The 2019 OCI Award winners are Porex and The Gorilla Glue Company.

Porex Corporation (Filtration Group), a manufacturer of porous polymer products based in Atlanta, Georgia, showed how their strong customer focus, processes and metrics are used to deliver strong growth through innovation by disrupting new categories.

“At the core of Porex is a spirit of collaborative innovation and dedication contributing to a safer, healthier, and more productive world," said Avi Robbins, vice president of global product development and R&D at Porex. "We are incredibly honored to receive the unique distinction of PDMA 2019 Outstanding Corporate Innovator, as this award serves as a tribute to our proactive efforts to pioneer advancements across diverse industries and to develop materials and components that truly matter.”

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Featuring Speakers: Michael Eknoian, Ph.D, Global Vice President, R&D, Church & Dwight; and Bryan A. Harpine, Director of Global New Products, Church & Dwight

Session Description:

2020 Outstanding Corporate Innovator award winner Church & Dwight has recently completed a remarkable decade-long run of 20% annual Total Shareholder Return. This easily leads the Consumer Package Goods industry, and bests the S&P by 3x during the same time period. Given that 50% of their organic growth comes from new products, innovation is clearly a key driver in their on-going business success.

In this webinar, Church & Dwight will share their best practices for sustaining a culture of innovation while competing against much larger players in mature categories. Specifically, Church & Dwight created an unprecedented premium tier in the commodity cat litter market, anchored by their Clump & Seal family of brands. Similarly, they grew their Fabric Care business 2x the industry average leveraging breakthrough odor control technologies. This is a company that makes it a priority to understand the equity of its Brands, and supercharging them for growth regardless of whether they are longstanding company brands or more recent acquisitions.

Church & Dwight has many innovation best practices that will be of high interest to the PDMA audience across multiple industries, including the use of “Drill Sites” for the Front End of Innovation, an acquire-and-leverage approach to accelerating business growth in mature categories, on-line consumer research and early market testing, and their FutureWorks and SPRINT processes for assessing the potential of new product platforms.

Join us as we celebrate Church & Dwight’s OCI award, and take advantage of the unique opportunity to 'look under the hood' of a proven corporate innovator. You’ll be sure to discover best practices for driving innovation success within your own organization.

About Michael Eknoian, Ph.D

Global Vice President, R&D, Church & Dwight

Mike leads the Product Development R&D organization for Fabric Care and Home Care at Church & Dwight. His focus is on delivering high value product pipelines for the company by driving product development, upstream innovation, packaging, pipeline strategy, and strategic supplier relationships. He has been at Church & Dwight for almost 3 yrs.

Prior to joining Church & Dwight, Mike had 15 yrs experience at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products innovating on various global brands. In his last role at J&J Mike led the Open Innovation organization that drove significant growth and the process for setting clear targets based on consumer insights and faster decision making; Partner-Enabled Development for local/regional brands as well as low-complexity initiatives globally.

About Bryan A. Harpine

Director of Global New Products, Church & Dwight

During Bryan’s business career he has created extraordinary growth on America’s favorite brands such as Arm & Hammer, Sunkist, Lipton, and Oxi-Clean. In doing so, Bryan played a key role for two of the most admired companies in corporate America, Unilever (Lipton) and Church & Dwight Co., Inc. While at Unilever Bryan launched the Sunkist franchise into orange juice and kids snacks categories. While at Church & Dwight he helped expand the Arm & Hammer franchise from $135 million selling products in just 3 categories to $1.2B selling products in over 50 categories. He created and launched Arm & Hammer’s famous Fridge’n Freezer Freshener which transformed how millions of consumers keep their foods fresh from the grocery store to the kitchen table. Bryan has taken the Arm & Hammer pet franchise from $60 million to over $500 million and in doing so has won Nielsen’s Breakthrough Innovation Award two times, which identifies the top 25 new products among the nation’s 3,000 new products launched in any given year in the US. Bryan and his wife enjoy international travel to some of the earth’s most remote places and he enjoys playing golf competitively.

The OCI Award is the only global innovation award which recognizes sustained and quantifiable business results from new products and services. This year marks the 34th year PDMA has given this prestigious award, and past winners represent a group of global corporations widely-recognized and respected for their innovation success.

3M will present the practices and processes that makes their innovations successful at the PDMA conference in Baltimore, MD on November 15 at 8:30 am. All the winners and finalists for the OCI 2020 and 2021 awards will be recognized at a lunch on November 14. 

Dr. John Banovetz, EVP, CTO & Environmental Responsibility states, “It is an honor for 3M to be recognized as the 2021 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award winner. Since 1902, 3Mers have innovated to create the 3M products consumers around the world depend on today. As we move into the future and face new global challenges, I’m confident that our culture of collaboration and focus on the customer will drive us to find new ways to improve lives and innovate more sustainably than ever before.”

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The 2022 OCI Award Winner is The Hershey Company, an industry-leading snacks company known for bringing goodness to the world through its iconic brands, remarkable people and enduring commitment to help children succeed, headquartered in Hershey, PA. The Hershey Company has demonstrated seamless and open innovation resulting in growth, strong work processes, brand recognition and an exemplary culture. This year, The Hershey Company was recognized by Wall Street Journal for their creative diversification strategies that helped the company soar in a time when other companies were struggling with market meltdown.

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The 2023 OCI Award Winners are Cargill and Novelis.

Sitting at the heart of the supply chain, Cargill, headquartered in Wayzata, MN, is a globally recognized family company dedicated to providing food, ingredients, agricultural solutions, and industrial products in a responsible, sustainable manner. Cargill's commitment to innovation is embedded in their very core, driven by a resolute innovation strategy and a culture committed to reimagining the possibilities of food and agriculture.

With a steadfast focus on customer-driven innovation, Cargill has cultivated unique practices that not only fortify its core business but also catalyze disruptive opportunities and new market penetration. The company's relentless pursuit of purposeful innovation has earned it a well-deserved place among this year's OCI Award recipients.

Florian Schattenmann, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of R&D and Innovation at Cargill, expressed, "Customer-driven innovation can't happen without great innovators and strong partnerships. We're thrilled to receive this award and be recognized alongside so many other innovative companies. Cargill is a place where innovators can deliver lasting and meaningful impact on a global scale. We are proud of the culture we’ve built to innovate with purpose, empower our customers and deliver sustainable solutions that address many of the world’s most pressing needs."

Access Cargill's award presentation by purchasing this product.

The 2023 OCI Award Winners are Cargill and Novelis.

Novelis, a global leader in flat rolled aluminum and recycling, has ingrained sustainability into its business strategy, culture and problem-solving approach. Guided by the Innovation Council, Novelis R&D continually crafts solutions that transcend conventional product boundaries, focusing on delivering transformative value across core and adjacent markets.

From leveraging technology insights and consumer analysis to pioneering front-end innovation, Novelis has championed a holistic approach to innovation, driving aluminum adoption and sustainable manufacturing. Their integration of AI and machine learning in production epitomizes their commitment to cutting-edge advancement.

Philippe Meyer, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Novelis, commented, "At Novelis, we believe innovation forges our future and is critical to realizing our Purpose of Shaping a Sustainable World Together. We are honored to be named PDMA’s 2023 Outstanding Corporate Innovator and to be recognized by the committee for our focus on partnering with customers to reimagine aluminum’s role in their products and in our daily lives."

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Slides from A Tale of Two Metric Implementations: Challenges and Successes presentation.

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Slides from the Creating Growth Platforms: The Work of Leadership presentation. 

Slides from Creating Seamless Experiences presentation. 

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Slides from Do Requirements Kill Innovation presentation.

Slides from Experience Design Visualization presentation.

Slides from Focusing the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation - Disruptive Innovation Tools to Predict and Drive Growth presentation.

Slides from Future of R&D in a Global Economy presentation.

Slides from Got Metrics? So What. presentation.

Slides from Improving Product Development with Intellectual Property Competitive Intelligence presentation.

Slides from Innovation: As Easy as Screwing in a Light Bulb? presentation.

If someone told you that you could cut your development time in half, double the number of new products you make each year, and do so with smaller budgets, no additional resources, and increase quality at the same time, would you believe them? I'd guess not. But this is really happening. And these companies are enjoying simultaneous and significant increases in market share, revenues, margins and profits. How? With Lean New Product Development. Access the transcript and Audio files from the 2009 PDMA Global Conference Guru Roundtable Discussion to start your Lean New Product Development path today.

Slides from Make More and Better Product Decisions for Greater Impact presentation.

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Slides from Roadmaps: Rich Timelines for Future Product Ideation and Development - Nokia as a Case Study presentation.

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Slides from Ten Steps to Becoming Innovative in Product Management presentation.

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Slides from The Way You Make Me Feel - Quantifying Emotional Experience presentation.

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Slides from Win or Lose…The Customer Experience Game presentation.

What separates New Product Introduction and New Product Development? Adherence to best practices can make your new product development (NPD) and new product introduction (NPI )processes smoother, efficient and more cost effective. Many companies make the mistake of treating manufacturing, new product development (NPD) and newproduct introduction (NPI) as if they are nearly identical. They’re not. Not at all. These processes are interrelated, complementary, and prerequisites for one another. 

Learn more in Arena Solution's newest White Paper.

"The Importance of New". It very much depends on the industry as to what proportion of a product portfolio should be “new”. In a high-tech business it would be reasonable to expect that the majority of the products in the portfolio will be less than five years old. In a company that sells aggregates into the construction industry it would be unlikely that any of the products in the portfolio will be less than a few million years old.

This publication is the first in a series that will highlight selected articles from The Journal of Product Innovation Management in a way that makes them more accessible. The publication features the most frequently downloaded articles of 2012. Condensed to the author's abstract and conclusions, the purpose of the compilation is to provide quick take-aways from leading research, whithout having to wade through the research.

In this publication:

• The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?
  Marion K. Poetz and Martin Schreier. JPIM 2012;29(2):245–256
• Bottom of the Pyramid as a Source of Breakthrough Innovations
  C. K. Prahalad. JPIM 2012;29(1):6–12
• An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice
  Kenneth B. Kahn, Gloria Barczak, John Nicholas, Ann Ledwith, and Helen Perks. JPIM 2012;29(2):180–192
• Perspective: Ranking of the World’s Top Innovation Management Scholars and Universities
  Pianpian Yang and Lei Tao. JPIM 2012;29(2):319–331
• Perspective: The Stage-Gates Idea-to-Launch Process—Update, What’s New, and NexGen Systems
  Robert G. Cooper. JPIM 2008;25(3):213–232
• Resource Dedication and New Product Performance: A Resource-Based View
  David H. Henard and M. Ann McFadyen. JPIM 2012;29(2):193–204
• Success Factors in New Ventures: A Meta-analysis
  Michael Song, Ksenia Podoynitsyna, Hans van der Bij, and Johannes I. M. Halman. JPIM 2008;25(1):7–27
• Successful Development and Commercialization of Technological Innovation: Insights Based on Strategy Type
  Stanley F. Slater and Jakki J. Mohr. JPIM 2006;23(1):26–33
• A Critical Look at Technological Innovation Typology and Innovativeness Terminology: A Literature Review
  Rosanna Garcia and Roger Calantone. JPIM 2002;19(2):110–132
• Disruptive Technology Reconsidered: A Critique and Research Agenda
  Erwin Danneels. JPIM 2004;21(4):246–258

Thomas P. Hustad, NPDP, has crafted a collection featuring the articles that have been most frequently downloaded from the Journal of Product Innovation Management during 2013. This is but one measure of impact and it certainly does not guarantee that everyone who sees this publication will find each article to be of interest. But in part that is a consequence of the diversity of our needs for information.

What you will find here is limited to the author’s original abstract and conclusions, along with guidelines for displaying each complete article if you wish to dig deeper. In addition, Hustad has tried to introduce each article with a short statement that describes why you might find it interesting. His goal is to help you see if one or more these articles extends your thinking.

DSSP is a category name that encompasses multiple technology advances. It describes the ability to use scanning hardware and processing software to digitally capture physical objects and automatically create accurate 3D models with associated structural properties for design, engineering, inspection and custom manufacturing. What digital signal processing (DSP) is to audio, DSSP is to 3D geometry.

What do magic and LEGO® have to do with innovation? At HBS Executive Education’s Leading Product Innovation program, the answer is: “everything.”

The rationale behind the continuous changes to Harvard Business School Executive Education’s Leading Product Innovation program is simple: “How can we effectively teach innovation if our program is not innovative?” Faculty Chair Stefan Thomke explains: “When people come here, their expectations are already quite high. These are senior executives, many with decades of experience and proven track records of success, and they’re at Harvard Business School. So, of course, they expect the program and the faculty to be great. But our objective is to exceed those expectations, create a ‘wow’ factor, and provide an element of surprise.”

Since its inception in 1991, when it was known as Leading Product Development, this program has been focused on identifying the best practices in the field of innovation. While many of these originate in product-based industries, they’re equally applicableto service industries. Although executives from product companies still make up the largest proportion of the audience, the program always attracts participants from service companies—a trend that is expected to continue.

Prior to attempting to adopt innovation management as a practice within an organization, innovation as a concept must first be understood fully, since this term can mean very different things for different people. This TIM Foundation Guidebook provides universal facts, truths and un-truths about innovation in general and as a practice within an organization, while attempting to straighten out blatant misconceptions and myths.

The number of people who care about the fate of our planet and embrace sustainability goals is growing. Awareness of sustainability as a serious subject is increasing. Yet, you may often wonder why sustainability has been on the radar screen for decades, but in many areas finds it hard to achieve serious lift-off, in spite of rising awareness and necessity.

This complimentary guidebook, brought to you by the TIM Foundation and Cooperative Amsterdam Resilience Collective U.A. (Coop ARC), looks at structured ways in which organizations can innovate in a sustainable way.

The open innovation movement is in full swing, and companies everywhereare turning to external sources for new product ideas. But, with open innovation now the standard business model, how can your company truly gain a competitive advantage? More specifically, where can you look for new products that no one else has thought to look? Though it sometimes may seem like the well of new ideas has run dry, thereis a practical, cost-effective solution that remains relatively untapped across industries. This white paper will examine this key resource and how your company can employ it to find new products.

It’s not just for legal teams anymore A company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio is often one of its most valuable and strategic assets. Even though IP creation and reuse is an integral component of an effective innovation process, IP management and oversight typically is relegated to corporate legal groups. These groups tend to focus on protecting what the company owns and enforcing existing licenses. Protection and enforcement are important, but they are only a small piece of effective IP management. Extracting value requires a business‐driven strategy.It’s not just for legal teams anymore A company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio is often one of its most valuable and strategic assets. Even though IP creation and reuse is an integral component of an effective innovation process, IP management and oversight typically is relegated to corporate legal groups. These groups tend to focus on protecting what the company owns and enforcing existing licenses. Protection and enforcement are important, but they are only a small piece of effective IP management. Extracting value requires a business‐driven strategy.

This paper presents methodology and findings from three product efficacy studies that verify the quality of life benefits resulting from prior research, development, and transfer activities. The paper then discusses key lessons learned with implications for product evaluation practice. The studies assessed the quality of three assistive technology (AT) products transferred to market by the University at Buffalo’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T2RERC) and their value to consumers with disabilities.

The road you are about to travel as an inventor or technology developer is a complex journey. Along the way you will be introduced to new terms, and processes and exposed to a business world that may be totally foreign to you. In this module we hope to answer some of the questions you may have, and provide you with a good, basic knowledge foundation for starting your invention journey. This module walks the reader through a Sample Invention Timeline and provides definitions, examples, and resources along the way.

This paper presents methodology and findings from three product efficacy studies that verify the quality of life benefits resulting from prior research, development, and transfer activities. The paper then discusses key lessons learned with implications for product evaluation practice. The studies assessed the quality of three assistive technology (AT) products transferred to market by the University at Buffalo’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T2RERC) and their value to consumers with disabilities.

This FOCUS presents a framework for integrating two distinct processes: knowledge translation (KT) and technology transfer (TT). The integration permits stakeholders involved in technol­ogy-based research and development activities to identify and coordinate their respective roles, and to optimize the eventual use of research by industry for production purposes.

Commercializing technology innovations is a complex process. Many of its milestones and related activities may be unfamiliar to many people looking to develop new technologies. Attempting to commercialize your developments will raise several new issues that must be addressed. One of the most significant issues is recognizing the importance of protecting your intellectual property. To help you better understand the issues involved, this module will suggest some early steps to help protect your intellectual property along with options for how it can be protected.

Historically, the assistive technology (AT) industry is made up of small to medium size companies serving relatively small markets with products characterized as ‘niche’ or ‘orphan’ products. Presenting opportunities to AT companies that are created by outside sources is difficult. Presenting such opportunities to companies serving larger markets is even more difficult. In both cases, transferring new or improved products is fraught with barriers. This paper outlines the critical barriers to brokering efforts between major U.S. university technology transfer offices and U.S. corporations.

New product developers are required to understand and apply a wide variety of processes and tools as they produce new devices or services. Individuals who are seeking alternative or new methods for their process may often be overwhelmed by the amount of academic and practice literature documenting “best practices.” Unfortunately, new product developers may not have sufficient time to invest in exploring alternative strategies, resulting in the repetition of old - possibly outdated - practices. This paper presents the method and preliminary results of a scoping review designed to consolidate information on effective new product development practices into a comprehensive knowledge base. New product developers will enjoy the ease of finding alternative effective practices, while researchers will find value in the consolidated presentation of new product development practices and study methodologies that lend themselves to systematic reviews.

