ProdMan.Net

Mind reading technologies

 It looks like companies are able to read the mind of the consumer more than ever, now using “the tools of biometrics - measuring brain waves, galvanic skin response, eye movements, pulse rates and the like - is increasing as American consumer spending slows in the wake of the credit crunch, falling real estate values and rising gasoline prices.” This article in the International Herald Tribune gave me some interesting ideas.

There are some interesting companies in this space such as NeuroFocus getting funding from some big players like Nielson. Another company, EmSense, is also developing innovative technologies that interpret brain waves for practical purposes.

Right now, these tools are being heavily used in advertising where there is a lot of mony to finance such testing, and where making the adjustments and changes to maximize the desired results are fairly inexpensive (maybe they just change the color or message on the ad and it improves).

I have worked at companies that use similar (but much simpler) types of tools for product development, but they are often used at the end of some development process that has taken years to get there, and the ‘user testing’ ends up leading to a few changes of links, text instructions, and other superficial items. Often these tests are limited to one feature, tool, or other limited use case that is targeted at something particular.  This is often because the test is done by some middle manager down the pipeline who does not have the authority or incentive to make dramatic changes to the whole application if the tests reveal some huge flaws in the product.

Good product management is all about being ahead of the customers. Our goal is to give the customers a product that delights them. Companies like these give us accessible tools that can actually get into the minds and hearts of our customers and measure (scientifically) their emotional, physiogical, and mental reactions to prototypes of new products, features, and innovations–while there is yet time to make substantive changes to the product.

I guess the real trick to making tools like this useful in the product management process is to

#1. Have it done as early as possible in the development process.

#2. Make sure you can respond dramatically to the results if you have to {i.e. have some decision-making authority intepret the results who is ready and able to make hard decisions)

#3. Make the tests open-ended in the sense that you need to be willing to learn ANYTHING from the results. This means you recognize that these tests may change the product, the service, even the business model in a way that leads to success. 

#4. Choose your participants very carefully. Sometimes your exact target market may not be best subject to test new product ideas on.  You want your participants to be influential in their arenas, and insightful in their reactions.

Anyway check out the article for yourself. These new technologies just might blow your mind.  

Posted in innovation, Cool Companies, Useful Links | No Comments »

How Strategic is Your Product Management?

Here is an interesting article entitled The Strategic Role of Product Management, written by Steve Johnson for the product management gang over at Pragmatic Marketing. It was an interesting read. I’ll recommend it to product managers.

Personally, I think it might over-promise on the benefits of product management. There are some people who act like product management is some kind of magical savior of a company that will fix all your product and market problems. That frightens me. Product management is important, but it is just part of a team effort. Product management brings people together and helps champion the voice of the customer inside an organization, but all the other members of the team are critical: engineering, sales, support, finance, accounting, legal, etc.

This article really focuses on the ‘product part’ of a company’s strategy. While good products are essential to success, I think business strategy involves a lot more than just products. It involves considerations for partnerships, alliances, technologies, resources, people and a lot more. A successful product manager needs to understand the many trade-offs that need to be made in a company in order to pick the right fights, make the right compromises, and propose right solutions that will fit with the company’s bigger picture.

Anyway, the essay is thought provoking. Enjoy.

Posted in strategy, product management | 1 Comment »

Battle of the Clouds

So, Microsoft today announced a new cloud computing model of their own called Live Mesh. I keep mis-typing it as Live Mess. Maybe that’s just my fault. Now everyone who’s anyone has a cloud computing play. Amazon has S3, Google’s App Engine, IBM Gear, and dozens more.

I like the idea of cloud computing in theory. It makes startups a lot cheaper, that’s for sure. While the hype is pretty big around these services, cloud computing does offer instant scalability and that is pretty cool. Anyway, it will be interesting to watch.

Posted in trends, innovation | No Comments »

Idea killing machines

Here is an interesting article about how innovation struggles to get a chance at many companies–even the ‘good’ ones. The articles explores ideas presented in a book by Jane Linder, called “Spiral Up . . . and Other Management Secrets Behind Wildly Successful Initiatives.”

The article describes two scenarios. One with bad management, where top managers “boldly and blatantly” shoot down all new ideas brought before them. I’ve been in organizations where any ideas that may deviate from the status quo are seen as dangerous and distracting — even when everyone knows the status quo is not working. The other scenario is with ‘good’ management, where top managers are given a chance to weigh in on a new idea before it is presented. This time the managers ‘help improve’ the idea and in the process water it down to something that fits with the status quo. The article explains,

The more intriguing idea is that good management is, by its nature, an idea-killing machine. In her book, Linder offers a quick but telling example. Middle manager “Lee” is responsible for a meeting in which department heads will explain what they’re planning for the coming year. The goal of the meeting is that managers will spot ways to support one another. Lee, knowing how dull such meetings have been in the past, decides to break up the typical “talking head” approach and open with a case study of what happens when departments fail to coordinate their efforts. She writes up the study, based on an internal breakdown, “laying out some of the conflicts and tensions fairly bluntly.”

