Vielleicht haben Sie es in der Presse gesehen oder gehört. Die USA planen ein Gesetz, das die Freiheit im Internet signifikant einschränken wird, und zudem am eigentlichen Problem (Urheberrechtsverletzungen) vorbeioperiert.

Ich habe mir die entsprechende Presse näher angesehen, und dabei erkannt, daß dieses Gesetz auch Webpublizisten treffen könnten, die nicht in den USA tätig sind. Zudem scheinen die USA Druck auf andere Länder auszuüben, ein solches Gesetz ebenfalls einzuführen. Beides geht natürlich nicht.

Da ich der Meinung bin, daß die Freiheit der Meinungsäußerung ein zu hohes Gut ist, um dieses zu Gunsten einiger US Konzerne aufzugeben (die zugegebenerweise unter Raubkopien leiden), erkläre ich ich solidarisch mit den Webseiten, die heute “schwarz” bleiben, und mache daher ebenfalls keinen inhaltlichen Beitrag.

Hier die Artikel, auf die ich mich beziehe. Bilden Sie sich eine eigene Meinung:

• Don’t censor the web (Google)
• US-Copyright-Cops greifen weltweit zu (Spiegel)
• Wikipedia schaltet ab – aus Protest (Spiegel)
• SOPA and PIPA – Learn more (Wikipedia)

As a profession, the Product Management originally started in other industry sectors than the High-Tech sector. Only recently the High Tech sector began to implementing this function on a broad scale, while this sector mainly is understanding Product Management as Technical Product Management, and thus has a different focus.

The On Product Management blog has started with some interesting thoughts about the growing momentum of the product management as a profession (see → Product Management is spreading…technologists take note!).

I know that some of my (graduate) readers are just in the phase to decide about their own professional development or to select their first positions, and think that the mentioned article is quite helpful to them. As always, I would like to add my own experiences.

In the Literature…

The author lists several reasons, why he thinks that Product Management has taken momentum. Among others, in his view, the reasons are the following:

• There are several blogs out there, who write about Product Management
• There are several (new) books that deal with Product Management
• Several education events around the globe deal with Product Management

On the other hand, he mentions that there are some companies, who explicitely decide to not implement Product Management.

The author sees Product Management at an inflection point, and argues as following:

“I honestly think we’ve hit an inflection point. It has never been easier to create a high-tech product….

Technology used to be a differentiator in a competitive market place. Not any more.  Winning companies will be those who can embed product leadership principles throughout their organization. It’s not just about being “innovative”, but about ensuring there is a repeatable, scalable and adaptable discipline of product management inside the organization.”

Recent Developments

I also observe that in the meantime the profession Product Management is largely adapted by the companies, not only in the US, but also in Europe. What started to take off some years ago has clearly taken momentum (maybe more momentum in the US than here). I agree with him that you can observe this development, if you take a look to specialized blogs, books or education opportunities.

From PM to Product Owner or Solution Manager

However, I also see that recently a change is taking place in terms of the role that Product Management plays in companies. In earlier time it was easy; companies developed their products using the waterfall method, and the PM-responsibility was to rollin requirements to development, and to roll-out developed solutions to the market.

In these days many companies start using agile development methods, as they have learned about the disadvantages of the waterfall model. We now see that Product Management evolves into different directions.

• On the one hand side the “Product Management” takes over the role of the product owner in scrum teams (and thus works as immediate enabler for the development).
• On the other side, we see more and more Product Managers working in the area of Solutions Management (and thus in areas far away from development/concentrating on the complete solution).

Changed Business Case for Product Management

I also think that the business case for product management in a company changed fundamentally. Not ten years ago, it was sufficient in our industry to create new software products simply by adding functions and features. In this phase a Product Manager had to be good in rolling-in customer problems to be solved, and he, or she had to be good in explaining the features to the market – on detail-level.

Today most large mature software systems include sufficient features. Now the development and sales focus lays on the entire product, the integration of this product into the social media context, and it focusses on the total customer experience.

That means that nowadays Product Management adds real value to the organization, if he or she can orchestrate something that is called innovativeness. Innovation in this sense is on the one hand side the creativity to invent products, and on the other hand side, it is the ability to actually deliver inventions that are incorporated into a product that delights customers. Thus, the role evolves into an area that was formerly covered by Innovation Management/ Managers in central research departments.

