Create Kano Surveys for Free on KanoSurvey.com

Posted on May 15, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

kano-analysisDr. Noriaki Kano’s customer satisfaction model revolutionized the science of quality and gave a voice to the abstract concepts behind what draws customers to specific product offerings. The heart of Dr. Kano’s methodology was his customer survey designs and how to plot responses in a way that uncovered what customers truly care about with a degree of specificity that exposed the product features that trigger customers to choose one product or feature set over a competitive offering.

Created in 2009 by Agile Coach, Sergei Dmitrev, kanosurvey.com is a free website (registration required, though) that can guide you through templates to create your own Kano surveys.  While this is intended for software developers, it should work with any types of product features you wish to populate the survey with.  Even if you don’t or can’t use the survey for your specific project, it can be a valuable exercise in general Kano survey design if you are just starting out with employing these methods.

You can also learn more about employing the Kano method and other proven complementary VOC analysis tools at MRT’s upcoming workshop: Between the Lines: Turning Customer Input into Customer Insights with Wayne Mackey, August 6-7, 2013 in Boston.

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Advanced Project Management for NPD – Top 4 Concerns of Webinar Participants

Posted on May 13, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

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Below are some quick insights from a survey recently conducted in conjunction with our upcoming webinar on May 22, 2013, “Advanced Project Management for Product Development: Applying Lean and Agile Principles to Managing Partners” led by John Carter of TCGen, Inc.

Webinar registrants were asked to rate the following 8 categories on a scale of 1 (not interested) to 5 (highly interested).  The average rating for each category appears in parentheses:

  • Product Development / Project Management Metrics (4.53)
  • Agile Development Techniques (4.15)
  • Culture & Communication (4.15)
  • Risk Management (4.00)
  • Managing Distributed Teams (3.97)
  • Innovation & Ideation (3.71)
  • Open Innovation & Social Technologies (3.69)
  • Lean Engineering Methods (3.65)

Approximately 100 participants were surveyed with a 34% response rate.

The top concern is hardly surprising, as methods for measuring performance seem to be an evergreen issue for every business function.  As a company evolves, so does it’s leadership and corporate priorities, which can make the focus of a business’ metrics rather fluid and unstable.  There is often much internal disagreement about what should be measured and how to measure things accurately, which can lead to troublesome misalignment, especially in engineering-heavy environments.

The bottom two issues were somewhat surprising.  One could have easily assumed that “Open Innovation and Social Technologies” would be of higher interest considering their high profile and mindshare in business and overall society.  Similarly, “Lean Engineering” has historically been a highly popular subject area and is rather similar to “Agile” that took a top spot, which could signify that Lean has reached a maturity level or there could be some dissatisfaction with the lean methods that have been in practice for quite a number of years now.

Please note that these are observations and not scientifically backed conclusions.

This webinar is part four of a five-part series on the skills, tools and methods that compose the “Advanced Project Management” discipline.   The May 22nd session will provide an introduction to the key concepts and provide practical, tools-based knowledge on managing partnerships and collaborative innovation.

Related Links:

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CoDev, Innovation Process, Lean Product Development, Management Techniques, Open Innovation, Product Design, Roadmapping, Technology Strategy , , , ,

GGI R&D survey focuses on “Organic R&D,” Open Innovation & IP and Corp. Metrics

Posted on May 3, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

surveyGoldense Group, Inc. (GGI), a Massachusetts-based market research and consulting firm specializing in R&D/Product Development, has just announced its latest survey on industry innovation practices.

Over the past 15 years, GGI’s R&D surveys have provided a wealth of insight into the direction and initiatives at R&D organizations across the globe. These surveys are carefully constructed and thoughtfully analyzed by experienced R&D practitioners and are designed to capture meaningful insights into what R&D practitioners can expect in the coming years.

The focus of this year’s research is on Organic R&D-Product Development, Open Innovation, Intellectual Property, & CXO Corporate Metrics. The research is aimed at culling-out industry’s current deployment and utilization of selected innovation and intellectual property strategies, processes, practices, techniques, and metrics.

The questionnaire is intended for manufacturing companies, R&D labs, and Contract Design/Development companies that are actively creating and commercializing new products. Responses from industry service and advisory firms will not be accepted.