Sounds interesting, right? But prior to the presentation something awful happens: she gets managed. Linder writes: “Because this is such an unusual approach, she makes sure she gets her boss’s approval. He waters down some of the conflicts in the case study, saying they’re ‘just too inflammatory.’ Lee makes the changes and distributes the case study. The day before the event, Lee’s boss’s boss calls and suggests that she shouldn’t actually facilitate a discussion at all. He recommends that Lee present her own analysis of the situation, then ask for questions.”

The upshot is that Lee will be making another “talking head” presentation, circling back to the exact point she’d set out to avoid.

It is an insightful look at something we as product managers might see every day. Even supposed ‘good’ managers are resistant to change and want to avoid conflict and risk. My favorite part of the article was around the process of introducing new ideas. How many times have we been told as product managers that if we have a new idea, we need to build a solid business case? We’ll need to justify it with financial projections, forecasts, and plans that explain every possibility and eventuality. How many times have we seen new ideas get torn apart by this possibility or that possibility? In my experience, engineers love to do this most to new ideas. They love to pick at, poke, and prod new ideas until all that is left are bunch of unpleasant scenarios that ‘could’ turn this new idea into a disaster. As the article puts it,

What about true innovations? Management is designed to plan, to budget, and execute. The problem is that when it’s confronted with a truly new idea, it’s almost impossible to plan and budget.

The best ideas are explorations. (Speaking of exploring, picture Lewis and Clark going before a management committee. How long will it take? Don’t know. How will you get there? Don’t know. What will you find? Don’t know.) You can’t manage an exploration; you take not knowing as a given. What you hear explorers say is “we’ll figure it out as we go,” and “we’ll manage.” That latter remark would make a good starting point for the sort of endeavors that Linder describes - they don’t get managed from above, but rather, they’re self-managed along the way.

In the end, I know too many managers who are afraid of uncertainty and risk. The idea of giving the answer ‘we’ll manage’ to questions about a new venture frightens them. They have been burned too many times. They don’t want to face the repercussions if things go wrong on their watch. They would rather have people do what they normally do, keep the status quo going humming along, and everything will be just fine. Unfortunately, in my limited experience, this is a recipe for mediocrity, constant follower-ship, and dangerous exposure to real disruption.

Your thoughts?

Posted in leadership, product planning, innovation | No Comments »

No personal gardens in the ashram

One of my uncles became a Hindu, moved to India, and lived on an ashram (a religious commune) for decades. He spent his days and nights supposedly acquiring spiritual insights and experiences in his personal quest for Nirvana. Once he came back to the States and stayed with my family for a while taking care of some personal business.

One day he told us about life on the Ashram, and some of the resent difficulties he and his (then) wife had been having. Apparently, his wife had wanted to have flowers near her cabin on the Ashram. She planted her own garden and cared for it very much. One day, one of the local guru-guys came and told her that her garden had to be destroyed. She asked why, and the guru said that it was not an officially sanctioned garden of the Ashram. She would need to have permission from the garden committee or something to plant the garden. She was upset and got into a semi-scandalous territorial dispute with the Ashram guru council (or whatever they have to run things).

I sat and listened to this story in wonder. Here were these gurus and mystics, living in a little commune in middle-of-nowhere India, and they were having some territorial squabble about who gets to plant a flower garden at their cabin. To me, it was a lesson that even in a place where you’d think political drama would be avoidable; there was the same posturing, power trips, and authority struggles that we see in any company or organization of people anywhere.

My conclusion: politics is just part of life. It is part of living and working with other people. It is unavoidable. There is no escape.

I’ve heard countless people say that their organization has very little politics. At this point my spidey senses go off when I hear this. Oftentimes people who think there is no politics are the winners. They are those who are doing well and getting their way. These people are often completely oblivious (or just uncaring) of the people they rolled over to get their way.

Every time I think I’m in a place where there might be less politics I am eventually left disappointed. Some people in the group are always struggling for influence and power. Some people are always fighting for more say over what everyone else does. There’s always some who are trying to manipulate the rest of the crew to get their way. This would be the dark side of politics. 

I guess I should just accept this fact. There is probably no company or organization where people just focus on the work, the customer, and doing the best you can. There is probably no place where (if you fail) there is not a blame-game of musical chairs where everyone tries to get as far away from the mess as possible to save their own hides – instead of everyone rushing in to help solve the problem itself.

