How can you handle stakeholder disagreements about product innovation?

Highlight your proactive approach to addressing evolving stakeholder needs and preferences, ensuring that your innovation remains aligned with their expectations over time.

Disagreements obviously differ thematically and can happen at different life cycle stages. With innovation, more often they are related to the potential relevance and commercial viability of the product and therefore happen early on in developmental stages. Data is the solution. Deeply understanding the user(s), competitors, trends and emerging developments can help resolve disagreements allowing for data driven decision making. True innovation is about doing novel things and that requires hypothesis testing and a carefully crafted iterative approach. This can help ease anxieties and get everyone on board.

Regarding innovation, what always must remain in sight is: what problem we are solving? and who are we solving it for?. That's what should be the connecting factor for all stakeholders. Not all innovation is meant to satisfy consumer needs. We tend to think about innovation in terms of the product itself, but it can be about a business model, or cost reduction, or how we deliver the product/experience, or it can be channel oriented. Only by being aligned on what problem we are solving and for who can we all push in the same direction. Knowing that is what truly delivers the value of innovation.

It is crucial to empathize with stakeholders when working on product innovation to understand their perspective, concerns, and objections and find solutions that address their needs. I find it helpful to consider the expertise and insights of stakeholders. Being open to their ideas can be beneficial. Establishing trust and understanding with stakeholders requires regular communication, transparency, and mutual respect.

Imagine that managing stakeholder disagreements in product innovation is like herding cows—lots of mooing (diverse perspectives) to hear, tempting with fresh pasture (data-driven insights), and guiding them to the same barn (finding common ground). It's a delicate tightrope act—imagine tightrope walking while juggling milk pails. Testing the innovation in a small field can calm the herd, and having a referee (or a convincing cow whisperer) for unresolved issues can be udderly helpful. Clear communication is crucial—think leaving a trail of hay to ensure everyone's herdling forward together.

Transparency and trust are underrated tools in managing stakeholder disagreements. I have found what helps me most is : 1. Seeking input on goals, process, prioritization criteria from the start 2. being transparent about tradeoffs and process, especially if there is bad news 3. Discussing any issues with a solution orientation (bluntly put this would be a form of - your top issue will not be in my next release, how can I mitigate the resulting problems) 4. Building trust and delivering on any commitments you make inside or outside of your product to stakeholders (or communicating if you cant)

Emphasize that your product innovation's vision is not static. Highlight your commitment to ongoing refinement and adaptation based on stakeholder insights and changing market dynamics!

I often employ storytelling and other persuasive communication techniques to effectively communicate vision and persuade stakeholders. One practical approach is clearly and convincingly explaining how your proposed innovation will benefit the stakeholders and the company. This might involve detailing the specific advantages and positive outcomes of the innovation, such as increased efficiency, cost savings, or improved user experiences. Also, it would be helpful to provide concrete examples or case studies showing how similar innovations have succeeded. Use these techniques to increase your vision's chance of successful implementation.

Visionaries and innovators have the tendency to be satisfied with seeing the path forward and compartmentalising their role vs. The investors. Often time the investors attitude is that they’re investing in you more than the idea. If you don’t offer more of yourself and share these visions you’re essentially leaving them to their imagination, and that’s not what they’re there for!

Innovation should not be the goal. If you are having a disagreement with stakeholders about Product Innovation, you are probably having the wrong conversation. For Innovation to be successful, it needs to start with the customer identifying an area where they have an unmet need to address an underlying problem and the current solution to the problem is expensive, takes a lot of time, or inadequate. Find the need, come up with a strategy that addresses the need. Then work with stakeholders to align on the vision and strategy. The conversation shouldn't be about innovation, it should be about the elements of the vision/strategy.

Implement a transparent feedback loop that ensures stakeholders' suggestions and concerns are acknowledged and followed up on.

Involve stakeholders from the early stages of the innovation process. This allows them to contribute from the outset and feel more invested in the project's success.

It is important to hold regular meetings with stakeholders to discuss progress, address their concerns, and brainstorm solutions. This will keep them informed and involved in the decision-making process. In addition, collaborative tools should be used to allow stakeholders to contribute ideas, give feedback, and participate in discussions. Furthermore, organizing workshops where stakeholders can collaborate on problem-solving and decision-making is also beneficial. This can help build consensus and resolve disagreements in an effective way.

A huge benefit of involving stakeholders is that you can increase the diversity of experience ... Which ultimately will lead you to better decisions downstream. So not only will you get stakeholder buy-in, you'll increase changes of getting a better product offering in the end.