All responses will be kept strictly confidential. No data is shared with any identifiable information to a person or to a company. The questionnaire has been designed to minimize the need for permissions or approvals from your company in order to participate.  On average, it should take approximately 30-35 minutes to complete.

All research participants will receive a comprehensive document, complete with text and graphs, that summarizes each question across the population of respondents.

If you would like to participate or get additional information, please contact Alex Cooper at alex@roundtable.com or call 781-891-8080.

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Video: The companies & statistics behind many Open Innovation successes

Posted on May 1, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0


Filled with statistics and examples, this nifty video by Hyve AG, a German-based innovation company, provides a quick and highly informative introduction to Open Innovation.  In approximately 7 minutes, this video provides numerous case examples of successful co-development projects at many different companies and industries.  Throughout these case studies, they have also sprinkled a healthy dose of statistical information that helps illustrate and emphasize the benefits and real world results that companies are achieving by leveraging communities around the Internet as well as their own lead user customers.

These types of videos remind me of the short film strips they used to show us in elementary school, quick, to the point, and with enough production value to keep your attention.

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CoDev, Innovation Process, Management Techniques, Open Innovation

How to Conduct Good Customer Visits – 16 Tips

Posted on April 25, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

visitorVisiting customers can be exciting, frightening, inspirational or even depressing. Every once in a while you might hit upon that one customer that criticizes you honestly, but constructively, that tells you both the whats AND the whys, and that truly represents an accurate common denominator of your product’s users.  But they are typically few and far between.  So being prepared to maximize the scant time you’re able to spend with ANY customers is a necessity to make the trip worthwhile.

Below is a link to an article written by Edward McQuarrie, author of the seminal book on the subject, aptly titled Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus.

In the article, How to Conduct Good Customer Visits, Dr. McQuarrie outlines 16 fundamental tips for how to prepare and conduct yourself.  He answers questions such as:

  • How many and what profile of customer should you target?
  • How much of your staff and which functions should participate?
  • How should you structure the visit and what type of questions should you ask?
  • What are the things you should do after the visit to best capture what you’ve learned?

To download the article, click here.

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Putting Open Innovation on the Map

Posted on April 24, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

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If you Want to Find an OI platform to Get and Manage, here’s a nifty, albeit incomplete, interactive map graphic created by the students at Heilbron University in Germany.  The map is designed to help people find OI and crowdsourcing platforms in any part of the world through a virtual map, a very fancy word for what seems like just a directory.  Hovering over the dots on the map will call up a box with a brief description of the platform provider and a link to respective websites.

The map can be filtered by business and service type and currently contains approximately 40-50 entries.  We noticed quite a few platforms missing, but we’re not sure how long this has been around and whether or not it is being actively updated.  Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any mechanism for suggesting new entries.  It is also interesting to see where OI services are concentrated, we know US and Europe are the hotbeds, but we’re interested to see if the other parts of the world will fill in at some point in the future.

To see the map, click on the image above or click right here.

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CoDev, Innovation Process, Management Techniques, Open Innovation , , ,

Beyond the GANNT chart – Advanced Project Management for NPD

Posted on April 23, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

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Management fads may come and go, but the one that outlasts them all is sound project management.  While it’s not nearly as sexy-sounding as “six sigma,” when’s the last time you heard someone boast about their black belt?  Coordinating the myriad of complex disciplines (and their respective complex people!) to bring a product to market remains a singular challenge above all others.

The complexity surrounding today’s NPD projects seems compounded by two major factors: 1) the expanding scope of a product’s embedded technology (e.g. software, wireless connectivity); and 2) the expanding scope of participating stakeholders (e.g. open innovation, supplier partnerships, crowdsourcing).  Long gone are the days of command and control, co-location of team members and “dumb” (unconnected and software-disabled) products.

To manage these new realities, some companies are having success by applying principles from lean manufacturing, agile software development and even social networking to R&D and NPD projects.  Using specific tools from each discipline, such as Cadence, Flow and Pull from manufacturing, and Burn Down Charts, Waterfall and Sprints from software development, one can create a toolbox that manages all the new project risks that have surfaced over the years while also exposing leverage points that can improve efficiency and market performance.  And by employing modern social networking media, one can effectively manage partners and suppliers as well as communicate efficiently with project teams.

Want to learn more about the latest in Advanced Project Management?