As a product manager, you can sit in a very perilous position. You rely on people that you don’t have any direct authority over. Whether it is a programming team, a legal department, accountants, or network ops; you often rely on people that do specialized tasks that you just don’t have a full grasp over. You rely on them to deliver the right results on schedule, when they are not responsible to you. Unfortunately, they are not accountable for your results.

A product manager can do a lot to deal with company politics. The good product managers are the ones who effectively build alliances inside the organization to get things done and deliver results.  You need alliances up and down the food chain. You need people at the bottom to give you honest feedback. You need people at the top to trust that you will do the right thing and not make them look stupid. And you need customers on your side (or, better yet, you need to be on the side of the customer).  For some, this kind of thing comes naturally. They love the internal schmoozing and coddling that comes with political maneuvering. For me, this is the hardest part of product management. I’m not the best politician. I like to focus on results, not politics. I like to think that things that make sense — just make sense. I like to think that when things go wrong, that we live and die as a team, and that we should just deal with it and learn from it. So I am learning. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don’t win completely. It takes time. And I’m working on it.

One last thing a product manager needs is a good sponsor for his or her initiatives among the senior leadership in the organization. A good sponsor is necessary for your protection. Unless you have a good sponsor in the organization, if you fail, you will take the fall alone. A good sponsor is flexible, understanding, and supportive. I guess that’s the difference between a leader and a manager. A manager just keeps track of your tasks and performance. A leader is someone who cares about your survival and success. A leader is someone you want to follow because you know they are looking out for you. A product manager cannot get much done across functions and groups without this. If your sponsor throws you under the bus when things go bad, then you are left alone to fend for yourself. And that can be a very bad place to be.

Posted in leadership, product management | No Comments »

Do widgets work?

Here’s an interesting article in BusinessWeek about the value of widgets to a marketing person. Widgets are the new new new thing that every trendy company wants to build. They are small applications that run on the different social networking platforms such as Facebook and MySpace. They can include games, message posting tools, group-building tools, and other social-activity based tools that let a user ‘get more’ out of his or her networks of people.

The article talks about three activities that people engage in with their online social networks: hunting, receiving, and doing. The article says that widgets do not work because users are ‘doing,’ which means they have no interest in engaging with companies and purchasing products. Unless the widget is highly targeted to the audience, such as a job search widget on LinkedIn, the article thinks that widgets will probably be a waste of your time.

Personally, I’m totally amazed by the whole social networking phenomenon. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the rest have really grown beyond anything I would have imagined. In the ‘old days,’ only computer-dorks would consider putting their personal profiles online and connecting with their ‘friends’ for the lamest of things. Today, it is seen as the cool thing to do for young people, and everyone wants to connect with everyone for socializing, commerce, relationships, career stuff and more. I’m sure it all came from a combination of trends in demographics, culture, and technology; but I am still dumbfounded by the sheer numbers that are now online, and how so many people think it is the normal thing to do. Maybe today’s big networks are just a passing fad, but I think the explosion and pervasiveness of social networking phenomenon will still have impacts on society for a long time to come.

The widget debate is yet to be determined. As it is, the biggest social networks have yet to prove they can make big profits for their owners.  The widget-making game may just be a way for every company to lose money on social networks. I guess time will tell.

Posted in trends, marketing, innovation | No Comments »

Be a ‘Good’ Product Manager

Here’s an interesting new article at goodproductmanager.com from a fellow product manager blogger, Jeff Lash. Jeff makes a point that good product managers will ask their peers for advice, and bad product managers will not ask for help. I think it is probably more a question of having the right attitude than just being a question of ’good’ or ‘bad.’ I think to be successful as a product manager, you need to be a people person. You need to be curious and not afraid to look ignorant. You need to always have your door open to listen to ideas, suggestions, concerns, and criticisms. If you have a problem, you need to be able to find solutions. As a product manager you are often the only place people with such feedback have to turn in order to to see something change or improve.

Some people are able to do that. Some people are not. Some people need to think they have all the answers. Some people are overly afraid to lose face and admit they don’t know something. Some people are unable to get people to share what they really think. I guess these people would be the bad product managers. These people will fail at product management, because success in our field is all about relationships.

An effective product manager manages relationships, not people. He/She has no real authority to tell engineers, developers, designers, executives, lawyers, accountants, or salespeople what do. An effective product manager is therefore only as good as his/her ability to influence others with ‘Soft Power.’ Soft Power is “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion.” To be successful with Soft Power, you don’t need posturing and threats; you need open communication, a clear flow of information, and the right incentives and rewards to encourage people to want to be part of your team. In product management, these incentives are not necessarily economic. They are more about opennenss, opportunity, inclusiveness, and building a sense of unity and strength in the collective. An effective product manager knows how to create the kind of team where everyone feels like an essential part, where everyone feels like their contribution matters, and where everyone gets a seat at the table with a voice in the direction of things.  

