What is the best way to balance innovation goals in your portfolio?

Innovation is your secret weapon to keep your business fresh and ahead. It's about thinking outside the box to make things better for your customers. Sure, it's tricky – trends change and new tech keeps coming. But stay focused on what your customers really need and how you can deliver it uniquely. That's how you turn challenges into your biggest wins.

Use a balanced scorecard that includes financial metrics, customer satisfaction, internal business processes, and learning and growth. This helps ensure that innovation is not just about revenue but also about customer value, process improvement, and organizational knowledge.

Embrace innovation as the lifeblood of your portfolio, recognizing that it not only fuels growth but also enhances adaptability in dynamic markets. Foster a culture that encourages experimentation and learning, understanding that failure is often a stepping stone towards groundbreaking discoveries and market differentiation. Allocate dedicated resources to innovation projects, ensuring they receive the attention and support needed to flourish, even in the face of short-term uncertainties. Regularly evaluate the success of innovation initiatives, adjusting strategies based on insights gained, and continuously realigning your portfolio to maintain a harmonious blend of stability and pioneering endeavors.

Innovation is like building a fire – fresh ideas are the logs, and customer needs are the sparks. When they meet, you get that vital warmth, that competitive edge. You keep customers happy, costs down, quality up, and growth blazing. But it's not all sunshine and marshmallows. Innovation can be a tricky beast, unpredictable and demanding. Customer desires shift like desert winds, technology races ahead, and budgets aren't bottomless pits. That's why you need a map, a clear vision, and a strategy to manage your "innovation portfolio" – like tending a fire, feeding the right sparks at the right time. So, unleash your inner innovator, embrace the risks, and watch your business rise like a phoenix, fueled by the flames of creative solutions.

tting Unrealistic Expectations: Mistake: Promising outcomes or benefits that cannot be realistically achieved. Why it's a problem: Unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointment, mistrust, and a lack of stakeholder buy-in. Neglecting Relationship Building: Mistake: Focusing solely on the transactional aspects of stakeholder engagement without building relationships. Why it's a problem: Strong relationships foster collaboration and increase the likelihood of successful stakeholder alignment.

Think of an innovation portfolio like a toolbox for future success. It holds various projects, big and small, aiming to unlock new value through fresh ideas. These range from minor tweaks to complete game-changers, each with its own strengths and quirks. Some polish existing offerings, while others forge entire new paths. No matter the pace, they all fall into "when" buckets – quick fixes, steady improvements, or moonshot leaps. This mix keeps your company nimble, tackling everyday needs while also planting seeds for tomorrow's growth. It's all about balancing the familiar with the daring, ensuring both smooth sailing and the potential for revolutionary breakthroughs.

An innovation portfolio is like a collection of different bets a company makes to stay ahead. Imagine a tech company managing projects like upgrading smartphones, creating new wearable devices, focusing on sustainability, and integrating AI. Each project is a unique opportunity. If one idea doesn't work out, others might succeed, ensuring the company stays competitive and can adapt to changing trends in technology and consumer preferences. Mainly two types of innovations companies do in products. 1. incremental innovation 2. New concept innovation.

An innovation portfolio refers to a strategic collection of projects, initiatives, or ideas that an organization manages to foster and drive innovation. Similar to a financial portfolio, it involves diversifying investments across various innovation endeavors, balancing risk and return. This approach helps organizations allocate resources effectively, explore different types of innovations, and maximize the potential for long-term success and growth. The goal is to maintain a healthy mix of incremental improvements, breakthrough innovations, and transformative projects within the portfolio.

To effectively balance innovation goals in your portfolio, it’s crucial to strategically align the timing of product launches with your organisation’s capacity for commercialisation. This alignment ensures that each innovation is launched at a time when your organisation is fully prepared to maximise its market impact. Equally important is maintaining a balanced portfolio of low-risk & high-reward projects. This balance allows you to explore groundbreaking ideas while mitigating potential setbacks, ensuring a steady flow of successful innovations and maintaining a competitive edge in the market. Through harmonising launch timing with organisational readiness & balancing risk and reward it’s possible to sustain continuous innovation.