The use of targeted focus groups employing purposive sampling, rigorous primary and secondary recruitment screens, and state of the art product and feature demonstrations early in the design process allow new product developers to obtain specific design functions and features for the product being developed directly from the product’s targeted end users. Farther on in the product development process these same targeted, educated, end users are reconvened to review functional prototypes of the new product prior to its initial production run. This paper will present a method that has been repeatedly successfully employed in developing new mainstream consumer products in conjunction with a University based partner organization.

This issue of FOCUS presents the Need to Knowledge (NtK) Model for new product development. The model was designed to encompass all activities from inception of a project through post-launch evaluation to paint a complete picture of the research, development, and production processes. This technical brief explains the details related to the model’s stages and gates, while also introducing four specific opportunities to employ knowledge translation techniques. Focus: A Publication of the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research (NCDDR).

Stakeholders adopt and use knowledge that has perceived utility, such as a solution to a problem. Achieving a technology-based solution involves three methods that generate knowledge in three states, analogous to the three classic states of matter. Research activity generates discoveries that are intangible and highly malleable like a gas; development activity transforms discoveries into inventions that are moderately tangible yet still malleable like a liquid; and production activity transforms inventions into innovations that are tangible and immutable like a solid.

New Product Portfolio and Project Management can be one of the most challenging components to implement in the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process model. On the surface, the concepts are fairly straightforward and integrated with a company’s strategic plan in a way that is easy to understand. Actually implementing these concepts, and more importantly sustaining them, is the real challenge.

The key findings from the PDMA Foundation "Best Practices" research on New Product Development are available in this report.  This report contains over 50 graphs and tables summarizing data taken from over 400 different companies.

The key findings from the PDMA Foundation "Best Practices" research on New Product Development are available in this report.  This report contains over 50 graphs and tables summarizing data taken from over 400 different companies.

Stakeholders adopt and use knowledge that has perceived utility, such as a solution to a problem. Achieving a technology-based solution involves three In today’s tough economic climate, understanding customer engagement is more important that ever, because it has a powerful impact on customer loyalty, retention, growth, and profitability. This research report will help you understand how companies are engaging their customers in the new product development process and using innovation to improve global competitiveness. We surveyed marketers and product developers from over 400 companies around the world to learn how they use customer involvement in new product development. Our findings show that customers are being integrated into the new product development process, but there’s ample opportunity for greater involvement.

Our Customer-Centric Innovation research report will help you:

• Understand the role of customers in product development
• Focus on the “Voice of the Customer” when developing new products
• Use radical innovation to strategize and succeed

How does your product organization compare? How do you measure up to your peers? To your competition? Get the report and find out. More than 900 product development practitioners participated. This study provides insight into key pain points, risks, and a look at the effectiveness of processes for portfolio planning and project execution. 2nd Annual Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study Commissioned by Planview and conducted by Appleseed Partners and OpenSky Research.

How does your product organization compare? How do you measure up to your peers? To your competition? Get the report and find out. This study provides insight into key pain points, risks, and a look at the effectiveness of processes for portfolio planning and project execution. 4th Annual Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study Commissioned by Planview and conducted by Appleseed Partners and OpenSky Research.

What if you had a proven method for building and marketing products that resonate with your customers? Something that could help you become more market driven, efficient and effective immediately.

Since 1993, Pragmatic Marketing has been providing that blueprint and other tools as part of its practical, actionable training, so that product management and marketing professionals can build and market the products people want to buy.

A Practical Approach to Products—like our Pragmatic Marketing Framework™, magazine, blogs and eBooks—is intended as another such tool for product success and for helping product professionals implement a pragmatic, outside-in approach.

PPM is a discipline that helps companies optimize their product development investments and increase product profitability. PPM practices and tools deliver proven ROI. PPM helps companies develop high-value, strategically aligned portfolios, ensure they are resourced properly, and then execute them effectively to drive profitable revenue. PPM tools also help improve efficiency. To enjoy these benefits, companies need to put in place the right PPM processes, metrics, and tools to improve portfolio decision-making and execution. Getting processes right is important in any systems implementation, but this is even more true in PPM where the goal is to make critical business decisions.

This whitepaper provides an in-depth exploration of product line strategy and roadmapping. The reader will understand the value of product line strategies,their relationship to product line roadmaps, and techniques for successful planning, execution and communication.

Topics covered include:

• The Four Levers of Advantage
• Components of Organizational Focus for Leveraging Strategic Advantage
• • Executing Strategy
• Deep Dive into Platforms: Types, Competencies, Insights
• Choosing Outcomes
• Types of Strategy: Corporate, Business and Product Line
• The Strategy Gap
• Strategizing the Advantage
• Product Line Roadmaps
• MATI and Roadmapping
• Roadmaps and Product Line Strategies
• Road Mapping as a Strategy
• Communicating Roadmaps

Author: Paul O’Connor is an expert in the field of New Product Development and a past PDMA president. In 1984, Paul founded The Adept Group Limited, Inc. with a focus on product development productivity working with executives at a wide range of global companies across different industries. Widely published in peer-reviewed journals and business publications, Paul was among the original contributors to PDMA’s first Handbook of Product Development (1996) as well as other editions. He provided material for PDMA’s 2004 ToolBook, and is a past contributing editor to R&D Magazine, and his work has appeared in the highly respected Journal of Product Innovation Management. He teaches master courses and workshops, and is a frequent speaker at professional organization meetings and corporate seminars – addressing audiences on a breadth of topics ranging from Product Line Roadmapping to NPD portfolio analytics and optimization.

It’s good to use the most authentic green design principles possible to create products with a lower impact, but even this may not be enough. In a quickly shifting consumer market with an eye on sustainability, the rules are rapidly changing. To stay competitive, forward-thinking businesses need to stay ahead of the curve and practice “eco-innovation.”

As the R&D manager, how do you decide which projects should receive funding and resources for development, and how much information do you need to make a sound decision? There has been much written about R&D portfolio decision making. However, as a group of MBA students taking what we hoped was a fresh look at this challenge, we wanted to learn how the top innovators made project selections and understand how their best practices could be applied to any R&D portfolio decision.

It is generally recognized that one key to maximizing the return on investment (ROI) from product innovation is to ensure that portfolio decisions are driven by business and product strategy. However, many companies struggle to keep product portfolios aligned with their strategic plans. In some instances, that’s because the strategies are ambiguous or inconsistent. In others, the underlying reason is that strategic planning and portfolio management are treated as independent processes, and the two are never truly tied together.

Since the death of Steve Jobs on Oct. 5, 2011, innumerable magazine articles, a multitude of blogs and a best-selling book have been published about his life and contributions to the world. Publishing yet another retrospective would be superfluous, yet it would seem remiss for Visions, with its tagline “insights into innovation,” not to cover the passing of a man described as “the greatest innovator of our time.” Jobs has been eulogized with comparisons to Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. Such comparisons demand attention. 

Put simply, companies know they can outperform rivals if they can establish a difference that they can sustain. This is the essence of intellectual property; the protection of which is essential to success in our competitive marketplace. Such product differentiation and associated intellectual property rights are best pursued deliberately and without relying on happenstance. A framework (summarized later) helps accomplish this by making product differentiation an organic byproduct of planned innovation. It helps produce products that are unique from the intellectual property perspective— they stand out in the marketplace, they benefit from strong intellectual property rights and they avoid conflicts with the rights of others.

When companies become entrenched and fail to innovate and change, there is little dispute that decline and outright destruction often follows. The same holds true for products. All of the new value generated in commerce is created through innovation in some form. We, as individuals, share the same reality in our professional lives. To evade decline, we need to become intrinsically self-motivated about innovation, not just looking at innovation as something we do for an organization during the workday. Innovation is not a career; it is a way of life. Increasing, our innovation aptitude is a crucial aspect of personal and professional success. Fortunately, there is a rich universe of innovation practices and tools that can be adapted from the organizational level and applied to the personal level. Here are some of my personal favorites that can make your career more successful and, perhaps, your life a touch more fulfilling.

As open innovation has become one of the primary catalysts of growth, companies are continually looking for opportunities to add new product lines, move into new markets and make a significant impact on business. Whether “transformative” or expansionary, the key questions are: How do you focus your search? Where should you look?

For the past 24 years, PDMA’s Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) Award has recognized companies that have demonstrated sustained and quantifiable innovation success, and the winners have provided a valuable set of lessons learned. This article takes “a look under the hood” of past OCI winners to identify the practices and processes that have contributed to their success.

Kobayashi Maru thinking provides an approach to solve intractable problems by changing the starting conditions to redefine the problem.

The pace of industry is quickening: New technologies and breakthroughs are begetting innovations at a rapid clip. Is a chain reaction about to usher in a new era of technology synchronization, efficiency and communication? The findings of the 3rd Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study, which gathered input from 320 product development leaders from around the world and across multiple industries, provides ample evidence to also suggest—while innovation is a priority—that resources are being stretched and over utilized. After a time where many industries felt the sting of recession, companies want to innovate and improve on their product portfolios as efficiently as possible. How can these companies work smarter and harder to bring forth the next generation of products within a constrained set of resources?

Our research, has found individuals in virtually every large, mature organization we have studied who have developed and commercialized one successful breakthrough innovation after another. After studying more than 50 of these individuals in depth, as well as many of their managers and coworkers, we dubbed them “Serial Innovators.” Who are these "Serial Innovators"?

In the last edition of Visions, our LEGO hero was perched precariously on the edge of business collapse. the LEGO group, facing severe economic hardship, had turned to innovation to save the organization. The result? It almost went bankrupt. In a challenging and thought-provoking keynote at the PDMA’s Annual Global Conference, professor Dr. David Robertson of The Wharton School took the audience through this story. As a group of innovators, this was a moment of truth for us. Was all that we believed about new product development and innovation to be dashed by the reality of the LEGO experience? Were these truths we’ve heard and tried to promote within our professions about to be revealed as falsehoods?

The open innovation (OI) professional is a rare breed—part entrepreneur, deal maker, alliance manager and project manager. Success in this role requires a true balance of talent and skills to drive growth from new sources and business models. Practitioners must both be technically proficient and demonstrate a high degree of business and social acumen—skills that are sometimes found in different places within an organization. We do not deny that some of the skills we describe here overlap (they probably do). But like a diamond, each has various facets that work together to create a brilliant whole.

To me, the back end of innovation begins at the point where the product or service has been defined, designed and developed. In terms of the PDMA’s Body of Knowledge, it can be thought of as those parts of the process that occur after discovery and development and at the point where we are about to enter the stage of commercialization (see Figure 2). While it might seem that all of the hard decisions have now been made, as you will see, there is much yet to do! These activities can be classified into six major categories:

• Product
• Marketing
• Manufacturing
• Logistics
• Field Support
• Customer Service

Despite continuous growth in research and development (r&d) spending, many senior leaders remain deeply concerned about their organization’s ability to innovate. For example, the pharmaceutical industry has more than doubled its spending on research and development during the last 10 years, but its success rate in finding new drugs has been disappointing. Yet new research by Booz & Company points to an unexpected and unheralded source of potential productivity: midlevel managers in the R&D function. Companies can significantly raise their R&D productivity by recognizing and activating the unique impact of leaders in the middle of the organization’s hierarchy.

When trying to get back in the game, a product manager is faced with two choices: zig while they’re zagging, that is, create a product around a value propostion that hasn’t been addressed by the competitors yet, or leapfrog the competition and create a product that takes the existing value proposition to a whole new level. Both are viable strategies and either approach will work with the processes outlined later in this article. A real-life case at Intuicom provides some tangible examples of how to accomplish these strategies. Intuicom sells wireless broadband solutions into the intelligent transportation market. Typically, this involves both hardware (radios and switches) and software. Customers increasingly judge the value of these solutions based on the proprietary software used to discover and configure the radios.

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Steve Jobs: A Product Developer’s Perspective 
• The Missing Link in Innovative Research
• How Industry Leaders Find, Evaluate and Choose the Most Promising Open Innovation Opportunities
• So What Did LEGO Do, Anyway?

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation.

Feature Articles:

• Aligning Product Portfolios with Strategic Plans
• Soft Skills for Open Innovation Success Gail Martino
• Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms
• Deliberate Product Differentiation: Creating Unique Products and Valuable Intellectual Property
• A Fresh Look at R&D Decisions: Learning from the Best

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation.

Feature Articles:

• Want to Jump-Start Your Product Development? Reverse Engineer Your Future
• Lessons Learned from Outstanding Corporate Innovators
• Powering Next Gen Innovation
• The Back End of Innovation

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• DNA of Connected Innovators: Nurture Eight Characteristics to Spark Connected Innovation
• 10 Rules of Thumb for I.N.N.O.V.A.T.I.O.N. in Your Company
• A Framework for Understanding Emerging Consumer Needs
• Navigating the Conjoint Analysis Minefield
• Improving Product Development by Capturing Knowledge

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Social Technology: The New Weapon forAccelerating Innovation and Speed in Product Development
• Embrace Change by Embracing Innovation
• An Attitude of Craftsmanship in Innovation
• The Best vs. the Rest: Key Findings From PDMA's 2012 Comparative Performance Assessment Study

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Innovation at Its Best: PDMA Announces the 2013 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Finalists
• An NPD Professional's Entrepreneurial Journey Using the Principles of Effectuation
• PIM 13: Innovation Under Constraints

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Managing NPD Project Tradeoffs
  
• Big Data: Friend or Foe to Creativity and Innovation
• PIM 13: Brainstorm. Debaate. Collaborate

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY IBM Case History: Designing offerings that continue to meet and exceed customer expectations
• October 2006 Research Forum Call for Papers
• Primer on “open innovation"
• “Open innovation” myths, realities, and opportunities
• Resource Management: Where enterprise project management systems fail

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY–What is “Innovation DNA”? A comparison between P&G and Gillette
• The shift from “one-size-fits-all” to Inclusive Design
• Interview: How Motorola uses an Early-Stage Accelerator Jim O’Connor interviewed by Mary Drotar
• Collaborative Outsourcing in the chemical industry

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000 2007 study reveals three types of innovation strategy
• How FedEX uses insight and invention to innovate
• COVER STORY: NPD collaboration—A story of what happens when opposites attract (Hint: It’s something to smile about)
• Why your Intellectual Property isn’t generating cash flow—you may be leaving money on the table

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Domino’s Pizza reinvents itself: The story-behind-the-story of the new product launch
• “Innovation is in our genes:” How DSM transformed itself through innovation
• Is your ideation process broken? 10 symptoms of problems, and how to fix them
• Corporate R&D spending declined during 2009 downturn, according to Booz and Company 2010 Innovation 1000 study
• Avoid costly 11th-hour project dilemmas by preparing for change

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• How to make “open innovation” work in your company—Renewed interest in this concept
• High Tech Corner: How Konica Minolta innovates in a highly dispersed and complex environment
• Scenario boards can be used to improve validation of early product and service concepts
• Financial Services: How Mellon Financial Services created an online liquidity management service
• PDMA 2005 International Conference attracts its largest audience ever to focus on innovation in global Product Development
• COVER STORY Innovation at Nextel: Addressing unmet customer needs
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• A Toyota secret revealed: The Oobeya room
• Notes from the IAPD: Companies explore the innovation workforce of the future Beebe Nelson
• An Innovation Center links Corporate America with the classroom
• The Gate Debate:…Why a knowledge-based process may be better
• Flexible product development for a turbulent world: Is “Agile” NPD the answer?
• Visualizing your process from the customer’s perspective
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• “Crowdsourcing” is used by Dutch Internet company 9292 to create a new travel application
• How the “Wisdom of Crowds” concept inspired Intel to improve its innovation transfer process through the Valley of Death

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• The Impact of Emerging Economies
• Commentary – The World is Round
• Subsistence Marketplaces: From Impactful Research to Practical Innovation
• Achieving Market Success with Porcelain
• Rethinking the Product Development Funnel
• Co-Creation: A Big Idea with Major Implications
• Navigating the New Normal: How Companies Handle the Portfolio Management Question

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY—DJ Orthopedics adopts “lean” Product Development processes to win
• Ten ways to make better portfolio and project selection decisions
• Do you have 2 Percenters in your department?
• The ABCs of Intellectual Property protection under U.S. law
• Borderless Innovation™: The Impact of Globalization on NPD Planning
• High Tech Corner—Zyvex: How to turn an “invention” company into an “innovation” company

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• What is “lean” about product development?
• COVER STORY: Hyundai uses “Touch the Market” to create clarity in product concepts
• From Open Innovation to Open Business Models: An interview with Chesbrough Henry Chesbrough interviewed by Michael Docherty
• Arizona Chapter conference focuses on sustainability

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• The results unfold at General Mills: One food company’s foray into open innovatio
• COVER STORY: Why Six Sigma experts are wrong about product development—Here’s the proof
• Xerox Case Study: Using lean Six Sigma techniques to develop an environmentally friendly newsprint paper
• Beyond “phase gate”—Why not use a “tailored” solution?
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• What makes 2 Percenters so valuable
• The story of one 2 Percenter: A Sad Tale
• COVER STORY: Innovation at Xerox
• EXCLUSIVE: What the Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000 report means to New Product Development 
  Professionals
• Booz Allen Hamilton report highlights
• Interview with Kevin Dehoff of Booz Allen Hamilton on outsourcing in high-tech
• Product obsolescence: Removing parasites from the portfolio
• Innovating beyond TRIZ: Weeding out the pipeline

