Your path to business agility
Innovation is all about focusing and optimizing the product portfolio so you can get products to market at the right time and cost. Topics we’ll explore in the Product Innovation blog category range from ideation management to product launch and product end-of-life. Experts will provide recommendations to take your innovation strategy and delivery process to the next level. You’ll get tips for picking the right projects, prioritizing good projects, and aligning them with strategy. Take your innovation strategy to the next level with information on improving time to market to maximize resources, funding, and time. Get tips from other customers on how they improved transparency to pick the right projects and kill the bad projects early. You will also be able to access ground-breaking research and fresh insights on how capacity planning can accelerate business innovation while lowering risk.
A product manager and an analyst are discussing the revenue forecast for a product in development. Poring over the financials, the manager asks: “Have you considered how SUPR-3 will impact sales of our other SUPR products?” The analyst replies confidently: “Yes! Right here you can see we are estimating SUPR-3 to take a...
In a recently released research paper, Issue in Focus: Meeting Fixed Product Launch Windows analyst Jim Brown, Founder and President, Tech-Clarity, Inc., talks about how companies can use Product Portfolio Management (PPM) applications to hit timely product launch deadlines to improve new product development and overall performance. Conversations with product developers and the immediate interest...
Once again, our friends at Kalypso have issued a challenge for all of you product development companies out there… actually, two challenges this time. 1. Move past the myths that keep you from using social models and tools to support innovation and 2. If you have moved past these myths, nominate yourselves for a SPIKE...
It’s that time of year again: We find more requests for proposals (RFPs) in our inbox during the late summer and early fall than any other time of year. RFPs vary dramatically in length, complexity, and level of ambition. In a spirit of cooperation, allow me to make some suggestions about those RFPs, and about...
When we engage with a client, our primary objective is to ensure that they are investing in the right projects: Those in closest alignment with their strategic goals. Without proper attention paid to project execution, however, you’ll never unlock the potential of your chosen projects. Last year we blogged about the distinctions between operational and...
Coffee Talk: It’s Your Link to the Latest Innovation and Product Portfolio Management News and Trends! We are excited to introduce this new video blog series, Coffee Talk, featuring the Product Portfolio Mavens. Likened to The View for Product Portfolio Management (PPM), the Mavens offer wise insights along with a fun perspective on critical topics for...
As we have said before, every forecast you’ll ever build is wrong. The truth may be out there, but due to a lack of perfect information about the future, you won’t be able to reveal it before your project review meeting. There is a paradox here: The more you insist on the truth, the more...
What is an R&D-driven company with $10-50 billion of cash in the bank to do? In the last twelve months, Merck, Pfizer, HP, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb have announced stock buybacks totaling over $25 billion, and layoffs of over 30,000 employees. So apparently, for many firms, the best use of their cash hoard is a...
Finance and R&D can get along You’ve just finished briefing the executive committee on the methods for project valuation that you have worked so hard to establish in your R&D group. The team has finally acknowledged that risk needs to be managed in all its potential forms. You’ve reached consensus on the following set of...
Innovation is inherently risky. By definition, you’re doing something that you haven’t done before so there are no guarantees it will work. The mindset in many organizations is to “minimize” risk as if it were a disease, but it isn’t that simple. The best companies face risk head-on and manage it both systematically and transparently....
