In the early part of the negotiations (with HP), Xerox CEO John Visentin expressed concerns that his company was out of organic growth opportunities and must either expand through an acquisition or be acquired itself. Icahn Proposed Buying HP If It Didn’t Pursue Xerox Merger Bloomberg News, February 27, 2020 By Ed Hammond and Scott […]
How the Decision-Flow Impacts Product Development and Product Line Performance This list relates the blog Decision Flows and Product Line Strategies. It lays out ten issues that arise from a poor or disjointed decision flow. Please read and comment on each. Or please add to the list. Projects are swirling in development because too much risk […]
A disjointed decision-flow can cause many headaches. Years ago, I stumbled on a powerful insight into product development. It came to me while working with a large enterprise software company. The job was to help set up their new software to support product development and portfolio management. Today we call this workflow automation. The insight […]
Germans declare it Industrie 4.0. The Yanks tag it as The Connected Enterprise. And the Brits give it the 4th Industrial Revolution moniker. Any way you slice it, it’s the future. The product development community, especially those in large organizations, don’t seem as caught up in a name. I’ve seen Innovation 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 […]
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 […]
But Smart Strategy Drives Speed and Agility. “Agile execution beats strategy.” It sounds good, but is it true? It is if you believe strategies are fixed and unresponsive to change. But it’s not true if you create the right strategy made responsive to new situations. The biggest problem with strategies is that they don’t stand […]
Uniting Agile, Strategy, and Jobs-to-be-Done There’s a tug-a-war going on across three interrelated topics. Each drives superb product development. Yet the three topics act independently. The Approaches The Agile approach is found in every corner of product development. Its first mission was to uncover a new way to develop software successfully. But following its success, […]
Big companies have a special challenge when innovating. It’s that each function in the company affects the outcomes. It’s not just product development or marketing that decide the results. Other functions also matter. Yet the pressure to succeed falls to project and product management. Functions as Links in a Chain There is nothing new in the […]
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 […]
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 […]
Adept-2019