The change to the current Product Management is simple: They must be more the entrepreneurer, and less the administrator. And, they need a different standing.

Design Led Innovation

Not only since Apple started to address larger markets with their design-led products, a new trend started to develop. I often call this trend, the trend to deliver design led innovation. If you take a closer look to current products, and compare them to earlier products, you will probably also see that current product are often “nicely designed”.

Also the advertizing more and more concentrates on the design characteristics of a product, and less on pure technical features. I recently visited for instance one of the world largest trade fairs for interior design. Almost all companies their presented the beauty of their products. Not ten years ago, the design as product factor was much less important, and other characteristics were in focus.

For Product Management this change means the following. Before, we worked with development, and customers, and thus needed to be Techies, or customer centric. In future, we will in future also work with product designers, and thus people who take an artistic view (and less technial or commercial).

Here we need to take care that the designers not just take our part over. One way to do so, is to understand, how design and design-processes work.

Synthesis

Product Management clearly made its inroad to the companies. Thus it is a good choice for joung professionals who start in the HighTech Sector to begin with a Product Management role. Also, the role model is much clearer that it was some years ago. Thus, the expectations are better defined than ever. Current joung professionals will precisely know what they will face, and their choice is much easier.

However, Product Management changes, as the entire industries does. Product Management as a profession must therefor be prepared to constantly learn, and react to changes.

Especially in Europe we currently do not have the same level of expertise, and thus can still learn a lot from the US in terms of Technical Product Management.

Additional Information

If you liked this article, why don’t you subscribe to my → mailinglist, → follow me on Twitter, or → like me on Facebook?

In the following older articles on my blog can you find more information related to the current blogpost:

• → Agile Product Management
• → Was bedeutet Innovation?
• → Mit Design zum Erfolg
• → Classic Development Model and Lean Model Compared

In an agile development model, you and your team releases each takt software that your stakeholder can consume immediately. That means that the software, which you develop, needs therefore to be ready for distribution to anyone in the company for review or  it can be shipped to any external stakeholder as well.

You and your team specify, design, develop and test these potentially shippable products during the sprint. Thus, one of the most important aspects for your agile development project is the question, when you should consider a development task as done.

Formalized Done Criteria that match with the characteristics of your development product help you with this release decision.

In the Literature…

You find different definitions for done criteria in the literature. The article → Definition of Done Reference on the Scrumedge-Blog, for instance, talks about done criteria for development items, for concept items or for shipable units (releases) in general.

For development projects, the blog for example defines the following criteria:

Code Complete

Unit tests written and executed

Integration tested

Performance tested

Documented (just enough)

And for concept items, such as software-designs, it foresees the following criteria:

Design Reviewed

Implementation plan defined

The blog article also offers a complete list of done criteria for development-takts, projects, or releases (see there). The weak area of the presentation format choosen for the complete list is that it makes not transparent, which item is relevant to whom in the organization.

You find this transparency in a different article. The Scrum Aliance explains in → What is Definition of Done that you normally find different levels of done criteria within an organization:

“In reality, many teams are still working towards a potentially shippable state.  Such teams may have a different DoD at various levels:

• Definition of Done for a feature (story or product backlog item)
• Definition of Done for a sprint (collection of features developed within a sprint)
• Definition of Done for a release (potentially shippable state)

This article also proposes a procedure that you can follow, if you want to decide to which DoD in the hierarchy a particular activity belongs:

“There are various factors which influence whether a given activity belongs in the DoD for a feature, a sprint or a release.  Ultimately, the decision rests on the answer to the following three questions:

• Can we do this activity for each feature? If not, then
• Can we do this activity for each sprint? If not, then
• We have to do this activity for our release!

Defining Definitions of Done

Although you find different proposals for Done Criteria in the literature, it depends very much on your project, which specific done criteria you should select.

In my experiences, it makes sense that you define these criteria together with your scrum team, perhaps after you have analysed the current quality topics that you and your team is facing.

Assuming that you work for a team of ten that concentrates on new feature developments: In your first version you should concentrate on the criteria that you and your team can influence, and that define, when a particular backlog item shall be considered as done. Normally you choose testing criteria, which support your team directly, such as Unit Tests, or manual testcases on feature level. Also relevant is feature documentation, etc.

