PDMA Body of Knowledge: Product Innovation Management Insights #3
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The kHUB Curator Team members have each been assigned a BoK section to own. This includes seeking, editing and sharing content related to that section. The curators are also sharing their perspective of various sub-sections of their chapter and contributing personal examples, experience, or related articles corresponding to the subject matter.
Chapter 7 Insights – Product Innovation Management
The Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for Product Innovation are mainly Non-Product things!
How many times you’ve tried to innovate new features for your product to lead the game but the customer didn’t appreciate it? Well, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the product innovation game has certain rules. These rules are measured with certain critical success factors. Body of Knowledge tells us some interesting factors that most of them are not directly related to the product itself. In my opinion, I’d classify Product Innovation’s CSFs into the following:
PDMA’s Body of Knowledge (2nd edition) has cited (Kahn, 2013) in chapter 7 for some interesting factors to product innovation success:
- Unique, superior products; the real innovation pays off. Customers in each industry are constantly looking for new superior products. No matter how much it costs, they will find a way to acquire it.
- Strong market orientation; No matter how unique your product is;, you are wasting your time and money if you don’t plan the targeted market/segment correctly. Strong market orientation can accelerate the product innovation success no matter how narrow your targeted market.
- Pre-development homework; Before committing resources, a proper investigation shall be considered on the business side (ROI, Voice of Customer, ..etc).
- Sharp, early, and stable product definition; Time-to-market is another factor for success. Having a well-defined and early positioned product can make the real positioning for your product, and it can be a trendsetter.
- Planning and resourcing the launch; Imagining an amazing cook without being properly served! This is what happens when planning the product launch is messed up.
- Speed; Time-to-market is the classic success factor for product innovation. All features can be done over time, but the faster is the winner!
From the practitioner’s point of view, we can find Accenture (2016) talked about the winning formula in their report of Five Ways to Win with Digital Platforms to highlight that we need both layers of the platform ecosystem (for your products) and the Enabling Environment (including all involved stakeholders).
Another perspective from MIT’s researchers Eppinger and Chitkara (2006) where they mentioned some other key success factors such as: lower costs, improved process, global growth, and technology access).
As we can see, the success of product innovation rely on diversified aspects that are not necessarily core-product features. Understanding this concept may enable so many products and accelerate the innovation management process within the organization.
Now you can decide the tracks you need to invest your efforts across to come up with unique and successful product innovation environment.
About the Author
Ahmed Ragab is an award-winning digital transformation practice leader in UK(2016) and the author of The Butterfly Organization (Amazon). As a recognized speaker and thought leader in the MENA region, Eng. Ragab has delivered various digital transformation & innovation consulting engagements over the past 12+ years. With his Master’s studies of Digital Transformation at the University of Hull and his concentration on Smart Governments and IoT, Ahmed is trying to enable business leaders through insightful articles and practitioners’ point of view. Currently, he is leading Government Digital Transformation Consulting Practice at DataStars Co. with a vertical focus on Products & Services Development.
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