- Envolver as partes interessadas em testes e colher o Feedback de cada uma é fundamental para esclarecer a vis?o do produto, enriquecer a proposta de valor e dar credibilidade e previsibilidade à ideia e seus possíveis impactos . Estruture isso com vers?es alpha, beta, protótipos, pesquisas, entrevistas e reuni?es com grupos de trabalho.

Zus?tzlich zu den erw?hnten Projektmanagement-Ans?tzen zum Managen von Erwartungen, empfehle ich auch mit Methoden, wie Customer Journeys, MockUps oder generell Prototypen von zukünftigen Versionen des Produktes zu arbeiten. Es f?rdert die gemeinsame Sicht auf ein Produkt und deren Weiterentwicklung.

The journey must be split in phases for any product. The wish list of features is endless. If all is attempted in one go, disagreement is bound to happen. All stakeholders must sit down to agree on the phases and then lay out the plan of action. This would largely help to control the expectations.

Sempre desenhe junto com as partes interessadas os possíveis ganhos e riscos de cada ideia e deixe claro quais s?o os recursos necessários (humanos, financeiros, técnicos) para implementá-los, em seguida compare o custo-benefício e construa junto com o time uma torre de prioridades com base nesse parametro. Formalize um documento com as decis?es tomadas, com responsáveis pelas entregas de cada uma das a??es e prazos de execu??o.

When faced with conflicting priorities, it's essential to take a collaborative approach to resolve the issue. Bringing all stakeholders together for a joint session can help identify and prioritize the most pressing issues. This approach can help resolve conflicts and foster stronger relationships and greater stakeholder collaboration.

Lead by example. Demonstrate your commitment to the vision through actions. Consistent alignment between words and deeds builds trust and inspires others to champion the cause.

Establish a clear decision-making process that involves stakeholders equitably. This creates transparency and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings.

Developing a win-win outcome is crucial, but we need to take it a step further. Once you find a good compromise that people are willing to try out - you need to define a clear timeframe and metric to determine success or failure. How long will we try something before we stop? If the data is favorable, what do we commit to changing long term? This is the key to actually innovating and changing. Without clear agreements on how long we’ll try and what we’ll change if it works, you’ll end up falling back into the old way of doing things.

Always keep customer needs in mind. This is your strongest tool when it comes to handling disagreements across various stakeholders. Always bring it back to customers and their needs. 100% effective strategy.

This is a last resort in my experience. It’s a go or no go situation and a level of compromise has to come to play to allow the project move for the greater vision. Even though time consuming, engaging in negotiations where stakeholders give and take, also not only aims for a solution that addresses the concerns of all parties involved but also helps resolve biases and builds better stakeholder engagement. My advice is be willing to compromise and build in that buffer time for such activities.

It's critical to remeber: 1. Not everyone is innovative. Some people just don't or can't get it. That absolutely fine! Value them for what they do bring to the party that you don't. 2. The innovation need to be comercially viable. The greatest consumer insights, latest technology and hardest work will not get an innovation across the line if it doesn't make comercial sense.

Disagreements are usually subjective if the objective goals are clear. Use processes to help stakeholders set emotions or preconceptions aside. Create a map of objective outcomes or goals and use that to discuss what we can agree on in a non personal manner. There’s bound to be differences in views, the key is to make it about achieving a common goal and discuss the best way forward to achieve it objectively.

When handling stakeholder disagreements about product innovation, the most effective approach is to build a robust business case for your decisions, backed by solid market evidence. This involves gathering data on market trends, customer needs, and competitive analysis to support your innovation strategy. Presenting a well-researched, data-driven argument helps to objectively demonstrate the value and potential of your ideas. This approach not only provides a strong foundation for your decisions but also facilitates constructive discussions, aligning stakeholders with a shared vision based on market realities.

In my experience, I have found that leveraging data and analytics can be incredibly valuable when it comes to supporting decision-making. By presenting tangible evidence and statistics, it becomes much easier to alleviate concerns and disagreements that may arise during the decision-making process. This is especially true when it comes to proposing new innovations or implementing changes to existing processes. By using concrete evidence, stakeholders can better understand the potential impact of these proposed changes, which can help to build consensus and drive progress. Overall, I believe that data-driven decision-making is an essential component of any successful innovation strategy.

When going about resolving a difference of opinion, it is tempting to assume a position of entitlement to trust. However often times stakeholders don’t mind risk and creative thinking, they want to be sure that you have a firm grasp of realistic expectations as well as threats, rather than pretend those threats won’t come to pass. Expressing that to them reinforces trust as well as confidence in the path forward!