The above literature proposes integration, and performance tests. If you develop in a larger context, i.e. together with other teams, integration of performance tests are often only possible in consolidated coding lines. These tests are thus not possible in the moment, when you release your backlog item, and – in these cases – should not be choosen as criteria.

Once you have defined your criteria, you should use them on each item in all forthcomming sprints to decide if and when you can close a backlog item. As you and your team can change the criteria dynamically, you should review and extend your initial done criteria, once you have better knowledge.

Additional Information

If you liked this article, why don’t you subscribe to my → mailinglist, → follow me on Twitter, or → like me on Facebook?

In the following older articles on my blog can you find more information related to the current blogpost:

• → Technical Debt, and Test Categorization
• → Pair Programming
• → Classic Development Model and Lean Model Compared

Alle Jahre kommt es wieder, das Weihnachtsfest. Ob ich in diesem Jahr zwischen den Jahren noch einmal dazu kommen werde, einen Blogbeitrag zu verfassen, kann ich nicht versprechen.

Ich möchte deshalb schon heute bei Ihnen für Ihr Interesse bedanken, und Ihnen ein schönes Weihnachtsfest wünschen. Auch wünsche ich mir, daß Sie ein erfolgreiches neues Jahr haben werden.

Ich freue mich schon darauf, Sie im nächsten Jahr hier wiederzusehen! Als kleines Geschenk habe ich Ihnen unten einige Videos herausgesucht, die sehr gut zur jetzigen Jahreszeit passen.

Übrigens, nicht wundern: Um nicht von den Spammern überschwemmt zu werden, schalte ich über die Jahre die Kommentarfunktion ab.

XMas is approaching, and the final days of 2010. As I am not sure wether I will find the time to write another blogpost in 2010, I want to thank you for your attention in 2010. I hope to seeing you again in 2011.

Depending on where you live, I wish you either a Merry Christmas, and a happy new Year, or  a nice holiday season.

As a gift, you will find below some videos that I hope, you will enjoy.

To avoid that Spammers write too many useless comments, I will shut down the comment function.

Weiterführende Informationen/ More Information

Wenn Ihnen der Artikel gefallen hat, können Sie meinen Blog abonnieren, um regelmäßig über neue Artikel benachrichtig zu werden → Mailingliste. Oder, → folgen Sie mir einfach auf Twitter, oder abonnieren Sie → meine Facebook-Seite, um regelmäßig über Neuigkeiten informiert zu werden.

Here you can subscribe to my blog, and you will receive regular notifications, once an update is published: → Mailinglist. If you are interested in regular information, you can → follow me on Twitter, or you → become a fan on my Facebook-Page.

I always thought that the economies are still in trouble, due to the economic crisis.

Today Justin Fox states in → The Real Story Behind Those “Record” Corporate Profits the following piece of information, which made me think that it is over:

Corporate profits hit a new record in the U.S. in the third quarter of this year

Perfect….! But, ….. what is this…. If you read this article up to its end, you will find that it is by far not over. But the development still continues to run into the wrong direction.

Today I will be writing an article about my second hobby – Economics and the economy!

Growing Tensions

The current (fiscal) year is approaching its end, and many companies are starting to publish positive results. On the other hand, the newspapers are full with articles about economies-in-trouble, such as for example Ireland. Other articles warn us about huge fiscal deficits, for example in the US, which might cause future trouble.

The next articles attribute all problems in the world to Germany and China with their trade surplus, like Paul Krugman recently did (see → Axis of Depression):

“Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.”

To me it seems as if there were a lot of tension and misperception out there.

The Real Story Behind Those “Record” Corporate Profits

In his article → The Real Story Behind Those “Record” Corporate Profits, Fox  runs some calculations in a spreadsheet program, and comes to the following conclusion:

“So the reason that corporate profits are near their all-time highs would appear to be that financial corporations (mainly big financial corporations) and multinationals are making lots of money and paying less of it out in taxes. Hmmmm. …”

“The money is increasingly going to a select group at the very top of the economic food chain, who are able to reap the rewards of global growth, play the financial system astutely, and avoid taxes.”

So basically those gamblers, äh banks who had to be rescued with a large amount of money, and who are now putting entire countries into trouble, earn the most?! And those companies that find “creative” methods to cut their tax-expenses?