Think of it as a strategic collection of initiatives, projects, and ideas aimed at fostering innovation within a company. It includes a diverse range of innovation efforts, such as incremental improvements, breakthrough innovations, and disruptive projects.

I'm a fan of the 70-20-10 rule for balancing your innovation portfolio. 70% of effort or capacity goes to improving an existing product. Using human-centered design methods can make it easy to generate and prioritize this backlog. 20% of capacity goes toward big bets. These might be projects with a longer horizon for delivery. Be sure to set incremental milestones to assess the progress of the potential impact. Lastly, 10% is focused on transformational work that is high risk but also high reward. Be sure to have clear outcomes in mind and validate feasibility quickly. Don't be afraid to shelve things and move on. Be sure teams have the clarity and support to hold these three areas in tension and be productive in each space.

Balancing innovation goals from a B2B SaaS product involves finding the right blend of technological advancements with customer needs, business objective and market trends in a 40-40-20 ratio. Here are some ways to achieve balance in one’s innovation portfolio when first starting off: 1. Strategic roadmap planning- Develop a strategic roadmap that outlines a mix of incremental innovations, explore new opportunities and addressing technical debts 2. Prioritise based on impact 3. Align business objectives to overall vision. 4. Align innovation to compliance and security aspect addressing concerns of enterprise customers.

Innovating in your portfolio as a new product manager is crucial for showcasing forward-thinking and adaptability. Balance innovation with your current role by first assessing your job's demands, then allocating specific times for creative projects. Embrace small-scale innovations that align with your responsibilities and collaborate with colleagues for fresh insights. Keep abreast of industry trends through continual learning. For example, a product manager could enhance an existing software by integrating a new AI feature, demonstrating their ability to innovate while managing core duties. This approach to innovation, blending strategic planning and teamwork, is essential for impactful and manageable change.

Innovation doesn't occur often without deliberate efforts to make it happen. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that efforts are intentionally put in to foster innovation. One approach is to incorporate dedicated tasks during the sprint for research or experimenting with something new. A possible ratio could be 80:20 or 90:10, depending on the development timeline you have. These areas should extend beyond development approaches or solutions, also encompassing other aspects such as productivity tools

It's important to know where your product already sits in the marketplace and where in the product lifecycle it sits. Growth/Maturity:If you already have a strong customer base and decent market share this calculation is a good starting point. Introduction: If you are a new startup you should be focussed on radical or disruptive innovation as a rule (why else create a product if someone else already does it better?). Decline: Products that are losing market share rapidly and are in the decline phase of the product lifecycle then again the innovation portfolio should be shifted towards radical or disruptive innovation as you don't have as much to lose.

Measuring innovation in your product portfolio requires understanding that not all innovations will be direct product additions, but they're still valuable. Focus on what the team learns from each innovative effort. Ask: Did it reveal what doesn't work? Inform future strategies? Keep us updated on trends? Effective retrospectives are key. Ensure innovation drives team growth and knowledge, rather than become an aimless distraction.

As a PM, I measure my innovative products with what we are building, why we are building them, and the impact of the product.

In evaluating innovation portfolios, it's crucial to distinguish between metrics for incremental and transformative projects. Established products often rely on quantitative metrics for assessment. In contrast, early-stage, innovative products may benefit more from qualitative metrics. This differentiation is essential in accurately gauging the progress and impact of diverse innovation initiatives, ensuring that each project's unique nature and development stage are properly considered in the evaluation process.

Some metrics to consider include: Return on Investment (ROI): Assess the financial returns generated by each innovation project relative to its initial investment. Time to Market: Measure how quickly innovations move from ideation to market launch, ensuring timely responses to market changes. Customer Adoption Rates: Track the rate at which customers adopt and engage with new features or products resulting from innovation initiatives. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Use customer feedback and satisfaction scores to gauge how well innovations meet customer expectations.