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Can we just stop calling it “Lean” Product Development?
• COVER STORY: Ideation for product innovation: What are the best methods?
• Four approaches for tapping the “global brain”—Achieving success in network-centric innovation
• How Philips is using the InnoHub in Singapore to generate breakthrough innovation
• AFFILIATE SPOTLIGHT: Affiliate for German-speaking countries holds 3rd Innovation Management Conference
• Innovation goes
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY: The story of Clorox Green Works™—in designing a winning green product experience Clorox cracks the code
• Online Communities, Part II: Creating your own online community— how to avoid the pitfalls
• Are you setting prices blindfolded?
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY: Portfolio Pain Points: New study reveals that companies are suffering from a lack of streamlined product portfolio management processes
• The story of Eli Lilly’s open innovation journey—how one company developed a mature model
• Trends in In-house IT departments—adopting commercial NPD practices

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Deliberate practice—Pursuing perfect product launch
• Avoiding the “Blame Game:” When launches fail, try a Product Failure Audit to identify the cause or causes
• Why innovation is so important to Kennametal’s growth
• COVER STORY: How the top innovators keep winning

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• U.S. Army Case History: Success of an “Agile” Approach in a Challenging Environment
• COVER STORY Forget Joe Six Pack—Get Your Own “Persona”!
• Six Catalysts Shaping the Future of Product Development
• In Tough Times, “Hyper-Creatives” Provide Inventive Advantage
• Booz & Company “Innovation 1000"
• Do innovations really pay off? One way to find out is to measure “total returns on innovation"
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY: How Dupont uses New Product Blueprinting at the Front End—and implemented a new e-learning model to teach it
• Study Results—A new framework to help firms select among competing technololgies
• What most companies don’t know about using low-cost intellectual asset strategies
• Provo Craft develops a true NPD culture—How a small company succeeded at innovation

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY: Innovation at LEGO: Rebuilding an Iconic Brand One Piece at a Time
• Assessing the State of Innovation
• Business Model Innovation is Fundamental to Success
• Innovating by Design
• An Easier Way to Develop Product Requirements
• Nine Myths about the Voice of the Customer
• Why Companies Aren’t Jumping on the ‘Agile’ Bandwagon
• From the Hospital to the Home: Innovations in Developing Medical Devices for Residential Use
• Product Development in Emerging Markets
• The NPD Job Market: Improvement Despite Uncertainty
• For OCI Award Winners, Innovation is in Their DNA
• Goods and Services Innovation: Key Findings from PDMA’s Comparative Practices Assessment Survey

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY—How Kimberly-Clark Corp. uses Open Innovation to enhance NPD success: Interview with Cheryl Perkins
• Intellectual Property—Part II: Strategies for integrating a strong Intellectual Property (IP) review into New Product Development (NPD) processes
• How the right user interface can enhance success in the development of electronic devices
• The “trend” before the storm: How to use trend analysis and foresight to improve New Product Development success rates

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• How NASA uses “Infusion Partnerships” Open Innovation helps NASA develop robotic technology
• Managing failed ideas—Could this have been the next iPod®?
• Web-based “Open Networks” may help your company find the right innovation partners

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps PDMA members informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• COVER STORY: What leading companies are doing to reinvent their NPD processes
• Forging successful university-industry collaborations
• Observations on implementing an innovation system—Q&A with Michael Botos of Cardinal Health
• Interview with Geely Executive—What China-based Geely is doing in new product development to compete with global automakers
  

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Are You Squeezing R&D Too Much?
  
• Stop Throwing 'Good Money After Bad'
• Novozymes, Starbucks Named 2014 OCI Winners

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• Why Effective Innovators are Willing to ‘Get Wet’: A case for immersive brainstorming 
• Navigating a Course for Commercial Growth – The Commercial Marketplace: A Sea of Opportunity in Uncharted Waters 
• Building an Infrastructure for Innovation: Meet the 2014 Outstanding Corporate Innovators Award Winners 

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Feature Articles:

• How 'Status Quo' Products Can Make Digital Innovations Fail
• Innovation Process Design and Software Tool Enablement - Finding The Right Approach for Your Company
• Tackling the Product Delivery Problem with Better Collaboration
• Innovation Best Practices: Does Adopting a "Best Practice" Really Make You Any Better?

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

The feature content in this issue broaches the whole spectrum of product development. The articles include: 

• Collective Disruption: A New Model for Transformative Innovation By Michael Docherty 
• 'Value Creation,' 'Value Added' and Other Business Clichés: Does Voice of the Customer Have Anything to Do with This? 
• Leverage Who Knows What in NPD Teams: How to Deploy Different Communication Techniques for Different New Product Development Tasks
• Look to the Future for Today's New Ideas

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

Content includes:

• Meet Your 2015 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Winner: Becton Dickinson
• How to Govern Open Innovation: The Evidence May Surprise You
• To Grow, Start Doing Less: A Conversation with Dr. Mohan Sawhney
• Beyond the Product: Keys to Successful Innovation in Commoditized Markets
• What Product Developers Need to Know about Intellectual Property

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

From better branding to designing wirelessly connected devices and understanding why good products fail, this issue of Visions has crucial knowledge for every product development professional. Feature articles include:

• When Worlds Collide: Better Product Branding Through Integrated Industrial and Interaction Design
• IoT for the Rest of Us: Effective Design Strategies for Wirelessly Connected Devices
• Exploratory PD: An Adaptive Product Development Process for a Complex World
• 'Breaking Failure' Using Analysis and Strategy
• Why Good Products Fail 

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

From harnessing the power of design thinking to finding ways to predict the future, these organizations have taken unique approaches to their product development strategies, and Visions provides access to their collective wisdom. Feature articles include:

• The Power of Design Thinking: How Historical Design Movements Helped Share Organizations' Design Identities
• Breaking the Mold: A Conversation with Dr. Gina O'Connor
• The Back of the Envelope: The Science, Art and Magic of Idea Generation
• Predicting Disruptive Activity

Visions, the flagship magazine of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), keeps the PDMA community informed on news and trends in the new product development (NPD) world and the latest thinking of leaders in product development and innovation. Note: this is a digital format.

From an in-depth look at the 2016 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Winner: Xerox Services to PDMA Director Sharon Parsons being named a Bronze Winner at the 2016 Stevie Awards, we have a lot to celebrate as the year comes to a close. Content to look forward to includes:

• Meet the 2016 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Winner: Xerox Services
• Deliberate Differentiation: Celebrating the Coke Bottle at 100
• Learning to Innovate
• Up to 80% of Your Products are Losing Money
• More than Just Heat Maps

If you've been wondering how to start employing "Co-Creation" within your company's Innovation dynamics, it is helpful to have a starting point. In this webcast we will provide an overview of the concept of Co-Creation and focus on how to start by using Co-creation principles to build innovation networks/communities.

Company: Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
Year: 2011

Voice of the Customer projects are no walk in the park. Even the most seasoned product innovation and development professionals can find themselves stumbling in the realm of VOC. This webcast, 10 Ways to Screw Up Your VOC, sponsored by Applied Marketing Science, will tackle these roadblocks head-on. 

This webcast will provide a review of the common practices and processes which have contributed to the success of the companies acknowledged by the 23rd OCI Award, the only innovation award which recognizes sustained quantifiable innovation success. Specific examples of how the winners have implemented these practices within their companies will be shared.

Featuring Speaker: Sally Evans Kay, Strategic Product Development and Chris Swansegar, Product Management & Commercialization, Lennox International, 2017 OCI Winner

Session Description:

Lessons learned from proven successful practitioner companies provide valuable benchmarks for organizations wanting to improve their own new product/service development performance.

In 1988 PDMA established The Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award (OCI) to recognize companies which have achieved sustained and quantifiable innovation success and to learn from the practices which have contributed to their success. These practices provide valuable benchmarks for the innovation community.

In this webcast you will learn about the analyses conducted by The OCI Committee to look at the practices which have differentiated the winners over the 33-year history of OCI. You will learn that despite diversity in industry and size the winners share a common set of practices. You will learn about the evolution of innovation practices over time and how these companies have adapted their practices to reflect changing trends and market conditions. Attendees will also gain insights on how many of the OCI Winners are ahead of others in adopting next practices.

You will also have the unique opportunity to take an ‘under the hood’ look at how companies like BD, Church & Dwight, Clorox, Corning, DSM, Gorilla Glue, Lennox, Medtronic, and UnitedHealth Group actually implement innovation best practices. You will hear how past winners sustain success after winning OCI by creating a culture supportive of innovation and a constant focus on emerging best practices.

Don’t miss the opportunity to also hear from a past winner, Lennox International, about the OCI experience and the impact on the organization of participating in the process and winning the award.

About Sally Evans Kay

Strategic Product Development

Sally spent 36 years with The Dow Chemical Company and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare. After assignments in R&D, Finance, Sales and Marketing her career was focused on various areas of innovation and new product development. Since retiring Sally has started her own consulting business, Strategic Product Development, which focuses on the front end of the innovation process. She also mentors start-ups and entrepreneurs through various programs in the Cincinnati area and at Purdue University.

Sally has been active in The Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) since 1988, both nationally and at the chapter level. She serves on the Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Committee and is the past Chair of The Committee. She was an Associate Editor of the 3rd Edition of the PDMA Handbook of New Product Development and was the author of ‘Lessons Learned from Outstanding Corporate Innovators’, a chapter in the handbook. She was also a presenter in The University of Cincinnati’s MOOC on Innovation and Design Thinking.

Sally has a BS in Biology/Chemistry from The University of Pittsburgh and is an honorary Purdue Boilermaker.

About Chris Swansegar

Product Management & Commercialization

Chris Swansegar, Program & Project Portfolio Manager, Product Management & Commercialization for Allied Air Enterprises, a division of Lennox International, with over 40 years of experience in automotive and manufacturing industry.

A member of the Residential Product Management team. Chris is responsible for the Project Management Office (PMO); standardizing project portfolio management practices and processes, facilitating the launch and commercialization of new product to the market.

Prior to joining Allied, Chris has a long history in the automotive industry (32 years) with Bendix Commercial Vehicles in the capacity of Engineering, Change Management and Project / Program Management. A member of Project Management Institute (PMI) for more than 11 years, she has become a Subject Matter Expert of project and portfolio management practices.

Chris holds a Technical Engineering degree and bachelor’s degree in Business and Marketing Management. She is certified through Project Management Institute (PMI) as a Project Management Professional (PMP). She has been an active member of the PDMA OCI committee since 2018.

Getting to the right portfolio is critical for growth and cost management. Reshaping your portfolio to one that will inspire customers, make money for the business and spur further growth is crucial. In this session, Stephen Wilson, managing partner and co-founder of Wilson Perumal & Company, will discuss five key lessons from the front lines, based on his organization’s experience supporting companies with portfolio optimization efforts and research on best practices.

Your time is precious, so why spend it viewing this webcast? In addition to hearing about the five key lessons to portfolio optimization, the webcast will:

• Ensure you are familiar with the six key facets of portfolio optimization.
• Give you an introduction to a powerful alternative to Activity-Based Costing: Square-Root Costing, which is a faster more dynamic approach to quantifying complexity costs and understanding true profitability.
• Teach you how to overcome a key barrier to portfolio optimization—concern over the impact to revenues—by leveraging “substitutability” to cut complexity while keeping revenues.
• Provide knowledge about the many benefits of portfolio optimization, both from a growth and profitability perspective.

Presenter Stephen Wilson is the managing partner and co-founder of Wilson Perumal & Company. He works with senior leadership teams in corporations and private equity groups, advising them on critical strategy and operations issue. Stephen has written extensively on the topics of growth strategy, cost-competitiveness, organizational development and, in particular, on the issue of competing in today’s complex world.  He is the co-author of “Waging War on Complexity Costs” (McGraw-Hill, 2009). His latest book, “Growth in the Age of Complexity,” will be published in 2016.

Incorporating customer input into innovation doesn’t have to be painful – in fact, it can be incredibly rewarding. Customer knowledge and empathy are the essence of the design thinking and lean startup models. Join us to find out about a step-by-step system of tools and activities you can use WITH your customers at the front end of innovation to make sure that you’re developing products that meet real needs.

Customer insights are more than just a great basis for innovation. Those same insights can help you communicate and get support for your new product ideas. This session will help you prepare for validated idea generation for innovation with a solid system and plan that will increase your likelihood of success. 

This webcast will be relevant to individuals who are charged with ideating and developing new products, particularly those in smaller teams with fewer resources. This will also be relevant to their immediate team members, including those in marketing research/insights functions.

Presenters:

Darin Eich, Ph.D. is the author of Innovation Step-by-Step: How to Create & Develop Ideas for your Challenge, an expert Innovation Trainer, facilitator, keynote speaker & the founder of InnovationLearning.org.

Jane Boutelle is a marketing leader with deep experience in software product management and in marketing technology and products and services. She is a strong communicator and strategist. She is the CMO and co-founder of Digsite, a qualitative research platform for creating “virtual focus groups” to get in-depth customer input. 

Company: InnoVentures
Year: 2015

Large companies are not start-ups and never will be! They are designed and operate differently. To innovate effectively, large companies can’t simply replicate start-up principles. Rather, they must adapt start-up principles in ways that are smart and tailored to their organization.

During two webcasts, Irene will share a practical, unified framework that any company can apply to build a more efficient, agile and impactful innovation system - and one that works with your structure and specific innovation objectives. Informed by her first-hand experience delivering innovations (both failures and successes) within leading global corporations, Irene will share a foundation to “move the needle” toward the execution success.

Part 1 - Avoiding Innovation Execution Pitfalls – will include:

• How your company’s definition of “new”  affects what capabilities you need
• Advice on how to avoid execution pitfalls
• Practical methods to assess  what capabilities need to be installed/adapted/rebuilt
• Framework that attendees can apply to their efforts

Large companies are not start-ups and never will be! They are designed and operate differently. To innovate effectively, large companies can’t simply replicate start-up principles. Rather, they must adapt start-up principles in ways that are smart and tailored to their organization.

During two webcasts, Irene will share a practical, unified framework that any company can apply to build a more efficient, agile and impactful innovation system - and one that works with your structure and specific innovation objectives. Informed by her first-hand experience delivering innovations (both failures and successes) within leading global corporations, Irene will share a foundation to “move the needle” toward the execution success.

Part 2 – Building Your Innovation System – will include:

• How a system-based approach to innovation can help any company become successful with innovation delivery
• Generating and scaling ideas effectively
• Developing capability to deal with uncertainty and manage risk
• Bridging the credibility gap with stakeholders to sustain investment in high-risk programs when competing for scarce resources
• Incorporating five success principles into a coherent system that works with your organizational structure and innovation objectives

Featuring Speaker: Steve Angelo-Edie, VP VFQ Services, Emergn

Session Description:

Have you or your teams ever faced these questions, "Which agile methodology should I choose?", "I am doing the methodology, right?" "Why isn't the rest of the organization doing the same agile?", maybe even "Why isn't agile sticking?" If so, then this webcast is for you. We'll discuss creating a common language and approach to work that successfully helps leaders, managers, and developers to unlock their potential and the potential of an entire organization, helping you to build and deliver products that your customers will love.

About Steve Angelo-Edie

VP VFQ Services, Emergn

Steve has been involved in IT for over 30 years but began to focus on helping teams improve their agility while working with Microsoft on the Domain-Specific Languages and Software Factories projects in 2004. Since then, Steve has educated thousands of people across the globe as well as leading a number of Agile education programs in some of the most complex and prestigious organizations. Steve has also developed courses and content alongside our clients, including building coaching communities in the transformations he’s worked on. Steve is deeply committed to helping people and organizations improve the way they work, passing on his knowledge and enthusiasm to leave lasting capability and confidence.

Product innovation has been described as the way out of today’s difficult business environment.  However, the rate of success of development projects, in particular white space or disruptive innovation projects remains too low. This webcast will discuss the different types of development projects based on degree of uncertainty and the creation of different project tracks.  Projects are managed using different tool sets based on the best fit between information available and decision making needs.

Company: SmartOrg
Year: 2012

How could you quickly and systematically discover, prioritize and clearly communicate the business case upstream to secure the R&D funding that your team needs, and downstream to inform development priorities? What if you had a process that promotes discovery and truthful communication, and brings people across different functions together to deliver breakthrough innovation?

During this webcast, David Fradin will explore six keys to product success including a modern product lifecycle framework, how to do market research that works including understanding what your customers "do" to develop successful products, decision making, the importance of values and vision, and having a product market strategy before product development begins.

This webcast is for those that need to check their current work against the framework, values and vision to identify gaps andamake improvements to improve their market research.

Collecting Product Input Through a Well-Managed Customer Advisory Board Program is led by Eyal Danon, founder of Ignite Advisory Group, and Gavin Nathan, founder of customeradvisoryboard.org.

This webcast is intended for individuals that are members of the C-suite and involved with Operations.

Join this insightful and educational webinar to learn the essential elements in creating and managing a world-class CAB program, including:

• Company and members benefits of a well-managed CAB program
• Key challenges in designing and running a CAB
• Creating an impactful CAB program

 Goals of this webcast include:

•  Understand how CABs can be used to effectively gather customer input into product development roadmaps
• Learn various methods to collect and prioritize customer desired product features and functions
• Learn best practices for turning collected input into a robust action plan

Combining Jobs-To-Be-Done and Journey Mapping:
An Innovative Approach to Innovation

Featuring Speaker: Steve Hansen, Phase 5

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

In this webcast Steve Hansen, partner at Phase 5 and erstwhile product manager, will demonstrate how combining the Jobs-To-Be-Done and Journey Mapping frameworks helps you build a more comprehensive innovation strategy. Rooted in the belief that Customer Centricity is the new competitive battlefield for businesses, Steve’s presentation will show why and how the two work well together and deliver superior results.

