transitory virtual teams that cross multiple geographic, cultural and organizational boundaries.

From physical presence to technological presence: Being fully present and connecting with others is important on any team, but it becomes more challenging in virtual environments, where isolation and alienation are common.

From command and control to collaborate and control:
Managers leading distributed workgroups understand that command-and-control micromanagement is dysfunctional in a virtual environment. To paraphrase a Pentagon saying: It’s pretty hard to turn a screw with an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver.

From information value to connection value: The right information at the right time still has power, but information is everywhere and easily accessible. Connections are becoming the new currency — not simply the number, but the access many give to new knowledge, influence, skills and resources.

From fixed structures to fluid structures: New technologies enable agile working and teaming. Virtual project teams can be formed and dissolved quickly to promote speed, responsiveness and innovation. The best global talent for a job can be mobilized and leveraged to solve customer problems or create new sources of value.”

What do you think of the Six C’s?  Cooperation, Convergence, Coordination, Capability, Communication, and Cultural Intelligence.

Are you using virtual teams?  Do you see these trends and problems?



Augmented Reality and Business

Nov 22nd, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Marketing, New Product Management, Strategy

From the Harvard Business School Blog…..

How will Augmented Reality affect Your Business

Check out the five “things”.  Personally, of these, the “nature of location” will have the most profound impact.

What do you think?



Steve Jobs CEO of the Decade?

Nov 6th, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Feature, Information Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, New Product Management, Technology Strategy

Thanks for the link Hugh.

How Jobs Transformed APPLE

The Decade of Steve

And, my favorite link   Jobs’ Greatest Hits — A Timeline

So, is he the CEO of the decade?  Is he one of the most innovative manager/leaders ever?

What do you think?



Reducing Vampire Power Consumption

Oct 28th, 2009 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: General, Information Technology, Innovation, New Product Management, Technology

Now that I have your attention, Hugh shared this video.

Vampire Power Video

Or, you can pull the plug or switch off the Power Strip.

Are you helping save the planet and your hard earned $?