New Product Development: Product Managers play a key role in evaluating & launching new products

Managing existing product portfolios is relatively easy than launching new products. However, as a product manager it’s vital to focus on future along with managing the current expectations. Normally, product managers are under pressure to ship the products on time meet the current customer demands/expectations and thus cannot devote time and energy on new ideas. Innovative ideas are muddled by what occurs in the present.

Strategic investments and not incremental innovations lead to great products. Gary Hamel’s landmark book highlights the importance of innovation not as a buzzword but a philosophy that every company needs to follow to create a niche market for their products. Absolute must read for Product Managers. The blog highlights how product manager contribute to the NPD process. Have highlighted the high level process below.

Step 1: Define your vision
Step 2: Define product strategy
Step 3: Ideation
Step 4: Define your business case
Step5: Define the project operating plan
Step 6: Product launch

One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.

Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.

Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:

One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.

Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.

Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:

Customer Visits (Most Important)/Lead User studies: Coordinate customer visits to gather ideas from your lead users and not the representative users. Lead users are smart, are aware of the business, products, industry & technical trends and have ideas. It’s important to work with smart people inside and outside the company if you have to focus on creating innovative solutions.

Talk to your sales: Relationship with folks who sell the product is important. They are closest to your customers.

Brainstorming sessions with R&D and cross functional groups: As stated above…its important to work with smart people. Assemble a team with cross functional group participation and setup a whiteboard discussion. Don’t forget to include your support team. Unfortunately, many IT companies do not involve support in the product development process. During the session highlight the high level use cases, analogies, metaphors…anything that gets the discussion going and helps generate ideas. At times, this functional group could be from a different product unit. Cross – pollination from one product to another can lead to new products/newer selling channels.

Competitive studies: It’s easy to learn about third party products. There are quite a few forums to gather this data.

Past success: Established products have this luxury. Learn from your past

Market Research : Technical forums, social networking groups, focus groups, seminars etc: I’d categorize everything else that you read/explore as a vital step that is essential