Learning Objectives:

• A better understanding of both frameworks applied to innovation and product development
• How to practically design research using the hybrid approach
• Do’s and don’ts to maximize success

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Steve Hansen, Phase 5

Steve Hansen is a partner at Phase 5, the chair of the firm’s Data Analytics practice, and President of Phase 5 US.

Steve enjoys taking a “Zen mind, beginner’s mind” approach to innovation, especially when it has the potential to disrupt a market ecosystem.

His professional background includes: Lecturer in Innovation in the Peking University Guanghua MBA program, Director of Market Research at Thomson Reuters, and various technology product management roles. Steve is regularly invited to speak at industry events on customer centricity throughout the innovation cycle.

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

The rapidly changing global landscape of trade, commerce and financial markets has caused customers and prospects to re-evaluate buying decisions and shift their focus away from evaluating new products and services. In light of the already significant impacts from COVID-19 and a volatile stock market, this session will explore what commercial strategies you can use during times of sucheconomic uncertainty. This includes low-investment, high-return actions for your new and existing products to keep customers engaged, support your sales efforts and weather this dynamic time.

About Ben Malakoff

Senior Director & Head of Sales, FiscalNote

Ben Malakoff is pricing strategy practitioner serving organizations seeking rapid growth in Enterprise Software & Services. His work has generated hundreds of millions in value for businesses, their customers and investors.

Ben currently serves as Senior Director & Head of Sales Operations for FiscalNote, a rapidly growing Software-as-a-Service and Information Services provider serving public and government affairs professionals.

At MatrixCare, a leading healthcare Software-as-a-Service provider, Ben was the organization's pricing leader for five years, overseeing a period of rapid organic and inorganic growth. Previously, Ben led product management and marketing teams at Ceridian and CIGNA.

Create Brand Stories That Buzz

Featuring Speaker: Arjun Sen, Founder & CEO, ZenMango

Session Description:

Based on high-impact brand origin & founder stories Arjun has created for brands.

Customers decide emotionally and justify rationally. In a world where most businesses scream their brand features, Arjun has created crisp purposeful stories that break through the clutter, put businesses in a one-of-one category, and jump-start their journey to ongoing Big Wins.

Arjun will show that every brand with a purpose has a story; and will share real-life secrets with your audience on how to discover and tell those stories to create lifetime customer connections.

Attendees will learn:

• See the power of brand stories
• Own a clear framework of how to discover and tell brand stories to build winning brands
• Make purposeful brand story-telling a way of life

About Arjun Sen

Founder & CEO, ZenMango

BRAND WHISPERER: 30 YEARS OF BIG WINS FOR BIG & SMALL BRANDS 

Real learning from real world business situations as Arjun shares his corporate executive experience:

• Papa John’s International, Senior Executive
• Led the 3,000-restaurant chain to 4-years of record growth
• Built first-ever online ordering system ($1 billion in annual revenue today)
• Senior level positions at Jillian’s, Boston Market, Einstein Bros., and Pizza Hut
• CEO of ZenMango, made business impact on major Restaurant, Service, Retail, Non-Profit and Sports brands and personalities. Brands impacted:

Blaine Hurst, Former President & CEO, Panera Bread and Former President, Papa John’s, called Arjun “one of the most ‘marketing-Intelligent’ minds in the business today. He is the 'GO-TO GUY' who makes things happen in the business world.”

Connect on LinkedIn

Featuring Speaker: Joshua L. Cohen, Shareholder and Director, RatnerPrestia

Session Description:

In technology-rich and design-sensitive marketplaces, the success of a product is often measured by how well it differentiates (and how well that differentiation is safeguarded). Even products developed by talented engineers and gifted designers are not automatically destined for success — products can be functional and beautiful but still fail to enjoy long-term success if they fail to differentiate in the marketplace.

In this session, Joshua’s case studies of iconic products illustrate a practical framework for developing consumer products that are unique and differentiated from competing product offerings. These case studies, ranging from products beloved for many decades to new products just introduced, reveal a pragmatic strategy that can be built into staged product development processes, so that protected differentiation becomes a specific deliverable of the development effort.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Adopt a practical framework for developing consumer products that are unique and differentiated from competing offerings.
• Integrate an actionable strategy into staged product development processes so that differentiation is a deliverable of development efforts.
• Initiate efforts for differentiation at the outset of new product development efforts.
• Convert design or technology differentiators into valuable commercial IP assets.
• Align IP and design strategies for robust protection of consumer products.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Joshua L. Cohen

Joshua L. Cohen, Shareholder and Director, RatnerPrestia

Joshua helps companies to differentiate their product offerings and safeguard the competitive advantage of technology and design innovations. As an intellectual property attorney and counselor, he integrates IP strategies into product development processes so that stronger IP positions are the natural byproduct of product development efforts. Put simply, Joshua helps companies to protect their IP rights, respect IP rights of others, and promote product innovation.

Joshua established RatnerPrestia’s Design Rights Group, which protects consumer products ranging from luxury sports cars and timepieces to consumer electronics. He teaches Integrated Product Development as an Adjunct Professor at Lehigh University and is President Emeritus of PDMA Philadelphia. Before law school, he developed new technologies as a Senior Project Engineer and Engineering Consultant.

Joshua earned his engineering degree from Lehigh University and his law degree from Widener University, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of Law Review.

Read Joshua's Full Bio

May 2019

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Dr. Wayne Fisher, Founder of Rockdale Innovation, has spent the past four years helping to introduce Open Innovation best practices to a cohort of over 20 organizations in a collaborative program sponsored by the Scottish Government.

The objective of this webinar is to share some common barriers to adoption of Open Innovation and provide practical tools for OI Implementation.  The webinar will cover (1) an Open Innovation Readiness assessment tool to be used with leadership teams (2) a proven Open Innovation Roadmap and Workbook that has been applied to dozens of OI Challenges and (3) a detailed Open Innovation case study and lessons learned from the marine industry. 

Participants will receive an electronic copy of the assessment tool and workbook to apply back in their organization.

About Wayne Fisher

Wayne Fisher, PhD, founded Rockdale Innovation after spending 27 years as an R&D manager at Procter & Gamble. While at P&G, Wayne created a series of popular innovation workshops for all phases of new product development. He has trained thousands of managers, providing a common language and framework for innovation, fostering collaboration across P&G’s diverse business units and regions. Prior to retiring, he served as a full-time innovation consultant and Creative Problem Solving facilitator at The GYM, an IDEO-inspired design studio in West Chester that remains a key enabler of P&G’s innovation capability.

Wayne was an early pioneer in the use of Open Innovation at P&G, serving as the first Technology Entrepreneur for their Family Care business. He developed and championed the use of The GYM’s Effective Problem Definition process, which helps scientists and engineers describe their technical challenges in a way that makes it easy for internal and external experts to offer up novel solutions. He is a sought after trainer, speaker, and writer on the topic of innovation best practices, including the chapter, “Applying the Creative Problem Solving Process to Open Innovation” for an upcoming book published by Oxford University Press. 

Wayne is also active in the Product Development and Management Association, where he serves on the Outstanding Corporate Innovator award selection committee. He is Past President of the Tri-State Chapter. Wayne received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and has been granted 18 US patents.

Featuring Speaker Jeevak Badve | Principal + Director of Strategic Growth SundbergFerar.com | Product Innovation Studio

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

We understand that machines are simple, it’s us “humans” that are complex. “We the humans” have assorted personality traits, behavior patterns and value structures. We ourselves change every decade or so and our mindsets evolve too. The society and culture we live in has it’s overarching influence in how we behave, think, speak, see, feel and act.

We cannot just build products and push technology because we can! The onus is on us, the design community to make sure we anticipate and answer the unspoken needs, un-articulated wants and the latent desires of end-users, and blend in those emotional attributes with the functional specifications.

Let’s try to understand how we investigate and uncover ideal user experiences across the entire set of multi-users. How we carefully design, develop and build a portfolio of meaningful products and services per those intended use cases. How we squeeze that expected product interaction into our artifact to make it useful, usable, ergonomic and beautiful; to make sure it seamlessly jells in the end-user’s existing and aspirational lifestyle.

Our studio, Sundberg-Ferar is the nation’s 2nd longest standing independent industrial design studio, which was born right here in Detroit, in 1934. Our sole reason for existence as a design studio is: To make everyday products a bit better and a bit more beautiful. In this webinar we will share some of our vantage points and insights, accumulated from our experience of 85 years of product design, design research and innovation strategy.

About Jeevak Badve

Jeevak brings energy, passion & curiosity to his role as VP of Strategic Growth at Sundberg-Ferar, a full service Product Innovation Studio supporting the Product and Vehicle industries from its Metro Detroit location, since 1934.

He helps companies to understand the fundamental role of Industrial Design Thinking: leveraging usefulness, usability, ergonomics & aesthetics as unique and compelling differentiators in your products to aid the sustainable growth of business, and planning for the entire range of use-case scenarios and designing for ideal user experiences. With his unique blend of education and experience in design, engineering and business he is a rallying voice for the alignment and optimal inclusion of end users’ un-met needs, unspoken wants, and unarticulated desires in the core value proposition offered by the products & service portfolio, to generate sought-after shareholder value.

He has 23 years of work experience, 7 years in India (Tata Motors ERC, Tata-Johnson, Voltas M&H) and 16 years in the USA (GM Design Center, ASC and now SF studio).

Alma mater:

3. Executive MBA, Michigan State University, Eli Broad College of Business. (Go Green)
2. Master’s in Industrial Design, Indian Institute of Technology, IDC, IIT-Bombay
1. Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, Pune University, India.

Board member of:

1. MDC - Michigan Design Council, www.michigandesigncouncil.org
2. DC3 - Detroit Creative Corridor Center, www.detroitc3.com
3. Aether Group, www.aetherlearning.com
4. IDSA – Board member, 2011-2013, 2013-2016, www.idsa.org

He lives in Rochester Hills, a northern suburb of Detroit, MI with his wife and two notoriously curious kids. He loves bird photography, kickboxing, astronomy, organic backyard gardening and obstacle course running.

Twitter: @jeevakbadve

Design thinking brings an iterative, qualitative approach to product development and strikes a balance between empathy, creativity and rationality.  The series explores design thinking as a strategic direction as well as a practical approach to extracting and leveraging value from product development teams.

Design thinking brings an iterative, qualitative approach to product development and strikes a balance between empathy, creativity and rationality.  The series explores design thinking as a strategic direction as well as a practical approach to extracting and leveraging value from product development teams.

Company: Exponential Edge, Inc.
Year: 2012

Psychologists have found that people spend about half (45%) of their day in routine and habitual behavior. Consider how busy people habitually check Facebook and spend hours addicted to video games yet claim, “I have no time!”  We know that the brain is a powerful habit engine; digital methods embedded into products and services enables habit formation on steroids.  Attend this webcast and learn successful strategies and techniques that leaders in Silicon Valley tech companies and beyond have discovered that turn customer distraction into traction for their business.

Companies: McKinsey & Company, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Year: 2010

Best practices in product development are widely discussed, researched and debated and often include a list of ‘to-dos’ that is overwhelming and unmanageable for the organization. We find that businesses with the best product development track records do three things better than less-successful peers: They create a clear sense of project goals early on, they nurture a strong project culture in their workplace, and they maintain close contact with customers throughout a project’s duration.  This webcast will take a closer look at findings from primary research conducted jointly by McKinsey & Co. and MIT involving over 60 companies, 500 employees, and experience from practitioners across industries to hone in on what really matters.

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Rates:

PDMA Members: $Free

Non-Members: $10

Session Description:

More and more of our teams these days are working from home, from another city, or from another part of the world. Remote work has been growing in acceptance, but also in efficiency. Companies are faced with either accepting the reality of our new virtual working conditions, or facing a shrinking pool of talent that refuse to be in the office every day. In this webinar, I'll share ideas and tools you can begin to think about to get as much, if not more, done with your growing number of remote staff.

About Jay Melone

Jay Melone is a Partner at New Haircut, a product strategy and training group. They help enterprise teams fall in love with the digital products they make, and how they make them. They offer a 4-week Product Transformation Program that drives more measurable outcomes in days than most companies have previously accomplished in months.

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Innovation is critical for business growth. A recent survey by McKinsey & Company showed that 84% of executives agree innovation is critical for their growth strategy, while only 6% are satisfied with the outcome of their innovation performance. One main challenge is the lack of a flexible, yet structured, and enabling environment. This webcast will discuss simple approaches that Emerson put in place to build successful disruptive innovations: enabling culture, integrated framework and well-defined processes.

About T.P. Ong

T.P. Ong is a seasoned innovator and executive who has been successful in developing and launching hundreds of new products since the beginning of his career 25 years ago. His experiences encompass semiconductor, chemical, glass, coatings and process automation industries. He is currently director of new products development, research and innovation at Emerson Electric in Austin, Texas. T.P. received his PhD in materials science & engineering and MS in chemical engineering from Northwestern University. He is a certified NPDP (PDMA), Lean Products Development Process (University of Michigan), and Six Sigma Black Belt (Motorola). He is also a holder of 11 US patents. 

This Webcast will be a review of the highlights and profound findings in the all-day Lab held at the PDMA PIM 2012 Conference in Orlando, Florida on Monday, October 22nd.

•     Making Oysters Work (90 min)
•     Improving Your Portfolio Innovation Horsepower (45 min)
•     Myths and Reality in Generating Results From Innovation (90 min)
•     Balancing Short- vs. Long-Term Projects (45 min)

We know the tools we use to communicate with our customers are fundamentally changing. New mediums are invaluable; not just for keeping up with our professional networks and driving new business, but for creating community, conversation and trust in the marketplace and building relationships with consumers. What opportunity will the emerging new media hold for product development? In this on-demand webcast, we will cover:

• New media ROI and How these mediums can be as much about driving the bottom line as they are about brand building. 
• Where and how tried and true traditional marketing strategies still fit into this new universe.  
• What the ultimate new media product development strategy might look like for a company like yours in a city like Pittsburgh, why it’s absolutely necessary to budget for social media next year, and how to sell it to your CEO so that you get  the tools you need to keep your company competitive.

Featuring Speaker: Parijat Singh, VP of Technology, Wells Fargo

Session Description:

Most companies are in the process of transforming to a new world of ‘Agility’. This topic intends to look at Enterprise Agility through a lens of Lean Software/Product development and principles of ‘Theory of Constraints’. Typically, Agile for most companies is limited to processes like Scrum and Kanban which addresses only one piece of the product development lifecycle. This presentation talks about various agility tools available to address all stages of product development as well as problems that prevent scaling up your agile organization. It will show the broad picture of Enterprise Agility by going beyond the buzz words like Digital transformation, DevOps transformation, Cloud transformation etc. Finally, it intends to demonstrate what separates digital native companies who have achieved immense scale in a fraction of time from traditional product development companies. This topic is mostly relevant to Software based products, although the principles can be applied to any product.

About Parijat Singh

VP of Technology, Wells Fargo

PJ Singh has spent 20+ years leading large technology organizations in fortune 100 companies like JP Morgan, TIAA and Wells Fargo. He has an extensive background in leading large-scale transformations, developing strategy, mentoring product development teams. implementing enterprise agility and digital transformation. He is passionate about Lean product/software development that has led him to develop a unique perspective on Enterprise Agility and how to scale it in traditional organizations. His methods have brought 10x-100x improvements in product adoption, delivery and cycle times thereby earning him the reputation of a relentless change leader and problem solver in every organization he has been in. PJ holds an engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Connect on LinkedIn

Featuring Speaker: Scott Propp — Founder, Adaptive Strategist, Dentro Consulting, LLC

Session Description:

The events that have taken place in 2020 have not only taken a toll on individuals, but also on businesses, projects and products regardless of size. No matter what type of disruption businesses are facing, whether in the environment, market, or within the enterprise, most strategies and plans have been rendered obsolete, thrusting teams into uncertain futures in which adaptation is the new normal. This includes every aspect of our organizations, including how we research, design, and execute new products and programs.  

This 60-minute webinar is designed to help product leaders and those who sponsor them understand how to be a high-value part of the solution that organizations need to serve customers and adapt to the changing market.

Who It's For

Senior product leaders who have a seat at the decision-making table for their firms as they engage in the challenging and complex work of recovering from this crisis, including what products to focus on and in what order.

What You Will Learn

As part of the webinar and interactive discussion, former Fortune 100 and strategist, Scott Propp, will:

• Introduce a pandemic-tested framework that has been used by more than 50 organizations and firms to structure their approach to recovery and identify the most viable products and programs going forward
• Unpack a thought model you can use to make “in the field” decisions that you can trust
• Facilitate Q&A and discussion so you can  get answers to the specific challenges and situations your team is facing
• 3 Vectors for identifying the right solutions - for right now
• Getting off the “X” - How to make key decisions and avoid the perfection trap
• How to contribute in a way that moves the organization forward vs just being busy with activity

About Scott Propp

Founder, Adaptive Strategist, Dentro Consulting, LLC

Scott Propp is a former Fortune 100 executive and strategist with deep expertise in functions as diverse as R&D and sales who has successfully led large-scale “industry-first” projects in 22 different countries using 12 proprietary business models.  Scott’s unique business background has provided diverse hands-on P&L accountable experiences in leading design, advanced manufacturing, and international operations.

As the founder of Dentro Consulting, Scott serves leaders and their teams He is the founder of through keynotes, workshops and strategic consulting

Scott’s academic background includes graduate-level degrees in engineering and business, as well as post-graduate executive training at the Kellogg School of Management and Harvard University.