The balanced scorecard, a key recommendation, echoes Kaplan and Norton's "The Balanced Scorecard." Applying financial, customer, process, and learning perspectives mirrors the comprehensive approach advocated in book. Moreover, a portfolio dashboard, akin to digital transformation frameworks, aids visualization. Reflecting on successful implementations, such as Amazon's AWS dashboard, which facilitates real-time monitoring, optimizing resource allocation dynamically. Emphasizing importance of feedback loop resonates with my experience launching lending products. Customer and stakeholder input is invaluable. Applying methodologies from "Lean Analytics" by Alistair Croll & Ben Yoskovitz reinforces the iterative, data-driven approach.

By systematically addressing these aspects, organizations can enhance the overall performance and impact of their innovation portfolios, ensuring they remain dynamic, aligned with strategic objectives, and capable of driving sustainable growth.

In my experience, fostering innovation throughout the Agile product development lifecycle is pivotal for enhancing the innovation portfolio. By consistently questioning the "why" at every stage, from initial requirement collection to sprint planning, we cultivate a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement. This approach ensures that each step is purposeful, aligning with the overarching goals and maximising business value. Embracing innovation from the outset allows for the identification of novel solutions and the incorporation of valuable feedback, creating a dynamic and adaptive development process. Through this iterative cycle, we not only meet immediate needs but also improve our innovation portfolio.

In the fintech arena, Apple Pay's iterative evolution, akin to agile methodologies, reflects the essence of regular portfolio reviews. Amazon Web Services exemplifies portfolio optimization, systematically scoring and modeling its extensive offerings. Square's strategic diversification, from point-of-sale to cryptocurrency, echoes the value of spreading resources, reducing dependency, and enhancing resilience. Implementing these insights demands a cultural commitment to continuous improvement, adapting strategies inspired by real-world successes in the dynamic landscape of fintech.

Diversification can be beneficial but this runs the risk of swallowing up valuable resources. As with almost everything in Product Management prioritization and understanding the outcomes your customers are trying to achieve are key. You can be radical in your innovation while still being focused on solving the same problems for your customers, just better. Your innovation portfolio should be constantly weighed against customer needs. If an approach is found to not be a good fit with your customers, remove it and focus on something else.

Establish a dynamic portfolio strategy that allocates resources proportionally to both high-risk, high-reward innovative projects and more stable, incremental advancements. Foster a culture of experimentation within your team, encouraging cross-functional collaboration and empowering employees to explore creative solutions that align with broader innovation goals. Implement a continuous feedback loop, regularly evaluating project performance against key innovation metrics and adjusting resource allocation based on real-time insights. Embrace a long-term vision while staying agile, allowing your portfolio to evolve and pivot as market trends, technological advancements, and customer needs shift.

Innovation propels products into the future, captivates users, and keeps the business ahead. But in this pursuit, avoid pitfalls like (a) Rushing to Market: A rushed low quality product launch can jeopardize success, (b) Alignment with the overall product strategy: Misalignment can lead to products that don't resonate with the target audience, miss market demands, or dilute the brand's identity.

Innovation is not limited to products or services alone; it can take many forms to help businesses grow and succeed by uniquely addressing customer problems. While we often associate innovation primarily with new product or service offerings, it can also occur in customer service through novel ways of addressing issues, in manufacturing via process improvements, or across other areas where creative problem-solving allows a company to stand out. Ultimately, forward-thinking solutions that provide value by resolving real pains and needs—whether through offerings, experiences, workflows, or more—fuel competitive advantage and progress.

The best way to balance innovation goals in a portfolio is to adopt a structured approach that combines short-term gains with long-term breakthroughs. Allocate resources strategically, dedicating a portion to incremental improvements addressing immediate market needs while reserving a significant share for high-risk, high-reward projects. Foster a culture that values experimentation, embraces failure as a learning opportunity, and encourages cross-functional collaboration. Regularly reassess the portfolio's alignment with market trends and user needs, adjusting priorities to maintain a dynamic balance between evolutionary and revolutionary innovation. This ensures sustained growth and competitiveness in the market.