The Double Irish, The Dutch Sandwich, and Bermuda – How to evade taxes, if you are large

Bloomberg recently published an article about the taxation tricks of large multinationals (see → Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes).

In this article can you read how it works, if you are at the top of the foodchain:

“Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax….

The high corporate tax rate in the U.S. motivates companies to move activities and related income to lower-tax countries, said Irving H. Plotkin,….

Google’s transfer pricing contributed to international tax benefits that boosted its earnings by 26 percent last year, company filings show. Based on a rough analysis, if the company paid taxes at the 35 percent rate on all its earnings, its share price might be reduced by about $100, said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. He recommends buying Google stock, which closed yesterday at $607.98.

The company, which tells employees “don’t be evil” in its code of conduct, has cut its effective tax rate abroad more than its peers in the technology sector:…”

(I recommend you to read the other parts of the article in original)

The REAL Axis of Depression

Banks that were bailed out with taxpayer’s money are now better of, or global corporations that cheat at us. The working population who pays the bill is worse.

To me THIS is the real Axis of Depression, Mr Krugman.

Another Axis of Depression is if we “forget” to mention the real reasons for our current economic trouble:

• As I have learned, the economic crisis was neither created by these surplus countries, nor do these countries have any interest in an uncompetitive America. Remember: The crisis was the result of deficit spending, and a bursting bubble, initiated by the subprime crisis in the US.
• A different reason was the wrong strategy of the last years. In these dark years, we  concentrated all our power in gambling with the big bugs in high finance, while we were offshoring all production facilities to China, and other tiger countries. And now we wake up and have suddenly learned that gambling does not buy food. No, we must work for it!

Further Information

In one of his recent articles, Garr Reynolds from the → Presentation Zen blog writtes about Sir Ken Robinson, who has a lot to say in terms of education and our education systems.

One information, which I read in this blog made me think about the climate, which we need to support innovative processes, and creativity.

Today I want to write about characteristics of our education system, which makes it hard to be creative and innovative. If you follow me in this, you will probably understand, how you best organize the innovation process in your company in a way that it supports creativity.

The animated Sir Ken Robinson

In his article → The animated Sir Ken Robinson Reynolds is showing below animated presentation, which is very impressive from the viewpoint of the presentation technique (If you want to know more about his aspect, I suggest that you read the abovementioned article).

Between 5.50 min and 9:50 min, Robinson is making the statements, which interest me the most:

“The Arts are Victims of this mentality. The Arts especially adress the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which you sense are operating at their peak, when you are present a the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing, when you are fully alive. Anaesthetic – Shut your senses off – Deaden to what is happening. …We should waken them up to what is inside of themselves”.

Later on in his speech, he shows that the current education system is created for the requirement of the industrialization. In our days we need the exact opposite – a system, which supports the divergent thinking. He sees the divergent thinking as an essential capacity of creativity, and he understands creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value.

For him, divergent thinking itself is the capacity to see lots of possible answers to a question, the ability to see lots of ways to interpret a question, or to think laterally. He then states that most people, been given the question of “How many uses can you think for a paper clip” see between 10-15 uses. People, which are good at this see 200 uses, and they do this by questioning, wether a paper clip can be made entirely different, than the ones we know.

Some thoughts on the Realization

When it comes to the act of organizing innovation, you should have the abovementioned findings in mind. First of all, it is helpful to accept that you need to support your employees in becomming creative (again), and that this investment is worth the effort.

Initially, you probably start with teams of persons, which do not think divergently. Thus, first of all, you need to create a climate, which allows divergent thinking to evolve. To do so, you could use techniques, which support creativity, such as for example brainstorming, team discussions, etc. In addition, you need to think about your organization’s capabilities.

Often, organizations are very much focussed on the delivery of products, and they aim at the fulfillment of key performance indicators. The danger is that such organizations “shut their senses of”, and become anaesthetic in the abovementioned sense. Here it would be helpful to change the organization into one that is “present in the current moment, and which is fully alive”.

Do do so you could think about substituting the given performance management system with a system that puts more emphasis on the things that excite your people most. Furthermore you could implement programs that give the people the needed space to work on innovation (see i.e. the “Good Friday” program made by Google).