Grow your business like the big guys, using the same strategies they use.  Big brands do a few things well and do them consistently over time.  Gerry O'Brion has worked on several billion dollar brands, and has translated that experience into strategies any business can use.  His presentation will help you develop an action plan to make your business stronger now and over the long term. 

Featuring Speaker: Steve Hansen, Partner, Phase 5

Session Description:

This webcast will provide Innovation and Product Development and Management professionals with practical knowledge and know how on how to apply and leverage the JTBD framework to succeed in a customer centric way.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Steve Hansen

Partner, Phase 5

A partner at Phase 5, Steve Hansen is the chair of Phase 5’s Data Analytics practice and head of the firm's Minneapolis office.

Steve enjoys taking a “Zen mind, beginner’s mind” approach to innovation, especially when it has the potential to disrupt a market ecosystem.

His professional background includes: Lecturer in Innovation in the Peking University Guanghua MBA program, Director of Market Research at Thomson Reuters, and various technology product management roles. Steve is regularly invited to speak at industry events on customer centricity throughout the innovation cycle.

Join PDMA for November’s Dynamic, Career-Advancing Webcast!

Fresh off the #PDMA2019 conference stage - join top speakers from each of our 4 content-packed Competitive Edge: Disruption by Design conference tracks discussing some of the top moments from the PDMA Orlando experience.

Session Description:

Our esteemed webcast panel of conference speakers will offer an engaging discussion of the hot topics and highlights from the 2019 PDMA Annual Conference and JPIM Research Forum being held in beautiful Orlando Florida November 2 – 5 at the Hilton Bonnet Creek.

With Disney close by, Competitive Edge: Disruption by Design Conference theme is Design, one of the four D’s of product development – define, design, develop, deploy. This webcast will report on key learning from our four conference tracks:

1. B2B – Is the perfect B2B solution a Fantasy Land?
2. Services – Multi-factor experiential services from Future World is now!
3. Software and AI – Tomorrow Land is today with software enabled products and services.
4. B2C – A better mouse trap for Main St. (Sorry, Mickey!)

From the two inspiring keynote sessions, Jeevak Badve and the Disney Institute, the two after hours events, and the two special Sunday workshops: Design Thinking and NPD Professional Review Session to the JPIM Research Forum and the Disney Magic Behind the Scenes Tour, this hour will be overflowing with thought provoking discussion.

This webcast is perfect for those attending the conference. Sign up to join the discussion and keep the conference content and experience alive as you return with skills to apply to your daily workplace challenges.

For those who can’t join us in Orlando, don’t miss this opportunity to catch the highlights and keep your finger on the pulse of best practices and trends that will help you advance your product career. Register today!

About the Panel

Our panel is a selection of conference speakers from Competitive Edge: Disruption by Design powered by PDMA. Check out the speakers, their bios, and their session titles and descriptions.

Featuring Speaker John W. Eaton, Client Strategist, Macomb-Oakland University Incubator

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

We often hear corporate innovation leaders encouraging their internal NPD teams to “act like a startup”…but that’s clearly easier said than done. And while founders of tech startups and “intrapreneurs” at Fortune 500 companies have the same basic commercialization goal – create a positive, profitable, scalable and sustainable path to success for their product or service – the language, process and pace of those efforts varies considerably whether you’re an independent visionary or a corporate product manager.

In this session we’ll compare and contrast the chaotic nature of startups with the discipline of corporate NPD using PDMA’s Body of Knowledge (BOK) as a framework, and focus on some essential elements of strategy, research, process, and collaboration to accelerate your work as a solo-entrepreneur or as a member of a product team within a larger organization.

Some takeaways from this session will include:

* What constitutes a strong “value proposition” for corporate innovation
* How to look at problems and solutions with less bias
* Knowing your customer(s) in a more intimate way through Human-Centered Design
* Refining the desirability/feasibility/viability of your concepts

We’ll also reserve some time to address your questions about Design-Thinking and how an end-user emphasis brings clarity and continuity to teams of any size and composition.

About John W. Eaton

John represents over 20 years of B2B product development, market research, innovation, design thinking and strategic planning. He has acquired a significant body of work across a variety of industries with regional start-ups, small businesses and multinationals including Northrop Grumman, IHS Global Insight and Johnson Controls. In his current role as Client Strategist at the Macomb-Oakland Incubator, John collaborates across the entrepreneurial ecosystem to help his client's ideas take shape, their products succeed, and their businesses thrive in in SE Michigan. John holds a BA from Western Michigan University in Art and Journalism, is a certified New Product Development Professional through the Product Development Management Association (PDMA), received a Business Incubation Management Certificate from the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA) and earned a Foundations in Design Thinking certificate from IDEO.

Good PMs Confidently Manage Products.
Great PMs Manage People’s Confidence.

Featuring Speaker: Alyssa Dver, American Confidence Institute

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

You nailed the requirements, the engineering processes, and the business plan. You may even be respected for your product knowledge, project management, and communication consistency. But you’re not called in to present to prospects or even to senior management. Instead of assuming it’s because you’ve equipped others so well, it’s likely because they lack confidence in you. Learn scientifically how to be a confidence crusader for your product and yourself.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Alyssa Dver

Alyssa Dver, American Confidence Institute

Alyssa was one of the first certified product marketers and managers and her 2003 book, “Software Product Management Essentials” remains a business bible for many PM’s. She’s consulted on hundreds of products and services. Today, she leads 2 organizations, The American Confidence Institute and The ERG Leadership Alliance. A TEDx and Boston Best speaker, Alyssa delivers riveting keynotes and workshops that use brain science to empower sustainable confidence. Her 7th book, “Confidence is a Choice: Real Science. Superhero Impact.” received an International Book Award and was endorsed by leaders at MIT, Wharton, Harvard, Yale, UC Berkeley and many others. She teaches at the UPenn Innovation Center, is an Advisor at MIT’s Trust Center and writes for Thrive Global. Check out her blog, podcast and other confidence-crusading work at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.

Featuring Speaker: David Boni, Product Director, Emergn

Session Description:

How do you know if your ideas are viable and solve real market problems? This webinar will discuss how shifting to a product mindset can help you take ideas to market that have the greatest chances of success by building products that customers love. Whether you are early in your product management path or looking to improve the way you work today, this webinar will provide attendees with tools and a new way of thinking to bring back to their daily work.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About David Boni

David Boni, Product Director, Emergn

Connect with David via LinkedIn

David Boni is a digital and product strategist with 20 years of experience building successful products and product teams for blue chip brands, including Lastminute.com, Hilton and Marriott. David has worked with wide variety of ever evolving development approaches and methodologies in that time. Central to all of his projects, products and teams is a passionate belief in customer-centric product innovation, driven by continuous improvement supported by lean and agile design principles. He joined Emergn in 2021 as a Product Director, helping clients create the products their customers will love.

This highly informative and entertaining webinar, product development guru Gerry Katz will lay out three major trends in the field of VOC, whose advocates he dubs:

• “The Naysayers”
• “The Stretchers”
• “The Technovangelists”

He’ll then discuss some of the plusses and minuses of these trends and what companies can do to take advantage of the benefits and avoid the pitfalls. Finally, Katz will challenge the conventional wisdom about one of today’s sacred cows: the role of Social Media in VOC.

Maziar Adl, Co-Founder and CTO, Gocious LLC

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

In this session, Gocious’ CTO and CO-Founder, Maziar Adl will walk through how you can determine if your product strategy is aligned with your business objectives and customer needs.

Most companies develop product strategies, but are they aligned to deliver on overall company objectives? How can you even tell if the product strategy is working? Are you able to track on-going results and measure then back to your product strategy?

Learning Objectives:

• How your business can drive greater business goals by clearly seeing the bigger picture of your long term plans
• How you can enable your teams to deliver on the company vision
• How you can build your strategic plan using a financial baseline
• How you can align your product strategy with your business goals
• How you can enable your teams to collaborate more effectively

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Maziar Adl

Maziar Adl, Co-Founder and CTO, Gocious LLC

Maziar Adl is Co-founder and CTO of Gocious, a product decision analytics platform that empowers better product innovation for industries that include auto/mobility, industrial equipment, and high tech, where he oversees end to end design, implementation, and development of products. A strategic leader with a record for spearheading the successful design and rollout of medium to large scale technology roadmaps and transformation, Maziar has played a pivotal role in the creation of Gocious’ cloud-based product decision analytics platform since he co-founded the company in 2018. Throughout his career, Maziar has become renowned as an expert in improving long terms performance strategies of organizations and teams using better, accessible, and timely information and analytics.

At Assembla, they are doing things that are not in the textbooks... YET.

The product manager’s job changes dramatically when companies move to short product cycles and lean Agile processes.  How do you adapt to these changes?  What new powers do product manager’s gain, and how can you use them effectively?
We will discuss:

• The basics of Lean Agile
• How to release more frequently
• Requirements gathering as a team sport
• Delivering a great user experience with “Story Owners”
• Real-time feedback: How to get it, how to use it
• Feature switches: A technique for better testing and staged releases

In this Webcast, you will learn:

1. What is Lean Agile, and how it makes companies more competitive
2. How Lean Agile processes change the product manager’s job
3. How to recruit and manage “story owners” to ensure the delivery of features with high value to customers

Curious about the 2011 NPD job market?  Want to know what employers are looking for in NPD professionals? Wondering how social media has changed the playing field? Add this on-demand webcast to your cart today! You will learn: 

• The current state of the NPD job market and how it compares to 2010
• How employers search for candidates
• How NPD professionals search for jobs, what works and the role of social media

Company: Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
Year: 2012

Much has been written about how to be a good consultant – what pleases clients and what annoys them.  In this highly informative and entertaining on-demand webcast, long-time market researcher Katz turns the tables!  You’ll learn about all the things that clients do that drive consultants crazy and actually hurt the quality of the end product they receive.  Listen in to learn how to become a smarter purchaser of market research and other kinds of new product development consulting services.

An innovator’s journey often begins with optimism weighed down by the realization that making a decision is the heaviest object carried in the pack. And while there may be a road map to a desired outcome, like most journeys, you’ll experience pitfalls and miracles along the way. What Cory Christensen of Corteva Agriscience learned from his innovation trek is how to build a disruptive innovation competency within an established, multi-national business with history spanning a century.

This presentation covers the following topics…

• The importance of setting up a disciplined and accountable structure that is separate but intimately linked to the core business
• The challenge of building trust and credibility
• The challenge of focusing on critical assumptions
• The challenge of developing reliable information
• The challenge of building the right portfolio

… And concludes with how meeting these four core challenges in a structured environment sets you up for winning at innovation.

About Cory A. Christensen

Corn and Genome Editing Global Technical Program Leader,
Seed Global Business Platform
Corteva Agriscience™

In his Global Technical Program Leader role, Cory has strategic accountability for early corn trait product development using core technologies and for the use of novel technologies, such as genome editing (CRISPR), to create new products across crops. In addition, he serves on the Disruptive Business Innovation Portfolio governance teams, which oversee investment in disruptive new technologies across Corteva.

Before joining Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva Agriscience) in 2010, Cory worked for two startup functional genomics companies—first at Paradigm Genetics, Inc. (later Icoria) in North Carolina and later at Ceres, Inc. in California. Most of his roles have been managing R&D departments involved in the discovery and development of biotech traits for crops. While at Ceres, he transitioned into a newly formed commercial development team where he served as the Director of Product Management with responsibility for Ceres’ perennial energy crops portfolio. It was in this role that he discovered his interest in operating at the interface of scientific research and the business and a passion for making high quality investment decisions.

Moderator

Ralph Morales III
Head of Innovation Practice
SmartOrg

Company: The Inovo Group
Year: 2014

Larry Schmitt, co-founder and President of The Inovo Group, shares lessons learned from over a dozen years from hundreds of innovation projects. This webcast is for individuals who want the next big thing in the future while maintaining operational excellence in the present. The video expands ideas from other innovation leaders such as Clayton Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma) and Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm).

Topics that Larry will discuss include:

• Strategic Innovation Canvas
• Strategic Innovation
• Company Culture

The webcast is designed for individuals that who are trying to move the needle, including business leaders and individuals involved in technical, marketing, or commercial aspects of bringing an innovation to market.

Featuring Speaker Patrick McGowan, Founder & Managing Principal, The Service Design Group

Space is limited, register early to reserve your spot!

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

How To Win With Services! Let’s face it, services are different! While some aspects of service design and development have matured, firms struggle to produce winning services -- services that produce revenue and drive actual business outcomes. In “How to Win With Services,” The Service Design Group will show critical tools and demonstrate techniques necessary to cultivate a pipeline of service innovations; build, test and refine services; and launch and manage a portfolio of winning services.

About Patrick McGowan

Mr. McGowan is a service design, management and innovation specialist. McGowan founded and runs The Service Design Group, which provides Service Innovation and Portfolio Management as a service to industry leading business-to-business enterprises. McGowan also teaches service innovation to MBA students.

Rich Duncombe, Innovation Catalyst, and his colleagues at Hewlett-Packard have developed a value driven process for evaluating innovative new products and businesses. He describes valuation by cross-functional teams of 30 new business opportunities, launching 15 new businesses of which 70% involved disruptive innovation.

Mark Adkins, NPDP, founder & president of Smart Hammer Innovation, shares his experiences of breakthrough innovations being developed at companies recognized as outstanding corporate innovators. This webcast is designed for individuals that are in organizations that are characterized by:

• An idea-to-launch process that is so refined, that breakthrough innovation ideas may not be advanced
• Typically, all available funding is committed to core products
• Breakthrough products are required to enable abundant growth in the future

Topics that Mark will discuss include how to restructure a traditional R&D group to include the role of commercial managers and  why a robust Stage Zero is critical to filter and promote breakthrough ideas. Walk away from this webcast with important action items:

• Construct an organizational chart for a Hybrid R&D group
• Sketch a process model that will guide Hybrid R&D activities
• Set Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for the new organization

September 2019

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

"The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit." 

Empathy requires us to put aside our culture, ideas and worldview in order to truly understand other peoples’ experiences. But most of the times, empathy is blinded by our own biases. As Product Managers and Product Designers we are trapped in assumptions and in the need to be right and it constantly hurts our view on the world around us and the impact of the products we are building. 

At Pivotal we build great products that have positive impact. And what makes a product great is not simply listening to the user. It is hearing the user with empathy and without biases. And acknowledging and eliminating biases is one of the hardest and most important tasks when designing and building products today and we can all continuously get better at it.

Take part in this session and become more aware of how you ask questions, you listen and interpret the information that you hear. I will also tell a series of stories on how we improved product design through empathy and I will go trough the traits of an empathic observer and the tools that we can use to gain a deep understanding of the people for whom we are designing.

Want more on this topic? Check out Alexandra Lung's session at the PDMA Annual Conference.

About Alexandra Lung

Alexandra is a product leader and a digital transformation expert who’s been in the game for more than 10 years.

Originally from Romania where she worked as a consultant in new business launch. Previously held positions in marketing, communication, product strategy and development and consulting in digital transformation. She's been building products for years touching various phases of the product lifecycle: user research, business insights, market analysis, financing, product vision, strategy and roadmapping. Alexandra was listed in the top women in Product in Europe 2018 and the elite business women to follow in 2019.

She is focused on helping companies transform the way they build software. She’s a result-driven expert who has extensive knowledge in finding product market fit and gathering deep understanding of the user in order to build a product people will love. She also shares her know-how and stories through talks and workshop all over the world and she mentors and coaches product professionals. 

Pivotal is a company that turns 100-year old banks and 1000-person IT business, into modern, adaptive and fast-changing companies. It teaches new ways of learning, creates a culture of innovation and make the most of your data.

May 2019

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

The session will incorporate information and real world applications of how clinical and consumer discover happens during Medical Device Product Development.  We will review the 4 P’s to keep in mind with product development which include: Patient, Payer, Provider and Physician;  Customers vs. Patients and are they really the same thing; and finally where clinical feedback from physicians and other various clinicians can be incorporated into product design, form and function.  The session will bring in examples of various methods used to gather the critical insights and requirements for product development in the Medical Device space. 

About Sharon Baer

Over the last 10 years, Sharon has worked in the field of new to world product development and is currently the Director of Product Management for the Advanced Innovation Business Group with Sleep and Respiratory Care of Philips. Prior to her current position, Sharon worked in the Clinical Marketing Organization for North America as a Program Manager of the Clinical Marketing Team, Global Product Manager and Strategic Marketing Manager for the Sleep Therapy before moving over to start the Advanced Innovation Department. Sharon started her career as a Critical Care Respiratory Therapist & Department Manager at Montefiore Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh PA. She transitioned from hospital critical work into clinical education with students currently obtaining their Associate and Bachelors degree’s in Respiratory Therapy.  She has been a Program Director for 2 different Associate Degree Respiratory Therapy Programs prior to coming to Philips.

October 2019

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Are you getting the results you want with others? What important initiatives are at risk if they don’t get the support they need? Your ability to leverage opportunities and manage risks depends, at least in part, on your effectiveness in influencing the support needed from others. In other words, results will be, in some way, a function of your influence. Join Brad Matthews as he explores how to ensure the functional expertise of organizations, teams and individuals is more effectively utilized, produces greater positive impact and nurtures more effective, enjoyable work relationships. In this interactive session, practical influence management strategies and techniques will be experientially explored and you will have the opportunity to identify how you intend to become even more successful in influencing for the results you want.

About Bradford Matthews

Brad’s experience includes significant consulting and executive coaching, as well as business management roles, including founding/directing two consulting firms with their global teams. He has worked in 21 countries, serving an exceptionally wide range of industries and organizational functions, in both the profit and non-profit sectors. Collaborative influence, innovation management, change leadership, and organizational engagement are specialties. See LinkedIn (BradfordMatthews) for more information.