Join us on May 22, 2013 for a complimentary webinar, “Advanced Project Management for Product Development: Applying Lean and Agile Principles to Managing Partners” led by John Carter of TCGen, Inc.  This webinar is the part four of a five-part series on the skills, tools and methods that compose the “Advanced Project Management” discipline.   The May 22nd session will provide an introduction to the key concepts and provide practical, tools-based knowledge on managing partnerships and collaborative innovation.

Clarification:  This webinar will not be discussing “wearable white boards”.

Related Links:

CoDev, Innovation Process, Lean Product Development, Management Techniques, Open Innovation, Product Design, Roadmapping, Technology Strategy , , , ,

Combining Best Practices for Next Generation R&D Management

Posted on April 18, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

“Best Practice” is, of course, a super Dilbert-y phrase and one that often elicits either admiration or contempt.  The danger of best practices comes when they are followed blindly, verbatim and merely copy-catted with the hope of someone else’s results.  The beauty of best practices comes in when they are applied with consideration of context and adjustments made wherever necessary to custom-fit.  I’m sure every company has examples of both in their history, including yours and mine.

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R&D Managers are often inundated with “best practices” and almost never have enough time to evaluate them, let alone incorporate them into their daily business of generating innovation, technology and profits for the company.  Today’s stewards of R&D need a lightning fast method to expose themselves to the difference-making processes available to them and shown clear examples of the path between implementation and results.

An upcoming one-day program June 19, 2013 in Alexandria, VA, from Management Roundtable and Knowledge Foundation, uses over 30 years of experience to separate the wheat from the chaff and present R&D managers with best practices that have been tested across numerous companies and industries over many years in a format that will efficiently educate you on the latest and best tools finding success today.

The root of this program will focus on the following areas and will be covered by leading experts of their respective fields from industry, academia and consulting:

  • Product & Technology Roadmapping
  • Collaborative and Open Innovation
  • Agile and Lean Development Methods

Faculty for this event will include in-depth case studies from companies such as Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Intel, FedEx and MeadWestVaco.

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CoDev, Innovation Process, Lean Product Development, Management Techniques, Open Innovation, Roadmapping, Technology Strategy , , , , ,

WFGM Framework – A Basic Open Innovation Best Practice

Posted on April 16, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

wantfindgetmanageThe “Want, Find, Get, Manage (WFGM)” model is one of the most adopted conceptual frameworks for open innovation.  This is definitely one of the places new people should start when trying to educate themselves on the subject and provides a very easily understood way to compartmentalize the key concepts of managing Open Innovation.

Gene Slowinski, author of The Strongest Link and Reinventing Corporate Growth, outlines this model very clearly in an article on his website, “Open Innovation and Alliances – “Good Practices” in OI“.

Here’s an excerpt of the article overview:

OVERVIEW
Open Innovation (OI) has become a mainstream organizational process. Firms are establishing OI groups, allocating budgets, and measuring results. In this article, we identify twelve “good practices” associated with high quality Open Innovation. In our experience, these practices are key inputs to the firm’s OI system, leading to high quality OI results when effectively executed. The goal of this article is to help management build the practices into their OI system and make continuous improvements in their OI processes.

Gene Slowinski is the lead instructor for MRT’s popular workshop:
Open Innovation Master Class – June 20, 2013 in Chicago

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CoDev, Innovation Process, Management Techniques, Open Innovation , , ,

NASA Roadmaps the Future of Space Travel Technology

Posted on April 9, 2013 by greggtong | Permalink 0

NASA_Roadmap You can never have enough examples of product and technology roadmaps. 

Over a half century removed from man’s first forays into outer space, it still boggles the mind that humans were able to harvest the technological might to break the atmosphere of our planet and also set foot on our moon.  And we did it all without Six Sigma black belt programs!

When you consider the vast amount of engineering resources required to organize, plan, design, manufacture and employ vehicles capable of space travel, it’s even more impressive to view the technology roadmaps that help NASA meet their mission critical objectives.  On top of that, things have gotten infinitely more complex since we primarily used primate and canine pilots, things like nanotechnology, robotics and advanced communication systems.

The good folks at NASA have been kind enough to spend some of their funding to help us tax-paying citizens understand the full scope of what’s involved in developing a space travel program.  The following links will take you to several roadmapping resources, including a nifty interactive infographic, that may help companies learn how to make such complex systems more visually organized.

Links:

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