Also on the level of our economies there is much to change. If it is really the case that our system does not support the needed skills of our children, we should think about how we can make our schools more of a place where pupils can keep their natural resources, and are allowed to keep their inner kindergarden child alive.

In the following video can you find Robinson’s view

Further Information

Recently, Tom Grant from Forrester has written about technical debt and its relevance to Product Management. He made some good points, so that it is with me today to add a few thoughts about quality.

His article → For ISVs, Technical Debt Is A Serious Business Issue basically states that it is important to keep an eye on software quality. Today I will be writing about the possibilities, which we have at hand, to do so.

Technical Debt

Often Product Managers think that they are fine, when they take care of customer needs. Below you find Grants’s most prominent comment, why this is not the case.

To understand, why Product Management has its stake in software quality, think about the pressure, which you normally receive from your stakeholders that want you to develop features and functions. Do you pass it on?

The more you develop, heedless of the technical debt you create, the harder and harder it becomes to make further changes. While this may seem like an obvious conclusion, it’s not one that has the impact on software development that it should. In their rush into the future, building code that is supposed to expand choices, many teams are actually constraining their choices.

The Art of Software Testing

To avoid the accumulation of technical debt (that is the sum of small defects and bugs in the coding, which you deliver to customers), you first have to understand that technical debt is a problem, as it prevents you step by step to deliver functions and features (see Grant’s comment from above). Once this is clear, you can think about the strategies to avoid technical debt.

Well, the basic strategy to avoid technical debt is simple. It happens by means of software testing, and the development according to quality standards. As you see in the following article, we have several methods at hand to test software, or to design it in a way that the technical debt is minimized by design: → Wikipedia – Software Testing.

Ok, at current you might have the following formular in your head: Testing = Software Development <> Product Management. Below you find an argument taken from Wikipedia, why this formular is not entirely correct – There is testing needed on requirements level (though the majority of the tests is done in the development):

Software testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed. As such, the methodology of the test is governed by the software development methodology adopted.

This comment probably leaves you with the questions: Where to learn, and how to start with Quality Engineering practices. In the following sections I will recommend you further reading.

Testing Knowledge

One influencial body in the area of software testing is the “International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB)”. This community deals with software testing methods, and the required knowledge. You find more information if you follow the following link:→ International Software Testing Qualification Board.

One thought leader in the software-testing-space is named Brian Marick. In his blog you can find a lot of useful information about his work. Most importantly, Marick has also brought the quality view into the Agile Development methodologies. For more information, visit his blog at → Testing Foundations.

How To Start

Once you know it generally, the next question is “how do I start testing, and which is my role?”. To answer this question, it is helpful to think about the different dimensions, which you target with your software, and which you need to cover with tests. Here, Marick has published a helpful tool, which he calls the Agile Testing Matrix→ My Agile testing project.

In his matrix, he basically distinguishes tests, which are business facing from tests that are technology facing. Then he distinguishes tests, which either support programming or, which are critique the product.

If you fill this matrix with the tests for your product, you will probably see that the upper right quadrant (business facing/ product critique) is the quadrant, where you as a product manager should test. Normally you would use exploratory tests (free style) to verify the usability of your software, or you would check how specific you are able to cover your work process by means of this piece of software.

Further Information

The Harvard Business School writes in its current newsletter about a tricky topic, which gave me a bit of an “aha-experience”.

I do not want to miss to share this experience with you, as it is important, if you intend that your company works customer centric.

Performance Pressure on Teams

Article → Customer Experts Lose Influence When Teams are Pressured includes an interview with professor Heidi K.Gardner, and explains under which conditions teams start to actively neglect customer needs, and namely the collegues, which have special knowledge about these needs.

She basically states that the following relation exists between performance pressure, and customer needs:

“..why performance pressure makes team members do what seems irrational: defer to high-status “generalist” experts among them and ignore colleagues with special knowledge of client needs.”

Translated into a practical project, this means that even teams, which normally work very customer centric, might stop under certain conditions with this orientation. This is really not good news, at least not for product management.

However, she also offers a solution to this problem, which consists of the following elements:

• Although often only few participants in the team are blamed for neglecting customer needs, managers should keep in mind that the entire team is responsible.
• The managers should take counteractions against this development, and in particular should make sure that every contribution counts.

