Product Launch

Are processes incidental to the value stream?

In the Agile Manifesto, the statement,"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools," declares relative value from the perspective of the signatories. In other development environments, processes and tools may seem to command a lot more attention than people. A people versus process discussion may polarize many participants.

This post explores a potentially more polarizing idea:

"In New Product Development (NPD), processes are incidental to the value stream" (1)

From Wikipedia:

Value Stream: The an end-to-end business process which delivers a product or service to a customer or consumer. The process steps along the way may both use and produce intermediate goods, services and information to reach that primary end.

Analysis may suggest the removal of intermediate process steps, goods, services and information that do not move the value stream forwards to its primary end, provided they do not serve important secondary ends such as compliance, quality control or employee loyalty.

Initially, the value is realized at launch when people begin to interact with your new product.The value depends on the user experience with your new product. For the most part, customers don't care too much about your processes.

Speculative Products and Speculative Processes

In NPD, most projects begin as speculative product concepts. A speculative product is not developed for a particular customer and there are no guarantees that sales will be abundant. Your 'finished' product may not have a great product/market fit. If your product doesn't have traction in the marketplace, an expensive advertising campaign or extensive public relations effort will be inefficient.

The product concept is speculative. The processes used to commercialize the product are more speculative even if it is implied that the processes are aligned with 'Best Practices.'

Incidental

Incidental doesn't imply unimportant. 

It is a reminder that NPD is a multi-variable problem and the desired primary output is value in the economic domain. Sometimes contributors to NPD get distracted by proxy variables such as waste, cycle time, variability, efficiency, and unit cost and processes. (2)

In new product development, mobilize your team to delight customers and incidentally you can publish the results on your brilliant processes that facilitated your success. 

Acknowledgements

1. The title of this post was inspired (in part) after viewing a presentation by Hal Macomber on Target-Value Design at the UK Lean Conference in 2009.

2. According to Don Reinertsen, the goal of NPD is to maximization of life cycle profits.

Adding social media to your new product development efforts

If you intend to employ more social media in your new product development (NPD) efforts, it may be helpful to begin by re-evaluating how presentations are delivered within your organization.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in November 2009, the keynote presentations were enhanced using a live Twitter feed generated using a publicized hashtag (#w2e) and multiple WiFi access points for the audience. 

  

I suspect that some of the Presenters were more comfortable with the established paradigm of delivering a monolog with a prepared set of images in a darkened room. 

The addition of a live Twitter feed provided a public sampling of the realtime conversation within the audience.

What was revealed in the conversations?

Some tweets contained simple status information such as "The presentation is starting now." Commonly, audience members posted quotes from the presenter. Other tweets contained supplemental information such as 'The link for more information is ...' Occasionally, the tweets were fact checks. A few tweets contained a surprising insight or humorous anecdote.

Capacity problems

Because so many people were attempting to use the WiFi, the system was overloaded. Joel Spolsky has an excellent post on "The WiFi at Conferences Problem." Additional suggestions are in the "Why is Interet access and Wi-Fi always so terrible at large conferences" discussion.

Benefits of having social media during a presentation 

The addition of hundreds of tweets during presentations provided:

• Richer experience for the audience. Potential for more excitement and greater engagement.
• Realtime evaluation. When the presenter was motivational, the content of the tweets reflected it. When there was too much superficial content, dissatisfaction was registered in the tweets. The absence of feedback signaled that the audience was distracted and likely to be using the WiFi connection for other activities.
• Disintermediated information. Instead of a dashboard summary, the raw text is available.
• Traceable sources. Tweets are not anonymous. Authorship is revealed.
• Analytics. The tweets can be reviewed after the presentation to extract other information.
• A multi-perspective summary of the event.
• Feedback for the presenter. Opportunities for realtime adjustments. Insights for improving future presentations. 
• Feedback for the event planners that complements survey information and subjective assessments.

After experiencing the enhanced presentations last month, it will be difficult to accept another dull PowerPoint monolog in a darkened room.

Don't feed the trolls (DNFTT)

During the Web 2.0 expo, the feed generated from #w2e (the publicized Twitter hashtag) was moderated. There was a mechanism to remove inappropriate comments before they were displayed on the big screen. Trolls were thwarted.

Implications for new product development

There seems to be a growing urgency to add social media capabilities to new product development efforts. The budget for social media capabilities has been increased in many organizations. Now, 'Social Media Strategist' is a job title. This is reminiscent of the job title 'Web Master' from the 1990s.

It will take more than adding Web 2.0 capabilities to your site and devoting resources to your Twitter effort to maximize the effectiveness of your development efforts. It will require more than mastering the jargon.

Perhaps one way to gain experience using social media is to evolve the established presentation paradigms to empower new communities and improve open innovation.

This is possible because social media provides a great method for listening. Likewise, new product development benefits from listening as the product evolves from a concept to a commercially viable solution

Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development (10/10) - Collaboration

In the conclusion of the 10-part series on Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development - Collaboration, opportunities for collaboration are explored. Opportunities for collaboration include the following interactions:

• Between individual contributors
• Across functional groups
• Agents (something that acts within the system) whose contributions focus on different portions of the development effort
• Individuals and information

This post address improving NPD environments and especially those embracing Web 2.0, social computing, NPD 2.0, co-development, open innovation, or geographically dispersed (virtual) teams concepts. It explores the concepts of neural networks and complex adaptive systems in NPD environments.