A partial list of clients includes:

• IT/IM – HP (Hewlett Packard), Agilent, Cisco, Symantec, Induct Software
• Financial Services – Charles Schwab, CitiBank, Progressive Insurance, GM Finance
• Healthcare – Salem Hospital (Mass. General Hospital), Oslo University Hospital, Kaiser-Permanente
• Automotive – Ford, GM-UAW
• Energy – Chevron, ARCO, Pacific Power
• Telecom – MCI, AT&T, Ericsson
• Consulting Services. – HP Consulting, Agilent, Right Management, E&Y
• Publishing – MacWorld, PCWorld, Wired
• Education – Mass. Experimental School System, US Office of Educ., Mass. Dept. of Educ.
• Innovation – Induct Software, BJC Hospital, Oslo Univ. Hospital, Cisco
• Materials – Borealis, Tyco
• Bio-Tech – Genencor, Genentech, Sanofi, CSL Behring

How do creative ideas grow to become innovations? As companies have increased their focus on discovering and creating new ideas they have created a backlog of opportunities that seem to stagnate and get no traction. Innovation leaders understand how to create the structures, practices and processes to move good ideas through all phases of the innovation lifecycle by creating and operating innovation labs and incubators. A key to success in this part of the innovation operating model is to understand the type of innovation you seek (incremental, breakthrough, or radical) and structuring your innovation lab to realize its potential. This webcast will include strategies to help you move your backlog of opportunities to the forefront and towards potential competitive advantage.

What things are here to stay and what will return to “normal”?

Featuring Speakers: Greg Geracie, Actuation Consulting; Oscar Acuña, Factum Partners
Moderator: Ernie Harris, BASIC Benefits

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Please join PDMA’s past President Ernie Harris as he moderates a discussion between Greg Geracia, CEO of Actuation Consulting in the United Stated and Oscar Acuña, Executive at Factum Partners in Mexico.  This panel will discuss the impacts of the pandemic on product and innovation management in terms of lessons learned and share insights on what is likely to be the new normal and what may return to the old normal.  We will combine the experience of two global consulting practices with the insights from the most recent Best Practices Survey data from the PDMA Research Foundation delivering a lively conversation and meaningful, data-driven insights.

Participants will get practical and actionable recommendations/tips on how they can succeed in a post-pandemic world and some idea of what the future holds.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Greg Geracie

Greg Geracie, Actuation Consulting

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the CEO of Actuation Consulting, the world's leading product management consulting and training organization. Actuation Consulting is a global provider of product management consulting, training, and advisory services to many of world’s most well-known organizations.

Greg is the author of two global best sellers, Take Charge Product Management and The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge. You can learn more about Greg and Actuation Consulting at www.ActuationConsulting.com.

About Oscar Acuña

Oscar Acuña, Factum Partners

Oscar is partner at Factum Partners in the field of Innovation & Portfolio Management. Factum is Latam service and reseller partner for Planview and Brightidea. Oscar works with well-known organizations all over LATAM, connecting their business from ideas to impact, empowering teams, and building the future of connected work. He is President of the PDMA Mexican Affiliate and past VP LATAM.

About Ernie Harris

Ernie Harris, BASIC Benefits

Ernie is the President of BASIC Benefits, a national Third-Party Administrator for employee benefits.  BASIC provides employee benefits administration to tens of thousands of employers in the United States. As a past President of the PDMA Association and current Chair of the PDMA Research Foundation, Ernie has been at the center of global product and innovation management best practices. Ernie is a regular contributor to innovation, technology and employee benefits publications and events.  Currently, Ernie is co-editing the 3rd Edition of the PDMA Body of Knowledge.

Company: Bressler Group
Year: 2012

Products of all kinds are set to take advantage of more sophisticated electronics, including on-board computing power, touch screen and emerging interactive technologies. How can companies improve process to leverage product opportunities through fully integrated graphic user interfaces? 

This webcast introduces two free resources produced by the Center on Knowledge Translation for Technology Transfer pertaining to Intellectual Property (IP); Intellectual Property Module and Chronological Guide for Inventors.  The webcast highlights some important IP topics within these resources, such as Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks and Trade Secrets.

Featuring Speaker: Greg Geracie - CEO, Actuation Consulting

Space is limited, register early to reserve your spot!

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Successful product development is complex. It relies upon purposefully melding people, processes, and tools to deliver results. Given the complexities organizations often lack data about what leads to a successful outcome or the factors that can aid organizations to be more successful. This webinar examines factors that can increase your product organizations success across the areas of innovation, product management and product team performance. If you are looking to improve your product team’s performance join us to learn more!

Key Insights:

• 5 innovation insights
• The current state of product development methodology adoption and which method is most strongly associated with product profitability
• 5 key regression analysis findings that are highly correlated with product team success

About Greg Geracie

CEO, Actuation Consulting

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the CEO of Actuation Consulting, the world's leading product management consulting and training organization. Actuation Consulting is a global provider of product management consulting, training, and advisory services to many of world’s most well-known organizations. Greg is the author of two global best sellers Take Charge Product Management and The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge.

Greg is a former board member of the Business Architecture Guild where he contributed to the most recent version of the BIZBOK Guide. As an industry expert, Greg has also been asked to contribute his product management expertise to a growing list of professional bodies of knowledge, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) first ITBOK and the latest BABOK Guide.

You can learn more about Greg and Actuation Consulting at www.ActuationConsulting.com. 

Lean thinking and Lean Six Sigma have found widespread application in manufacturing and services and more and more companies discover that the principles apply equally well to the innovation creation process. In fact the benefits for applying lean to R&D and innovation in manufacturing and services can be significantly higher than those achieved in plants and offices.

This presentation covers the following topics:

• The key principles and how they are appropriately applied in the different phases of the innovation process
• Examples and case studies of successful implementations
• Key tools and features:
• The lean startup and creation process
• The set based concurrent knowledge development process
• The fast and predictable product creation process
• How to engage people in a lean transformation

About Norbert Majerus

Beginning in 2005, Norbert implemented a principles-based lean product development process at the three global innovation centers of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. For more than a decade he was Goodyear’s lean champion in research and development.

Norbert, born and raised in Luxembourg, has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany, and worked most of the disciplines in the Goodyear innovation centers in Luxembourg and Akron.

In 2016, Norbert published his first book, Lean-Driven Innovation, which received the Shingo Research Award. Also in 2016, with Norbert’s guidance the Goodyear R&D organization applied for and received the AME Excellence Award.

Norbert has taught workshops and has spoken at many conferences in the United States and other countries. Since retiring from Goodyear in 2017, he continues to share his extensive lean expertise via norbert majerus consulting

This webcast is an introduction to the research and principles that led to the development of a proven and reliable system for the “front end” of innovation, known as Innovation Engineering. Innovation Engineering transforms innovation from a random event into a reliable, scientific system for profitable growth. This system creates a culture of never-ending innovation within organizations that delivers increased innovation speed (up to 6x), decreased risk (30 to 80%) and increased success (250%+) on the fuzzy front end. Innovation Engineering was inspired by the breakthrough work on “quality” by Edward Deming.

In this Webcast Recording you will learn:

•  How to create a culture of “never-ending” innovation in your organization.
•  How to increase speed and decrease risk in the front end of your innovation system
•  About the leading edge technology capabilities and tools you need to accelerate your innovation efforts, including search tools to efficiently find productive academic articles, IP for sale, active IP, inventions, and more.

Company: IBM
Year: 2013

Can social networking help you build better products or be a better product manager? According to IBM executive and author Ed Brill, the answer is yes. In this webcast, Brill discusses “Opting In,” lessons in merging product management and social networking from IBM’s use and leadership over the last decade. You will learn how, where, when, and why to participate in online communities, what the payback will be, and how to justify the effort internally.

Featuring Speakers: Mike Hess and Kurt Smith, Medtronic

Session Description:

2020 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award (OCI) Winner, Medtronic, is a global leader in the medical technology market. Medtronic has sustained success in this highly competitive market by developing and delivering invention, continuous innovations and disruptive innovations across the continuum of healthcare.

PDMA’s OCI Award recognizes companies like Medtronic which have achieved sustained and quantifiable innovation success and have well defined practices which have contributed to that success. These best and next practices provide valuable learnings for organizations in any industry trying to achieve consistent innovation success.

In this webcast Medtronic will share how the company has combined strategic focus, platform technologies, market knowledge, novel funding approaches and unique innovation tools to maintain market leadership. Among the areas you will learn about is how they engage target markets at the front end of the innovation process to identify and validate problems in the market and how they use tools like crowd sourcing, the Innovation Lab and open innovation to identify potential solutions.

They will discuss how the company is fostering agility in innovation through knowledge assimilation in the knowledge center and how agile development enabled them to deliver ventilators with unique and critical benefits during the pandemic. You will also gain insights about how Medtronic has established a culture of continuous innovation improvement through an internally developed process called Design, Reliability, Manufacturability (DRM).

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from a company with a proven innovation track record and a company willing to share what it has learned in its innovation journey.

About Mike Hess

VP, Engineering and Medtronic Fellow, Medtronic

Mike Hess, VP of Engineering and Medtronic Fellow has been with Medtronic for 29 years. Working with the corporate Strategic Scientific Operations (SSO) organization and R&D Council Mike is focused on identifying and prioritizing enterprise wide technology initiatives to advance therapy innovation. At Medtronic, Mike has worked in a wide range of leadership roles at Medtronic including therapy R&D management, corporate research and technology, program management, upstream marketing, clinical, and General Management for the Cardiac and Vascular Group (CVG) Brady and Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) therapies. He is a Technical Fellow, a member of the Bakken Society and an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) fellow. Mike has 36 issued patents and numerous publications to his credit.

Outside of Medtronic Mike is active on numerous academic advisory boards for the advancement of Biomedical Engineering and has been involved in Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) society and other associations that promote engineering and education. 

Kurt Smith

VP of Strategic Innovation, Medtronic

Dr. Smith, Vice President, Strategic Innovation has been called a visionary and a pioneer with a proven track record in innovation and entrepreneurship with the unique ability to drive passion in individuals and collaborative teams so that they can achieve their highest potential. Dr. Smith’s current role is focused on identifying strategic innovation bets across Medtronic that have high potential as ventures that leverage external funding. Dr. Smith has made numerous major entrepreneurial contributions to Medtronic, including most recently, the development of the Digital Health Innovation Center which supports digital health and data science across the organization. Over his career at Medtronic, he has played a leading role in the creation of numerous minimally invasive, image-guided diagnostic and ablation platforms including the StealthStation which is recognized as the preeminent surgical navigation system in the world. He also played a key role in establishing Medtronic’s technology center in Shanghai, China.

Dr. Smith is founder of numerous high technology companies and has been involved in the start-up of seventeen ventures including Surgical Navigation Technologies, now Medtronic Navigation. He has been a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Colorado where he founded the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program. He holds over 30 medical and information technology patents and is published in numerous academic publications. He has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, and a Doctor of Science in biomedical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Today, he is proudly a Medtronic Bakken Fellow.

Featuring Stephen Wendel, Head of Behavioral Science, Morningstar Inc.

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description

People don't always do what they say – or even what they sincerely want to do. That’s true in daily life, and it’s true in our products and with our users. Research in behavioral science can help us understand why good, well designed products sometimes succeed as we'd expect. Behavioral scientists study the many quirks of the mind that stop people from taking action with our products, and the creative techniques one can use to work around these obstacles.

In this webinar, you’ll gain

1. A practical introduction to applied behavioral science, and how lessons from the research community are being brought to everyday product design.
2. A framework to identify the behavioral obstacles that your users and potential users might face with your product
3. A set of specific techniques you can use to help your users get the most from your products

We’ll also reserve time to address your questions: about user behavior, your products, and how lessons from behavioral science can help.

About Stephen Wendel
Head of Behavioral Science, Morningstar Inc.

Dr. Wendel is a behavioral scientist who studies financial behavior and how digital products can help individuals manage their money more effectively.  He serves as Head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, where he leads a team of behavioral scientists and practitioners to conduct original research on saving and investment behavior.  Stephen has authored two books on applied behavioral science, Designing for Behavior Change and Improving Employee Benefits, and founded the non-profit Action Design Network, educating the public on how to apply behavioral research to product development with monthly events in ten cities. He has two wonderful kids, who don’t care about behavioral science at all.

Featuring Speakers:
Gerry Katz— Vice Chairman, Applied Marketing Science
Kristyn Corrigan— Principal, Applied Marketing Science

Session Description:

Machine learning is an increasingly prevalent term in today’s innovation landscape. But what is it and why is it so important?

The ultimate measure of successful innovation in a mature and well-understood category hinges on its ability to uncover new, game-changing insights and to know which customer needs to solve for now. Now more than ever product developers need to quickly and easily discover new insights on smaller budgets and within shorter time frames. But how can researchers maximize the chances of uncovering new, breakthrough insights within those constraints? Applied Marketing Science, in collaboration with researchers at MIT, has developed a new way to uncover and prioritize the most critical game changing insights for innovation from existing user generated content – surfacing those nuanced insights that traditional research might overlook. Learn how advances to this emerging technology will help you to answer your most pressing innovation insights questions faster and cheaper than ever before.

About Gerry Katz

Vice Chairman, Applied Marketing Science

Gerry Katz is Vice Chairman of Applied Marketing Science (AMS). He has presented at and chaired many PDMA conferences over the past two decades and served on the PDMA board for many years, chairing its Body of Knowledge Committee and writing and editing extensively for PDMA Visions.

About Kristyn Corrigan

Principal, Applied Marketing Science

Kristyn Corrigan is a Principal with AMS where she leads the firm’s Insights for Innovation Practice. She was heavily involved in the research and development of the method to be presented here as well as its delivery to several leading clients. She has spoken about machine learning at several conferences, including TMRE, CRC, FEI and NEIA. Her published work has been featured in Fast Company and Marketing News, and she has guest lectured at several institutions including the MIT Sloan School.

Companies: EvolveEA, Green Building Alliance, Berner International Corp., TRACO

How to make products green has become a prevalent topic of conversation among product developers, but developing an effective strategy involves a revamp of people, process and place. This Innovation Forum topic will pose a systematic and design-informed approach to green product development. We will not ask simply what materials or what actions might be successful but provide a stem/design view of the issue so that viewers can discover possible solutions that apply to their particular situations.

For more than a decade, companies have focused on innovation. Hundreds of approaches to innovation have emerged, many with limited success. What has worked? What has not? Why have business leaders been disappointed with ideation? Why have many companies failed to realize the promise of innovation? SmartOrg’s David Matheson will provide answers to these and other questions and introduce a business model for selecting, developing and successfully exploiting innovative business opportunities.

Mike Bauer, Sopheon

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Innovation is a critical driver of business growth in today's rapidly changing marketplace. However, many businesses struggle to effectively harness innovation to achieve their growth goals. InnovationOps is a powerful methodology for achieving business growth through innovation.

InnovationOps combines cultural philosophies, practices, people and tools to operationalize innovation. By following this approach, businesses can develop and implement innovative ideas that range from incremental to radical to drive growth and success.

In this webinar, we will explore how businesses can use InnovationOps to achieve business growth. We will begin by discussing the key principles of InnovationOps, creating a synchronized system of innovation by bringing together the people across the organization, with the processes they use perform key innovation jobs. We will provide practical examples and case studies to illustrate how these elements can be applied in real-world situations.

Next, we will explore how to build a culture of innovation within an organization. We will discuss the importance of leadership in fostering innovation and provide guidance on how to build and manage an innovation team.

We will also discuss the importance of metrics and measurement in driving business growth through innovation. We will provide guidance on how to measure and track the success of innovation initiatives and how to use this data to inform future innovation efforts.

Learning Objectives

• Throughout the webinar, participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and participate in interactive exercises designed to help them apply the principles of InnovationOps to their own businesses.
• By the end of the webinar, participants will have a clear understanding of how InnovationOps can be used to achieve business growth. They will have a roadmap for developing and executing innovative ideas that drive growth and success in their businesses. They will also have the knowledge and skills to build and manage an innovation team and create a culture of innovation within their organization.

Cost:

This PDMA Webcast is free to members and non-members.

About the Speakers

Mike Bauer, Sopheon

Mike has over thirty years of experience in building and leading cross functional teams and organizations to successfully define, develop and bring new companies and products to market. His experience spans multiple industries with experience in hardware, software and services in startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Currently, Mike serves as Sopheon’s Chief Product Officer and leads the team in Product Management, Design, and Product Marketing and is responsible for Sopheon products throughout their entire lifecycle. In addition, Mike is spearheading Sopheon’s launch of their new Product Led growth offerings.

Mike earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science degree, cum laude with University Honors, in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Company: INPRO Services, LLC

“Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door”. This age old prescription for business success is believed by most people to be inherently true. That better performance will drive market demand and lead to business success. But if this principle is true, why is it that only about 10% of better “mouse traps” succeed?

Featuring Jeremy Alexis, Senior Lecturer at IIT Institute of Design, Director of IPRO, and Director of the Idea Shop

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description

The mysteries of innovation culture: if these ideas are so good... why are they so hard to implement?

The adoption of innovation methods and design thinking has left many companies with numerous ideas and ambition for creating change, but little in the way of implementation and measurable results. We conducted in-depth interviews with innovation leaders at over 50 companies in a variety of industries to understand the barriers that prevented “innovative” ideas from being implemented. We present the findings of this research, including best practices, as a means to help large companies and organizations get more value out of their design and innovation efforts.