Anyway, we’ll keep our eye on goodproductmanger.com. It’s got some good stuff to think about.  

Posted in leadership, product management, job stuff | No Comments »

Recession Innovation Strategies

How to survive and thrive in a recessionary environment? Adage had a thought-provoking article about this. Here are some excerpts that you may enjoy:

Recessionary times provide ripe opportunities for innovation, especially product innovation. If we are indeed entering into a recessionary cycle, remember it’s just that: cyclical. There will be an end, and you’ll want to be well positioned when times turn around. Profit Impact of Market Strategy, a British study of 1,000 businesses during the past 30 years, found that companies that spent more on innovation during the downturn saw return on capital employed rise 23.8% during the recovery, compared with 0.6% for those that slashed spending.

And this…

During a recession, the little players tend to shake out, and many established companies go into innovation dormancy. It’s precisely this moment when a touch of strategic innovation can mean a big marketplace advantage.

This is a great insight. I think their advice is good too.

And to get the right answers, you need focused innovation: clearly defined, strategically driven goals, a focus on key insights and a nuts-and-bolts understanding of technologies. It’s up to management to set the focus and to make sure the right people are involved — both from within the organization and from qualified, creative outsiders who can bring a fresh perspective to the process. What’s important is that you consider several ideas, even those that have been considered before. It should also mean that not every idea has to be a home run. A few well-placed doubles can be equally successful and get to market more quickly.

Good points all around. Something to think about as we head into a new economic cycle.

Posted in economics, marketing, New news | No Comments »

Microsoft decides to double down

Here is a great post on the Alley Insider about Microsoft’s big moves into online advertising with the acquisitions of Yahoo! and aQuantive. Of particular interest is the quote below:

“Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo in part because it wants to develop a global “cloud computing” platform. This, at least, is smart. The business of installing and maintaining software on local servers and PCs is giving way to web-based apps served from data centers (cloud computing), and Microsoft, sensibly, doesn’t want to miss that train.

“Back in 1995, Microsoft decided that it had to compete in the consumer Internet media business. This was a mistake then, and it’s a mistake now–which is why Microsoft has struggled and failed to gain headway in that business for 13 years. Now, Microsoft has decided to double down on that business by buying Yahoo, in part because it believes its crown jewel, the corporate desktop software market, is transitioning to “software supported by advertising.”"Corporate applications will never be supported by advertising, and if Google really wants to unseat Microsoft’s Office monopoly, it will have to build up the same sort of corporate sales and service organization that Microsoft already has. Microsoft should stop trying to go into a business it doesn’t have to be in–advertising-supported consumer media–and concentrate on protecting the core corporate business it already rules–by committing wholeheartedly to Office Live.”

Agreed that Microsoft would be much better off developing on the cloud computing model. Amazon and Google are already moving in this direction, but Microsoft could catch up by putting valuable hooks into many of its Office and Windows products. What Microsoft needs to realize is that the search engine (and search platform) of the future is not going to be in one place at one time, its going to be in all places at all times. The winner will not be the one who controls the most searches, it will be the one who empowers the most people to find and use the right information–no matter when and where. Microsoft could help define that new reality (i.e. Office Live).

There is also an interesting article in the New York Times about the problems that await integrating both of these companies technology cultures. Both companies have very different approaches to building and developing technology platforms. Yahoo! is open source all the way, and Microsoft is…well… you know…

Posted in Microsoft, New news | No Comments »

Product management versus product marketing

I came across an interesting discussion the other day about product management versus product marketing. This is a big question in a lot of companies. In some companies, product marketing and product management are in constant battles. Product marketing often has pressure to manage a broad campaign and maintain corporate consistency; while product management wants to focus on building the right products that sell to the right customers. The article sums up the difference clearly when it states,

“The product manager is responsible for defining – in detail – the product to be built, and validate that product with real customers and users. The product marketing person is responsible for telling the world about that product, managing the product launch, providing tools for the sales channel to market and sell the product, and for leading key programs such as online marketing and influencer marketing programs.”

I have worked on both sides as a product manager and a product marketer. Personally, I think this tension is healthy. I think it makes the marketing folks think twice about what they are saying and take a little more time to craft unique messaging for specific customer segments. Additionally, I think the product management teams are pressured to think about how what they are building is going to fit into the overall story that the company is selling.

Posted in marketing, product planning | 1 Comment »