It concludes with "When your connotation of collaboration enables you to create an NPD culture that facilitates synergistic interactions among individuals and across functional groups as well enabling better insights from information throughout development, your potential for innovation will improve."

Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development (9/10) - I will know it when I see it

The phrase "I will know it when I see it" is explored in Part 9/10 of the Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development (NPD) series at the PDMA blog.

Under ideal NPD conditions, members of the development team do their best to ensure that an appropriate solution will be presented to the decision maker and that solution will be distinguished from all other candidates. 

When both the NPD problem and the appropriate NPD solution are unknown, there is more risk of failure. A question such as "Within our project constraints, what combination of attributes will form a compelling new product offering?" deserves a more rigorous development approach.

What are the qualities of leaders that inspire trust when they claim to recognize the appropriate solutions? What qualities of the individual contributors are required to ensure that appropriate solutions are presented for evaluation? How does the NPD network improve?

The detrimental connotations in this post originate from:

• Problems with the person making the claim
• Problems with the NPD network

Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development (6/10), Marketing

Part 6 of my Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development series has been posted on the PDMA blog. This segment explores several detrimental connotations about Marketing from an R&D perspective within an NPD context. 

It includes the following new graphic in the style popularized by Jessica Hagy at Indexed.

The final section of the post is 'Becoming a more valuable NPD contributor.' 

Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development (5/10), Designers and Developers

Part 5 of my Detrimental Connotations in New Product Development series has been posted on the PDMA blog. This segment explores the roles of Designers and Developers in NPD.

This post includes:

• Roles of several types of Designers (including Design school graduates).
• Implications of level-of-mastery (Shuhari)
• Potential collaboration with other team members.
• Pejorative characterizations that tend to cause tension between Designers and Developers.

Is hiring Alphas the most effective way to promote sustainable competitive advantage?

I commented on a thread about attracting and retaining employees. The post was about Alphas.

The original post began by defining Alphas as 'the most creative and ingenious employees' and inquired about 'feeding their hunger to innovate.' I was reminded of the first pages of Chapter 13 on Effectiveness in 'The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management.' Drucker comments that 'there seems to be little correlation between a man's effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge.' Drucker reports knowing brilliant men that were ineffective. He defines 'highly effective plodders' as the folks that consistently get the job done with skill and pride. He states 'Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained.' (pp. 191-192) It takes more than Alphas to accomplish these objectives in new product development (NPD). I have found it much more enjoyable to be in the company of dependable folks that do their job will skill. This can include Alphas and the new guy in Shipping and Receiving and most everyone that adds value. Company characteristics such as the appropriate objectives and the appropriate training and learning, plus the appropriate company culture contribute much to long term sustainable competitive advantage. I wonder if an organization could become significantly more effective by shedding those that are below the mean on team cooperation, collaboration, and skill. There are plenty of ways to recruit Alphas but that strategy may not provide the most effective way to promote NPD, innovation, and growth.

Strategies when the product is late and launch goal is limited by the number of sales people

In the Goals, Readiness and Constraints: The Three Dimensions of Product Launch article in the current issue of the Pragmatic Marketer, David Daniels presents an analysis of launch constraints of a hypothetical $100,000 Version 3 product that was six months late. In addition, a product feature that the sales group had been promoting was not going to be included in the proposed release. 

Internally, the new product development environment at this fictional company is characterized by handoffs. When 'the development team' thinks that the product is 'ready,' it is released to marketing and sales representatives. 

Representatives from the different groups do not have the same perspectives. The groups have different criteria for success. Software developers may have a prominent goal of 'shippable product.' The sales group may have the prominent goal of 'meet quota.'

In the development group, such goals may promote a myopic attitude. As long as requirements (which may be known as BDUF - big design up front] are met and the existing quality assurance tests (finding and fixing software bugs) are met, the product is released to manufacturing for distribution to customers. A separate group of marketing and sales representatives is assigned the responsibility of finding ways to 'sell the product they have.'  

There are many insights in the Daniels' article. One strategy may be to find solutions within the marketing and sales groups. Another strategy is to nourish an integrated new product development environment with more cooperation and collaboration.

I found that the most pivotal sentence in this original post was: 

"Clearly, the launch goal is limited by the number of available salespeople." 

This statement frames the situation as if the only two actions would be to change the launch goal or to requisition more sales people.

If this situation is representative of most of the company's new product development efforts, then there are company culture issues to resolve. Efforts to patch the current Widget 3.0 launch situation will be a distraction. 

The Widget 3.0 development efforts are seen by Sales/Marketing as over budget and six months late. Development dropped a reporting feature that the sale team has been promoting. 

The sales Team (7 people) has lost confidence in Widget 3.0 and plan to sell other products to make their quota. I predict that more sales people will not be hired, trained, and contributing within the 9 month quota period. If more sales people were hired, this would not resolve problems that will still exist when Widget 4.0 is available. 

