How to Screw Up a Product Line (and a Business)
When I began my career in product development, I didn’t understand how easy it is to screw up a product line. I had the opposite view. I thought managers of established product lines had an easy job. They didn’t have to worry about developing and launching new stuff. They needed only to manage pricing, promotion, and […]
Adept-2019Products and Product Lines: The Difference Matters
There’s a major difference between product and product line thinking. And not knowing how to manage each differently is costing companies a lot of money. Do you know the difference between a product and a product line? I’m sure you do, but do you recognize that how you address the difference can make or break […]
Jobs-to-be-Done – What Pioneers Get Wrong
“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.” — Wyatt Earp The market for getting the JTBD job done is like the Wild West. There are gunslingers and sheriffs, pioneers and hustlers. This isn’t about good guys and bad guys. Everyone want’s what’s best for JTBD and for themselves. But I use the Wild West metaphor […]
The Red Queen’s Race
Winning the Red Queen’s Race in New Product Development “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass Does product development seem […]
Agile and Strategy
The Need for Responsive Roadmapping Agile implementations have a big problem. When they bump up against an organization’s culture, progress can stop. It turns out, behaviors and practices can be a brick wall. To me, it’s humorous to hear experts say Agile’s full benefits accrue only from “transformative implementations.” They declare an organization, from top […]
Roadmapping the Roadmap
Where is Roadmapping Taking Us? Roadmapping has been on quite a journey. Many managers use the term to describe planning and tracking projects. But they use different schemes to create roadmaps. And the results vary widely. There’s much to learn from roadmapping’s evolution. This is especially true for innovation management and product development in big […]
Successful Yet Misdirected Innovation
The Quagmire of a Positive Innovation Culture Innovation is interesting. You must create something and win in a market to declare your work a true innovation. You seldom hear managers call an innovation bad. By definition, an innovation is successful. Someone paid money for it. And it fulfills a need. This is all good. Except […]
Rethinking Product Strategy
It’s surprising to see how product strategy can trip us up. It seems like every part of the topic should help us, not lead us astray. Product Strategy Problems The problem is that many managers see product strategy as the roadmap of changes to a single product. Or they view it as the roadmap for […]
Facts about Product Line Strategy and Roadmaps
Interested in Product Line Strategy and Roadmaps? Can you name a successful company without a powerful product line? What about a company that failed because a product line died? It’s easy to see the impact product lines have on business health. The problem is that good product line strategy gets lost in the culture of […]