About Jeremy Alexis
Senior Lecturer at IIT Institute of Design, Director of IPRO, and Director of the Idea Shop

Jeremy Alexis is a senior lecturer at IIT Institute of Design, Director of the Inter-Professional Projects program, and the Director of the Idea Shop. He holds both a bachelor of architecture and a master of design from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Jeremy teaches the core design process class, Analysis and Synthesis. He also co-teaches the Biomedical Engineering Capstone design class. He also gives lectures at Kent College of Law and Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business. Before joining IIT Institute of Design as a full-time faculty member, Jeremy worked for Doblin, gravitytank. He has works with clients such as Purina, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and FedEx.

Company: SmartOrg

Making the case for investment in your new product idea is a pretty challenging task—especially when there is uncertainty about market size, price, share and other factors that will affect your projections.  In this on-demand webcast, we will follow a team as it seeks support for a radical innovation: a solar teapot. The team draws on the tools of value-based analytics to go beyond spreadsheets and PowerPoint to make their case to management; they lose the first round, but return to gain the green light to proceed.

Companies are under increasing pressure to deliver on innovation. More projects, faster time to market, and less risk are all demanded, not only to stay competitive, but to grow. However, bridging the gap between new technology and product development can be a challenge. Sharing the results of our proprietary ITECS Innovation Survey with over 100 technology executives from Fortune 1000 companies, we’ll show how companies are successfully overcoming challenges and implementing new techniques to bring innovations to market faster and more successfully. It’s a great opportunity to learn best practices in Innovation and Open Innovation from those who have successfully pioneered the way.

In this webcast, you will learn:

1. Best practices from over 100 technology executives from Fortune 1000 companies that are delivering on innovation
2. How the practice of Open Innovation can be implemented and increase the number of innovation projects at your company
3. 7 common but major challenges to innovation initiatives and potential solutions to overcome them to keep moving forward

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Whether your product portfolio is small or large, balancing multiple products at different points in their product lifecycle in order to create the optimal mix can be challenging.  In this session, two senior product leaders will share their approach to product lifecycle management and discuss how they balance their diverse portfolios in order to meet their business objectives.  Learn about how they regularly inject innovation into their product mix, what levers they have at their disposal to make adjustments, and how they wrestle with difficult portfolio questions such as product end of life.  This will be an interactive session that features two short presentations and a moderated discussion together with time for questions and answers from attendees.

About Mark Bouchea

Mark Bouchea,Managing Director of ITP Product & Solution Delivery at DTCC, is responsible for developing a holistic strategy across Institutional Trade Processing services, ensuring integration between the firm’s suite of post-trade processing offerings and alignment with evolving client, regulatory and industry needs. His team is responsible for developing product roadmaps that drive innovation while ensuring the collection and definition of market requirements and the prioritization of key initiatives.

Mark previously spent 11 years at Omgeo, a former DTCC subsidiary where he served as Managing Director of Product Management, and played a leading role in overseeing the product delivery plan and business strategy. Prior to this role, Mr. Bouchea was primarily responsible for the ALERT offering, where he handled all product management aspects related to the service. In previous roles, Mr. Bouchea has held positions with Financial Recovery Technologies, Thomson Financial, Fidelity Management & Research and CCBN.

About Corey Fiedler

Corey Fiedler is Vice President of Product Management, leading the bank broker-dealer product team at Broadridge. Corey manages Broadridge’s regulatory communications, post-sale fulfillment, US proxy services, global proxy and institutional governance solutions – focusing on transforming compliance challenges into competitive advantages. Her combination of Fintech and Regulatory expertise helps drive innovation, operational excellence and user experiences in Broadridge’s regulatory solutions and industry utilities. A frequent speaker at industry events, Corey has authored many articles and white papers to empower clients to be “Ready for Next”. Previously she was Vice President of Product Management at Thomson Reuters.

Company: SmartOrg

It is challenging to make strategic decisions about your portfolio such as prioritizing projects, culling out those unlikely to pay off, focusing resources, and determining investment levels.  Organizations face with significant uncertainty, conflicting objectives and difficult-to-compare proposals. This on-demand webcast will cover principles of strategic portfolio management, developed for Stanford’s Strategic Decision and Risk Management program, summarize what it takes to create a portfolio that wins...

Featuring Speaker: Jim Morris, Product Discovery Coach, Product Discovery Group

Session Description:

In a year spent working remotely, many teams have skipped conversations with customers. These teams take a huge risk by spending engineering time on concepts that have never been put in front of actual users.

In this session, Jim will help you reverse this trend by conducting quick experiments with your customers. These Product Discovery efforts will help you extract actionable insights from customers and spark innovation in your product development.

Drawing on 25 years of failures and successes, this talk will focus on lessons learned and client-tested techniques that develop business and customer value in software-backed products and services. These can be applied across a variety of industries such as digital health, ecommerce, telecoms, insurance, finance, government, facilities tech, and technology services. Examples will be discussed from corporate and startup environments.

From his experience working with 60+ product development teams, Jim will share how to:

• Speed up product development using Product Discovery
• Avoid common blockers to doing Product Discovery
• Get better, more actionable insights from customer interviews
• Jumpstart your Product Discovery with ten concrete techniques
• Start doing Product Discovery every week at your company

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Jim Morris

Jim Morris, Product Discovery Coach, Product Discovery Group

Jim knows how to build and scale successful products. He co-founded PowerReviews which grew to 1,200+ clients and sold for $168 million. He product-managed and architected one of the first ecommerce engines at online retailer Fogdog.com which had a $450 million IPO. These days, he coaches Product teams and Product leaders at startups and corporations to replicate this success. He’s created a custom curriculum and training program that pulls from his 25 years of experience and the best minds in Product Management. He graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science.

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Michael Bauer, Sopheon

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Do a Google search on Product Health and you get articles covering everything from Daily Active users, Net Promoter Score, Customer Lifetime Value, Session per user, and many more topics. What happens if you are not a software product manager? Do these themes fit, and how do you choose what to prioritize?

Product Health is not just a laundry list of metrics to look at occasionally, it’s a way of steering your product’s holistic success.

In this session, we will discuss:

• The rationale for monitoring your product’s health
• How to think about the appropriate metrics for your product
• How to use those metrics to make product tradeoffs and decisions

Learning Objectives

• New awareness to an often-overlooked aspect of a product professional’s responsibility
• Knowing what actively managing a product’s health looks like and some guidelines for selecting key metrics

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Michael Bauer

Michael Bauer, Sopheon

Mike has thirty years of experience in building and leading crossfunctional teams and organizations to successfully define, develop and bring new companies and products to market. His experience spans multiple industries with experience in hardware, software and services in startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Currently, Mike serves as Sopheon’s Chief Product Officer and leads the team in Product Management, Design, and Product Marketing and is responsible for Sopheon products throughout their entire lifecycle. In addition, Mike is spearheading Sopheon’s launch of their new Product Led growth offerings.

Mike earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science degree, cum laude with University Honors, in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Sue Burek, Senior Consultant, Foresight Science & Technology
Søren Salomo, Professor for Technology and Innovation Management, TU Berlin
Kevin Caves, Engineer, Duke University Health System
Bengisu Berispek, Student, TU Berlin & Member, Sustain.ALL
Andrew Varvara, University of Tulsa

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Join us for an overview of PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge – learn about how students, professors, entrepreneurs and practitioners use process and best practices to launch successful products.

PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge provides a stage for young entrepreneurs to develop ideas driven towards innovation-based ventures, and helps students transition from academic to real-world practitioners. This program provides an opportunity to develop an idea for a new product or business and receive feedback from knowledgeable people, and works to prepare students to learn product development strategy driven by market intelligence, product development methodologies and frameworks through developing product solutions to real world problems.

Register above to learn about this year’s competition and hear from our students about their projects!

Learning Objectives

1. Help students to transition from academic to real-world practitioner.
2. Opportunity for companies to identify upcoming talent for roles in new product and market development jobs.
3. Provide a stage for young entrepreneurs to develop ideas driven towards innovation-based ventures.
4. Opportunity for students to learn product development methodologies and frameworks through developing product solutions to real world problems.
5. Attendees can learn new techniques in new product and market development.
6. Aligned with PDMA’s role to champion best practices in new product management and development.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About the Speakers

Sue Burek, Senior Consultant, Foresight Science & Technology

Susan Burek is the Product Manager and Administrator for PDMA’s kHUB She also contracts as a Senior Consultant at Foresight Science and Technology. Previously, she was a Program Manager at Stanley, Black & Decker, Newell Brands and Ingersoll Rand. She spent most of her career at Eastman Kodak Company in new product development, as well as in environment, health, safety, and regulatory roles. She is Past President and still active board member with the Carolinas Chapter of PDMA. Sue earned a BS in chemistry and an MS in product development from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Søren Salomo, Professor for Technology and Innovation Management, TU Berlin

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Kevin Caves, Engineer, Duke University Health System

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Bengisu Berispek, Student, TU Berlin & Member, Sustain.ALL

Andrew Varvara, University of Tulsa

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Ty Hagler, Trig Innovation and Industrial Design Firm

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This webcast covers four awkward realities and 12 new rules that offer a great summary of topical points for Product Developers involved in Business-to-Business (B2B) organizations.  With the Webcast you'll receive a free interactive e-book “Reinventing VOC for B2B” to get a preview of the content. This webcast is appropriate for all titles and levels interested in Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) and product innovation, from operations to the C-suite.

Company: PRTM
Year: 2010

The Global Innovation Challenges on-demand webcast will begin to explore the key issues and challenges that companies have faced with global innovation.  The one-hour session will be built around discussion of the following questions:

• What are the key strategic elements of a successful global innovation network?
• How do you construct the best operational model for the global network?
• How do you orchestrate R&D and innovate the network?
• What are the stages of maturity a company goes through in establishing global innovation? 
• What are examples of best practices? 

Richard Perez, Basadur Applied Innovation, VP Corporate Architecture

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

One-hour case study with overview of Procter & Gamble’s GYM Innovation Capability/Facility (Curated for Non-P&G Audience). Learn insights on the establishment and operation of the GYM’s through 5 Elements of:

1. Physical Venue/Studios,
2. Operations Team Structure,
3. Key Innovation Tools,
4. Innovation Coach/Facilitator Network, and
5. Management Structure.

These elements worked in synergy to create and maintain a thriving innovation engine for a decade of growth (2010-2020) at 30% yearly volume growth, 95% GYM user net promoter score and a team productivity benefit of $100 million/year! The Basadur Innovation Style Scatterbrains Profile will be showcased as an example of a valuable innovation tool driving teams to find innovation by thinking differently.

Learning Objectives

1. Learn Insights to be applied for product development around Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).
2. Understand your individual innovation style.
3. Understand how to unleash the innovation potential of a team by capitalizing on your team’s cognitive diversity across the 4 innovation styles described by the Scatterbrains Basadur Innovation Profile clinical research.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Richard Perez

Richard Perez, Basadur Applied Innovation, VP Corporate Architecture

Richard Perez is a 31-year Innovation Executive at P&G and book author (Scatterbrains: Teams Find Innovation by Thinking Differently). Experienced in integrating consumer insights, technology and business models in multiple billion dollar brand fast-moving-consumer-goods. As General Manager of P&G’s internal Innovation Capability, the GYM, he energized superior product innovation via customized team workshop experiences resulting in tangible and actionable prototype solutions for innovation challenges. The GYM integrated best-in-class tools, processes, people and venue in service of disruptive innovation.

Company: Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
Year: 2017

During this webcast, Gerry Katz will explore the complexity of managing the needs of many relevant 'customers' in business-to-business (B2B) product development.

At the beginning of any new product development initiative, one of the most critical questions that needs to be answered is, “Who’s the customer?” It always sounds trivial, but it rarely is. 

During this webcast, you will learn new ways to think about who you will need to talk to in order to fully understand customer needs to create a framework to design a formal sample for market research.

This webcast is for those that need to understand the problems of dealing with complex value chains where there are multiple 'customers' who need to be satisfied. Gerry will explore how to cover 'all the bases.' 

Company: Silver Streak Partners
Year: 2014

In this webcast, John Farnbach of Silver Streak Partners introduces fresh thinking about innovation, waste, and the NPD process. If you’re struggling with delay and wasted effort in your most innovative development projects, it may be time to pivot in your thinking about process.

John addresses problems that create risk and delays that hobble developers’ agility to respond quickly in a fast-changing market such as changing customer requirements force design rework and technical discoveries redefine the opportunity.

To get products to market faster or to meet aggressive product development schedules, many companies shorten the product planning process by jumping straight into the development of future products or enhancements. However, companies should not build products simply because they have the capability to do so. They must begin by discovering and understanding the user problems that they are trying to solve. Gain a better understand on how adopting a market driven product development approach can help shorten time to market and improve alignment of product capabilities to user requirements. The recording will give you access to real-world product development best practices on your own schedule: watch it WHERE you want and WHEN you want.

Seth B. Greenwald, PMP, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

Every product manager knows that they must wield the power of communication with great effect. After all, according to PMI’s annual global survey, communication is the #1 skill that employers are looking for in their project professionals. The way in which we present our ideas is critically important when speaking with our team, our stakeholders, and our vertical chain.

The best product managers have learned to engage their audiences with authenticity. They know how to tap into their ‘true impromptu self’. You can too, by learning to recognize and avoid the obstacles which stand in your way.

Join Seth at this seriously fun session as he shows you how to supercharge your communication skills with the power of authenticity.

Learning Objectives

• Recognize the five major obstacles which stand in their way from discovering their authenticity as a communicator in order to better connect with their audience.
• Use the power of the present moment to neutralize their inner critical voice that holds them back from expressing their off-the-cuff ideas.
• Quickly switch to their creative thinking mode to improve their impromptu communication skills during a presentation.
• Accept and embrace their unique point of view to break away from group-think.

Cost:

This PDMA Webcast is free to members and non-members.

About the Speaker

Seth B. Greenwald, PMP, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Seth B. Greenwald, PMP is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and communication coach for managers, engineers and other technical professionals. He's earned a Mechanical Engineer degree from The Cooper Union and an Industrial Design degree from Pratt Institute. Seth currently serves as Project Manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He's the author of three books on public speaking and presentation skills. Seth’s most recent publication “An Engineer’s Formula for Public Speaking Excellence” is a practical manual for technical leaders to discover their unique voice to present with clarity, confidence and conviction.

Seth is a 15 year veteran member of Toastmasters and has earned the organization's highest speaker designation. In his spare time, Seth teaches a unique speaking program, Improv2Improve which he's designed specifically for his fellow technical professionals. His students learn to improve their impromptu communication skills with by participating in some seriously fun group exercises focused on finding their authentic speaking self to better connect with their audiences. For more information on his course, visit: CreativeWarriorSecrets.com/Improv2Improve.

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Surprising New Research on B2B-Optimized Voice of the Consumer: Evidence for What Really Works is led by Dan Adams, founder of The Advanced Innovation & Marketing (AIM) Institute

During this 60-minute webcast, you will explore the fundamentals of B2B divergent (qualitative) and convergent (quantitative) interviews. The outline for this webcast includes:

• Why B2B product development should be different than B2C
• Moving from Innovation Maturity Level 1 to 3 (overcoming major B2B innovation problems)
• Exploring divergent and convergent B2B customer interviews
• New research results on interview effectiveness (regarding improved customer insight and reaction)

For years, prediction markets have harnessed "the wisdom of crowds" to predict a variety of real-world outcomes with great accuracy, from movie box office receipts to election winners. Now the world's leading brands are tapping their predictive power for market research purposes, such as testing new product, marketing or packaging concepts. In this webcast, learn how these "virtual stock markets" can predict concept success at a fraction of the cost and many times the speed of a survey, while also improving respondent engagement and benchmarking capabilities. 

Company: Design Concepts
Year: 2012

Design Concepts’ staff members Marlisa  Kopenski, director of business strategy and Stefanie Norvaisas, director of design strategy & research and principal, will explore the fields of design strategy and business strategy and discuss the benefit of both to the process of innovation. Through case studies Marlisa and Stefanie will share their point of view on the power of applying business strategy to the process of innovation to help mitigate risk and ensure success in product and service design.

For more than two decades, most of our time, attention, and research about New Product Development has been focused on the so-called Fuzzy Front End – discovery, Voice of the Customer, ideation, concept development, etc. Important? Absolutely! But what about the later stages of NPD, the activities found in what our Body of Knowledge labels as the Commercialization phase? Unfortunately, this has become the new stepchild of NPD. In this highly informative webinar, product development guru Gerry Katz will attempt to define and expound upon The Back End of Innovation. In Katz’s view, these activities are just as critical as those in the Front End, and may present just as many opportunities for innovation.

Featuring Speakers: Gloria Barczak, Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Innovation & Abbie Griffin, Royal L. Garff Presidential Chair in Marketing and David Eccles School of Business Associate Dean of Business Innovation

Session Description:

The results of the global PDMA best practices survey are in.  This 5-month effort gathered best practices data from firms throughout the world.  Learn the practices of those who are outperforming the competition directly from the researchers.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Gloria Barczak

Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Innovation in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University.

Gloria Barczak is Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Innovation in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. She has been actively involved in PDMA for 30+ years and is the recipient of the 2020 Crawford Fellow by PDMA.  She currently serves on the PDMA Board and Academic Committee is a former Editor of the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

About Abbie Griffin

Royal L. Garff Presidential Chair in Marketing at the David Eccles School of Business and Associate Dean for Business Innovation for the School of Medicine at the University of Utah

Abbie Griffin holds the Royal L. Garff Presidential Chair in Marketing at the David Eccles School of Business and also is the Associate Dean for Business Innovation for the School of Medicine at the University of Utah. She was named a Crawford Fellow by the PDMA in 2009. Her research investigates measuring and improving the processes of new product development and innovation management.