The larger opportunities require changes of the company culture. 

• One problem can be characterized as too many silos. The lack of collaboration between development and sales/marketing is costing the company millions of dollars a month. Improving collaboration should be a top objective for the CEO. 
• Development needs to hire some design and programming expertise. Being six months late and dropping a reporting feature indicate problems that should be revolved with training and co-development with other specialists. 
• Rebecca in Marketing Communications (who in limbo because of the Widget 3.0 delays) has some unique options. Since there are only 7 sales people and a handful of sales per month, communication can be supplemented with video conferences and online collaboration tools. The extended team (sales, marketing, product marketing,...) should be able to work as a dispersed team to evolve the required assets.
• Since the Widget 3.0 project is already six months overdue and there is contention about the importance of a report feature, a high level team should finalize a plan (within one week) to resolve the situation with integrity. The current 1.0 and 2.0 customers must be satisfied with the promised deliverables. I suspect that a workable solution can be achieved by hiring the expertise and that an acceptable product can be ready within three months.
• Bob, the VP of Sales should explore other options to make the overall sales quota and modify the CEO's expectations. He should reconsider building a new Widget 3.0 pipeline because the previous prospects became “lost opportunities because of the current product features.

The strategy that prevails will depend on the convictions of the leadership and the strength of the analysis. However, I predict that the company will be more profitable when they increase the collaboration of all the contributors that develop and launch new products.

Contrasting Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 Product Launches

Today, I reviewed insider comments from the product launches of two gaming systems. Separately, both stories were interesting but a comparison was insightful.

In the April 2007 issue of Fast Company magazine, a portion of the Microsoft Xbox 360 story was published. In Less Hulk, More Bruce Lee, Don Hall, the former Xbox global brand director, recalls the back-to-back-to-back presentations of three independent brand designers. The three contenders for launch services were from Landor, Turner Duckworth, and JDK Design (Jager, Di Paola, Kemp Design). Of the three contenders, JDK was the underdog.

The presentation from Michael Jager, JDK's creative director, included a description of the "pure aggressive power" of the Xbox but then suggested that it could become "an invitation to an experience." Jager continued:

"Our approach was to transition Xbox from this hulk of escaping power into this quiet power that is lurking, something still incredibly dangerous but with more of an elegance and grace," he recalls. "The analogy we used was Bruce Lee."

Hall remembers:

"As soon as Michael and his team walked out, I looked around the room and knew it was just a formality to sit through the other presentations." Indeed, Jager's illustrative shorthand became a mantra for the 360 team as it created the look and feel of the new system. "Whenever we evaluated our work in terms of guiding our decisions for Xbox 360," Hall says, "it was like, 'This is too Hulk' or 'We need more Bruce Lee.'"

The article revealed:

"As JDK worked with the Xbox 360 team, they continued to build on the Bruce Lee idea. The final reverse-parenthesis design [ ) ( ] of the console is itself Jager's symbologic conjuring of the martial-arts master, representing the inhalation of breath before a strike. JDK helped design a font specifically for every aspect of the new system."

The Xbox 360 console was launched 23 March 2006. The Fast Company article states that Microsoft sold more than 10 million consoles before the end of 2006.

Part of the Nintendo Wii story was presented at a 21 February 2007 teleconference hosted by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, WOMMA. A year ago, the Wii was considered the "third in a two-horse race." The Wii was launched as a brand using an organic word of mouth (WOM) approach. Key points from the February presentation included:

• "Fundamental to success is a product that's at once innovative and accessible
• Brands should move beyond word of mouth marketing and toward "word of experience" marketing, giving consumers the chance to not only talk about products, but also to use them
• The best kind of word of mouth is the kind that seizes upon consumer enthusiasm to create unimagined campaigns and unanticipated opportunities"

Wii was introduced 19 November 2006 and sales were 1.1 million through the end of 2006. Who is experiencing Wii? The range is astounding. Today, a Google search using the words "Senior" and "Citizens" and "Wii" return over 400,000 results. Retirement home residents enjoy games such as Wii bowling. Grandparents are teaching grandkids how to play. Non-gamers are willing to give the Wii system a try.

During the WOM teleconference, Perrin Kaplan, VP, Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Nintendo of America and Stephen Jones, EVP, GolinHarris reported:

"Nintendo used a combination of word of mouth marketing techniques -- including buzz marketing, social networking, consumer-generated media, and brand ambassadors -- to take its brand from last place to first, ahead of its largest competitors."

Both teams relied on outside experts to develop part of their product launch plans. They used different approaches because their situations were different. Both teams produced good results.

The Nintendo team cited inspiration from Clayton M. Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma. They knew that they had a great product and they facilitated multiple ways to get potential customers to use their product.

In contrast, the Fast Company article highlights the tactics (imagery, language, design cues, ...) used to make the Xbox more desirable.

What is one way to evaluate your product launch mastery skills? Determine which of the following skill levels best describes you.

• Good: Knowing about these two techniques
• Better: Knowing when to apply these techniques to a particular situation
• Best: Everything in "better" plus successful implementation