Other Changes

In my experience, and as she says, the described effect it might indeed happen – in particular under time pressure, or if the expectations are high, and everybody wants to speed-up.

Reasons

One reason for this is that it is complex and time consuming to consider customer needs within a development project. Often it would be much easier to develop according to an internal-out approach, and to concentrate on the straight-forward case.

In addition, customer intimacy often costs extra-effort. Where people would present a draft to an immediate collegue, most  people would try to prepare something more impressive to present to the customer (and this generates workload). Depending on how the relation of the customer expert to the team is, the same effect may happen here as well (i.e. if the customer expert plays an intermediate “messenger” role between customer and development).

Changes

In my experience the following works:

• Lower the pressure
• Find a more direct relation to the customer
• Do smaller loops
• Keep the management out

Often it is not easy to lower the pressure. However sometimes it is a good method, if the team learns to say “no”. If – for instance – the reason for the high performance pressure is that everybody expects 100 requirements to be implemented, it might be an option to say “no” to 10 of them. Either you work with the agile development method, where the team is entitled to decommit work, or you need to take care by yourself that you manage expectations.

If you wait too long with the feedback gathering from customers or customer experts, you might have left the correct way behind you for a long time. If you include customer feedback within each project phase, this basically might lower the pressure, and does normally not increase it. So in particular in times of pressure: include more customer view, and not less. A further effect is the commitment on customer side, which you buy in.

Further helpful is, if you make sure that the teams receive direct feedback on customer priorities in smaller and direct doses, as this helps the team to decide what it really important, and what is not. Alternatively you could include customer representatives directly into the team, as Gardner suggests.

Sometimes management has the tendency to micromanage, in particular if projects burn. On the other hand management normally is less an expert than the team is, but has a lot of decision power. This constellation might rapidly lead to wrong decisions, which turn out to be more demanding at the end than required.

In the long run, I have made good experiences with the agile development approach. The implementation of such an approach helps teams to lower the (contraproductive) pressure, and is one important contribution for the group of employees in management positions.

Further Information

James Heskett is a Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He asks in his newest article → What Is Customer Opinion Good For? and explains his question as follows:

“I have no particular brief for traditional marketing research. But is there a pattern here? Is it possible that “asking the customer” about anything of strategic importance is on the wane? If so, what are the implications for customers as well as those selling to them? What is customer opinion good for? What do you think?”

With this provocative question he starts an interesting discussion among his readers about the topics innovation, and customer intimacy. In addition can you find in these answers a large amount of supplemental information.

My view

In general, I think that it is very important to know your customers, and to learn about their problems and issues. So yes, you are supposed to ask customers. However, in  terms of the importance of customer intimacy, I think that it very much depends on the development, which you plan, how helpful customer intimacy actually is.

If you intend to improve an existing product, you probably need much, and very accurate information about customer preferences. On the other hand your customers are used to the products, and they own the data, which you are looking for.

However, if you intend to offer a disruptive product, you might find that customers do not know the answer either. In this case they are the wrong source of information. Here your own developers and your own knowledge about market demand and technological capabilities are.

I think, the following reply to Heskett’s article puts it best:

“The why, when and how of listening to the customer is worthy of on-going analysis and discussion. There are critical questions to be asked about whether the product is evolutionary or disruptive. More appropriately the question may really be, “Will this product be marketed as a disruptive product or fit with customer’s paradigms?”. Customer feedback is always important, but the weighting of that voice should vary greatly.

If a product is being positioned as evolutionary (possibly much larger value add, but same paradigm for customer) then the customers’ voice should probably be weighted heavily. If it’s to be a disruptive product, I’d suggest the customers’ feedback should also be abstracted to a slightly higher level.” - reply 17 Jonathan Hinkle in → What Is Customer Opinion Good For?

Further Information

These days have I seen an interesting Article in the Harvard Business Review, which deals with my favorite topic “innovation”.

I had to look twice, but in reality this article was not about innovation, but about ideation. As many people use a wrong definition, I thought it might be a good idea to (again) look into the definitions.

Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation

Here the article…. Emerging from a study with several CEOs, the article → Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation understands the following elements as “innovation”:

Meet People’s Needs. ….

Teach Creativity Systematically. ….

Nurture Passion. ….

Make the Work Matter. ….

Provide the Time. ….

Value Renewal. ….