Featuring Speaker: David Byron, Sundberg-Ferar Product Innovation Studio

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

In this webinar, David Byron of Sundberg-Ferar discusses the proprietary innovation techniques and design process behind the walking car concepts that took the world by storm at CES 2019 and again in February 2021. He also outlines how Sundberg-Ferar helped Hyundai develop these concepts and how you can apply these innovative strategies and design methods to boost your portfolio, enrich the creativity of your team, and generate business growth.

Learning Objectives

• Where do you start to come up with out-of-the-box ideas?
• What makes a walking car so different and compelling?
• Why does anyone need a car that can walk?
• How strategic research led to the development of compelling use-cases.
• How you can use these same methods to create ideal experiences and boost your product portfolio, whether you make walking cars or water purifyers.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About David Byron

David Byron, Sundberg-Ferar Product Innovation Studio

David’s passion for design and cars led him to the Motor City where he graduated from CCS in Transportation Design. He spent his early career at GM and ASC before becoming Lead Designer at Saleen where he penned the 2008 S5S Raptor supercar and 2010 Saleen S281. David then jumped from sports cars to sports equipment when he joined New Balance’s hockey and lacrosse brand, Warrior, where he lead the helmet design team. David has a strong ability to edit, communicate and execute concepts that connect on an emotional level while delivering real world solutions. His diverse background provides a wide perspective when tackling the vast array of design challenges experienced at Sundberg-Ferar. He stays active in the art community teaching design courses at CCS and has judged multiple times at the National Fine Arts Festival.

It’s not enough to have a good idea. In order to be successful, a product needs a value proposition to clearly answer the question “Why would someone be willing to purchase this product?” A value proposition is a clear statement that explains your product’s relevancy, quantified value, and unique differentiation. Communicating this persuasively is difficult though.

In this session you will learn to create a value proposition that answer the questions:

1. How does your product solve customers’ problems?
2. What specific benefits does your product deliver?
3. How is your product different from competing ones and why should someone buy it? 

A value proposition is a critical element of strategy, core to the business model, and the foundation from which your communication messages are created. The significance of the value proposition should not be underestimated and validating it with customers is a must-have. Getting feedback on your value proposition can help you avoid wasting time on ideas that won’t work – and that’s inVALUEable.

During this webcast, James Taylor will outline the value of predictive analytics and walk through the five steps you need to succeed, identifying key features you will need in a predictive analytic solution. Mark McNally will talk about some real-world customers and how the approach maps to their experience.

You will learn:

• How different kinds of predictions can empower your business
• What types of decisions can be improved with predictive analytics
• Core functionality required for a fully automated and collaborative predictive  analytics solution
• Deployment considerations
• Key factors in the “Build or Buy” decision for embedded predictive analytics capabilities

Join PDMA for a Dynamic and Informative Webcast!

Featuring Speaker Brian T. O'Neill, designer, advisor, and founder at Designing for Analytics

The Product Leader's Guide to Turning AI & Analytics Efforts Into Indispensable Human-Centered Data Products & Decision Support Solutions

Session Description:

In 2019, Gartner predicted 80%+ of analytics insights won't deliver outcomes through 2022 despite sizable tech investments and previous studies on these failure rates. While machine learning, AI, and advanced analytics remain in the "hype" cycle, data teams still struggle to design engaging, valuable decision support tools that customers love. Why? Solutions are too often data-first and human-second, obfuscating the real problems begging to be solved. Here are some design strategies product managers need to know.

About Brian T. O'Neill

Brian T. O'Neill is a designer, advisor, and founder of Designing for Analytics an independent consultancy which helps product leaders innovate by applying human-centered design to data science and analytics. For over 20 years, he has worked with companies including DELL/EMC, Tripadvisor, Fidelity, NetApp, MITRE, JP Morgan Chase, ETrade and numerous SAAS startups. Brian helps clients leverage human-centered design to create engaging, simple, and high-value decision support applications and data products. In addition to consulting, Brian is also an international speaker and trainer He has presented at multiple O'Reilly Strata conferences, Predictive Analytics World, the International Institute for Analytics Symposium, and on several data podcasts including IBM's Making Data Simple. Brian also authored the DFA Self-Assessment Guide, publishes a weekly Insights mailing list, and hosts his own podcast—Experiencing Data—which reveals the strategies that product, data science and analytics leaders are using to deliver valuable experiences around data. In 2018, Brian also joined the International Institute for Analytics' Expert Network as an advisor on human-centered design for data science and analytics.

A musician by training, Brian is also a professional percussionist in Boston. He tours internationally and has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and maybe your local tiki bar. Follow him on Twitter (@rhythmspice) and join his Insights mailing list.

During this webcast, Ameen Mirdamadi of Logi Analytics will share insights on integrating the UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) process into software development lifecycles. For example, agile software development doesn’t typically include a place for UX methods unless it’s actively set up with UI and UX in mind.

But for customers to find your application useful in their day-to-day lives, application teams must plan from the start to present information in easily understandable and visually appealing ways. If the application gets cluttered with unnecessary information or is not designed intuitively, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth to customers—who may stop using the application altogether.

Benjamin Gilad, Academy of Competitive Intelligence
Jay Nakagawa, Competitive Intelligence, Dell Technologies

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

An interactive session presenting the concept of "shapeshifting"- the skill underlying pressure-testing for your product strategy before you spend a lot of money.

“Shapeshifting” is the ability to predict what others will do by getting seriously “under their skins.”

In this session, you’ll get a rare opportunity to test your own innate talent of “shapeshifting” based on a short case and will be given a tool to develop it further throughout your career. Using this talent has enabled many product managers, brand directors, marketers and planners to design a winning product launch in a hotly contested market.

Registrants will be provided a short case to review before the event to prepare for the interactivity and discussion within the presentation.

Learning Objectives

• Learn of the true value of competitive intelligence in product planning and strategy – it’s not about information or data.
• Recognize the importance of seeking clues to market reaction before launch – avoid surprises and sharpen differences.
• Discover the value of intuitive judgements instead of discounting them; your experience has incredible value.
• Raise the probability of meeting goals in hotly contested markets
• Manage expectations based on true understanding of the competitive arena

Cost:

This PDMA Webcast is free to members and non-members.

About the Speakers

Benjamin Gilad, Academy of Competitive Intelligence

Former strategy professor at Rutgers University, founder and CEO of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence since 1999, author of 6 books including Business War Games (2008) and The Opposite of Noise (2022). The Academy developed the CIP™ certification for professionals and managers facing competitive pressures and has over 3,000 certified globally, with 87% from the Fortune 500 corporations.

Jay Nakagawa, Competitive Intelligence, Dell Technologies

Jay Nakagawa has been leading Dell Technologies' Competitive Intelligence for the past 10 years. For over 20 years, Jay had been a product manager creating winning product strategies in the IT industry with companies including Compuware, McDATA/Brocade, Sun Microsystems, and EMC. As a product manager, Jay understands the importance of understanding the competition and developing effective strategies. Jay has a B.S. from the University of Colorado Boulder, M.B.A. from Regis University, and has earned his CIP-I and CIP-II from the Academy of Competitive Intelligence (ACI).

How are companies using innovation to drive growth in spite of accelerating, disruptive change? During this webcast, Kevin Schwartz, a co-lead of PwC's Innovation management consulting practice, will share insights based on PwC's extensive industry survey of innovation practices released in late 2013.

Questions that will be addressed during this webcast:

• How do we know where to start for our company?
• How do we drive change and overcome cultural inertia?
• How do we measure success in radical and new business model innovation?

Kevin shares his perspective on the characteristics of successful innovation at the corporate level and emerging new models of innovation, including new business models, solutions, services, and products.

Featuring Speaker: Jana Axline, Founder, Project Genetics

Session Description:

One of the most expensive situations organizations face are failing projects. Understanding techniques to get an off-course project headed the right direction is critical before it adversely impacts the expected outcomes. In this energetic session, Jana teaches valuable critical-thinking and problem-assessment skills, as well as techniques to build executable strategies that allow an organization to course-correct before it’s too late.

Attendees will learn:

• The best way to communicate with frustrated stakeholders and sponsors.
• Effective questioning to find the true problem areas.
• How to be a champion for your project and team, revitalizing their resolve.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Jana Axline

Founder, Project Genetics

Connect with Jana via LinkedIn

Jana is a focused leader who achieves ambitious results. Adept at moving between big picture and small details, she is able to help clients execute the right initiatives to implementation, maximizing value to the organization. Her expertise stems from more than 20 years of experience in leadership and ten years in project and portfolio. Jana is the founder of Project Genetics, a project delivery consulting firm, and is immediate past president of the Project Management Institute Mile High Chapter. She is an active PMP, ACP, CSP-SM, and Scaled Agilist and has a Master of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Colorado.

Featuring Speaker: Scott Propp, Implementation Strategist and Founder of Dentro Consulting, LLC 

Session Description:

A year into the pandemic, it’s painfully clear that our teams are distracted, discouraged and at risk of being burnt out. With the ongoing fatigue and distraction of the pandemic, it can be very challenging for product teams to know what are the right products, where do we make our investments and how can we contribute to the bottom line.

In this session, Scott will introduce you to a client-tested framework that will help you accurately assess your current situation and zero in on the precise next steps that will have the most powerful effect on your firm’s future growth and vitality.

Drawing on experience as a former Fortune 100 executive and leader who’s worked in 12 business models across 22 countries, Scott will show you how to:

• Gain clarity on the specific ways the chaos of 2020 has affected your team
• Understand the three potential paths the pandemic has created - and which one your organization is on and how that impacts your next steps
• Understand the three levers needed to expedite progress on your strategic path
• Identify the X factors to accurately diagnose your current situation

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Scott Propp

Scott Propp, Implementation Strategist and Founder of Dentro Consulting, LLC

Scott helps executives and their teams create leveraged direction, actionable confidence and internal clarity. Scott lives at the intersection of strategy and implementation – providing unique and powerful insights that equip firms to not only plan, but execute.

A former Fortune 100 technology and operations executive, Scott has deep expertise in functions as diverse as R&D and sales and has successfully led large-scale “industry first” projects in 22 different countries using 12 proprietary business models. Scott’s unique business background has provided diverse hands-on P&L accountable experiences in leading design, advanced manufacturing and international operations.

As an advisor and strategist, he helps leaders in complex firms to successfully implement their strategy by using a client-tested, applied model that integrates transformative projects, unstoppable teams and customized plans.

Scott’s academic background includes graduate-level degrees in engineering and business, as well as post-graduate executive training at the Kellogg School of Management and Harvard University

Mike Hyzy, Inspire 11

** Attending a PDMA webcast earns one professional development credit for NPDP certified attendees. 

Session Description:

As product managers and leaders, we are relied upon and expected to develop new ideas that break barriers and support the business plans for the companies we build products for. We are also full-time firefighters, putting out the blazes and using critical thinking skills to solve problems.

In this webinar, Mike will show you how to use design thinking frameworks to drive innovative product ideas and solve your most pressing problems. Progressive work isn't done in a silo. Review tools and methods to use design thinking principles to strengthen your relationship with cross-functional teams and get results.

Learning Objectives

• Identify design thinking practices for product professionals and where to find more information.
• Develop skills in the art of running workshops and identify their importance.
• Demonstrate how to create and facilitate a design thinking workshop.
• Review how to incorporate design thinking principles in your everyday job as a product professional.

Cost:

This PDMA Webcast is free to members and non-members.

About the Speaker

Mike Hyzy, Inspire 11

Mike Hyzy is a highly experienced product strategist and management consultant with a proven track record of delivering results. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills, guiding cross-functional teams to successful product launches and driving growth for his clients. With a deep understanding of the product development landscape, Mike is known for his ability to develop and execute effective product strategies, bringing innovative products to market. Mike holds many key certifications, including a NPDP certification from the Product Development and Management Association, a CSPO certification from the Scrum Alliance, and a Foresight Practitioner certification from the Institute for the Future. He is currently writing a book on gamification for product teams to be published in the fall of 2023.

During this webcast, Gerry Katz will explore new ways to think about “value” that, hopefully, will broaden individuals' approach to finding and creating it.

The terms “Value Creation”, “Value Added”, and “Customer Value” have been around for a long time as a general business goal and as a description of why customers choose certain products and services and are often willing to pay a premium for them.  Most people think of “value” as a financial term that is used primarily to drive pricing decisions.  But VOC advocates think that such a definition is putting the cart before the horse.  First we need to figure out what creates value in a given category.

In this fast-paced webinar, product development guru Gerry Katz will offer a somewhat different definition of “value” and will discuss the role of VOC in creating value.  Finally, he’ll offer a host of examples where the “value” was found in unexpected places.

Presentation Outline:

1. The definition of “Value” and “Value Creation”
2. The definition of Voice of the Customer and how to go about hearing / observing it
3. The role of Voice of the Customer in creating value
4. Examples of the many different ways in which value can be created, along with several real-world cases

Learning Objectives:

1. To describe various ways of thinking about “value”.
2. To discuss how Voice of the Customer is used in the creation of value.
3. To offer examples of the many different ways in which value can be created.

Featuring Speaker: Dan Adams - Founder and President, The AIM Institute

Session Description:

Dan Adams of the AIM Institute has taught tens of thousands how to interview customers in-person and through web-conferences. Because of today’s travel restrictions, AIM has taken virtual VOC (VVOC) methods to the next level… so you can too! You’ll learn the 10 advantages of Virtual VOC… and 8 tips for becoming a VVOC pro. Use these difficult times to build your skills and gain customer insights to lower NPD commercial risk. Participants will receive a copy of AIM’s new white paper, Virtual VOC.

About Dan Adams

Founder and President, The AIM Institute

Dan Adams is the Founder and President of The AIM Institute, and author of New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth. He is a chemical engineer and holder of many patents and innovation awards, including a listing in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. One of the foremost experts in B2B innovation, Dan has taught B2B professionals in every region of the world in hundreds of workshops. An award-winning speaker, he has lectured at Wharton’s Executive MBA program and other North American & European universities, and is a popular industry keynote speaker.

Featuring Speaker: Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, President, Global NP Solutions, LLC

Session Description:

Is your innovation system failing you?  Waterfall and Agile processes leave much to be desired.  Wagile Innovation engages your customers and improves team collaboration.

Do your new products launch with mediocre market reception?  If so, your innovation process might be to blame.  Traditional waterfall processes become bureaucratic while Agile systems have not delivered on their promises, either.  New product development fails due to poor product designs and misunderstanding of the markets.

Enter “Wagile” New Product Development.  Wagile is a hybrid product development process that engages customers throughout the product design cycle while ensuring project execution meets internal requirements for scope, schedule, and budget.  Implementing wagile leads to increased collaboration between the project team and potential customers as well as reducing time-to-market.  All these factors result in higher success rates for your innovation system, enhanced profitability, and greater recognition.

In this session, you will learn how to implement a wagile product development process in your organization quickly and easily.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify appropriate innovation processes
• Learn new ways to engage customers throughout the development cycle
• Enhance team collaboration leading to faster market launches

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Teresa Jurgens-Kowal

President, Global NP Solutions, LLC

Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is passionate about innovation.  She founded Global NP Solutions in 2009 to help individuals and organizations learn, adopt, transform, and sustain innovation.  Teresa facilitates best practices training for executives, managers, and teams to improve innovation performance using a variety of hands-on work style assessments and customized tools.  Teresa frequently presents keynotes and breakouts locally and nationally on her favorite topics of innovation, design thinking, and product development.  She recently published a chapter on leading virtual teams for innovation projects with the Virtual Team Model (VTM) (October 2018, Leveraging Constraints for Innovation) and just released The Innovation ANSWER Book, a comprehensive guide to building innovation leadership (October 2019).  She is the co-editor of the PDMA Body of Knowledge, 2^nd edition. 

Teresa has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and an MBA from West Texas A&M University.  In addition to New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification with the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), she is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) with the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and a licensed Professional Engineer (State of Louisiana).

Visit Teresa's LinkedIn profile to learn more!

Company: Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
Year: 2010

Join product development guru Gerry Katz as he walks through some of the key design considerations for successful idea generation, as well as some of the latest research into this thorny and sometimes controversial area.

Featuring Speaker: Rachel Rapoza, Product Marketing Manager, Ultimate Kronos Group

Session Description:

A lot of B2B companies have great products, but unfortunately, a lot of companies also struggle to effectively communicate the value of their products - or worst, they sound like everyone else. For some, great product messaging and positioning may seem elusive, however, this session will demonstrate that messaging and positioning is actually a science, not an art. Attendees will learn about common messaging and positioning mistakes, how to fix them, and tips for developing strong messaging and positioning to help your product stand out.

Rates:

Members: Free
Non-Members: $10

About Rachel Rapoza

Product Marketing Manager, Ultimate Kronos Group

Rachel Rapoza has over a decade of marketing experience at small start-ups, SMBs, and enterprise technology companies. She currently serves as a product marketing manager for Ultimate Kronos Group where she is responsible for developing messaging and positioning, creating go-to-market strategies, and driving awareness for their HR and payroll solutions. As a graduate from Hamilton College with a degree in Classical Languages, her academic background compliments her career experience - giving her a unique perspective on product messaging and positioning. Throughout her career she's been a thought leader in marketing topics as well as HR and payroll topics and has been a presenter and contributor at various industry conferences and publications including CIO, TLNT, Workspan, and Paytech. Outside of work, she is a mentor and ambassador for OutInTech, a non-profit organization that unites the LGBTQ+ tech community.