You’re trying to develop your skills in product innovation. What’s the best way to get started?

Get on a product innovation team and watch them work. Observe each step and see what could be done differently either to reduce time or to get better innovation. Ask questions and participate in group discussions. Be curious and start doing some innovation yourself. Make a list of steps and activities and bring those to action. Try to make a prototype and share with others and seek feedback. Evaluate if the prototype delivers against the intended goal? Find out what is missing and go at it again to improve and address the point that does NOT deliver against the goal. When doing product innovation, think of how you can reduce cost, reduce time, make the product better, cut time to commercialization.

Start your journey by examining the success stories and strategies of eminent innovators across various fields. Study case studies and absorb insights from sectors as varied as technology, healthcare, and consumer goods. For instance, observing how companies like Dyson revolutionised home appliances through constant innovation can provide valuable lessons in persistence and thinking outside the box. This broader perspective can significantly enrich your understanding and inspire innovative thinking.

Developing skills in product innovation involves a multifaceted approach, focusing on understanding market needs, fostering creativity, leveraging technology, and applying strategic thinking. Here's a structured way to get started: 1) Educate Yourself and Try to Understand Your Market. 2) Embrace Design Thinking 3) Build a Network 4) Learn from Failure 5) Stay Updated with Technology 6) Get Hands-on Experience 7) Join Innovation Workshops or Hackathons 8) Seek Feedback 9) Adopt Agile Methodologies. Starting with these steps, you can gradually build a strong foundation in product innovation. Remember, the journey of innovation is ongoing and requires continuous learning and adaptation.

In fact, with Design Thinking you come up with great ideas by organizing them into steps to orchestrate the best decisions. And in addition, you need to know the business rules and work with a variety of knowledgeable people.

From my experiences, I would suggest two approaches: one is typical industry best practice, and the other is disruptive practice. 1) The key to developing product innovation skills is to be curious, learn from failures, and understand user needs. Collaborate with diverse people, seek mentorship, and engage with the innovation community through events, online forums, and reading materials. Practice, experiment, and continuously learn to refine your skills. 2) Learning from both competitors and successful innovators who have taken new approaches. examples: a large IT company adopting a strategy from the FMCG industry, and a credit card company targeting the student community in a unique way to attract and retain customers

In fact I would say learn from your day to day problems to generate ideas which helped me apply more than 10 numbers of patents in my previous organization. As an Automotive enthusiasts I always put myself into the customer shoes to identify their pain areas to identify the problems. We need to understand what task our customers has to perform to consume our product and the problems they face while consuming them. One of patents we filed in India for truck drivers where there is a safety concern due to overloaded truck roll back in ghat sections. There are features available in hi tech trucks like brake lock but how we can satisfy the millions of old trucks plying on Indian roads. We developed a portable kit which will solve this problem.

Besides Design Thinking, I would suggest Gemba walk technique. The purpose of Gemba walk is Product Managers closely observe the target customer persona activities and functions performed in real time and engage with them. This helps PMs to understand how users can work better. When we see problems firsthand, we understand them better. After we understand the problems well, we check with customers to make sure we got it right. Then, we focus on being creative and coming up with solutions. We want to learn quickly and start making prototypes.

When it comes to improving the design with innovative ideas, the product managers need to understand the users engagement on the product. This can be achieved using tools like Glassbox which help in analyzing user journey through event funnels, and identify the bottlenecks where user adoption rate is flaky. This would assist them to define the scope of problem and ideate the potential design changes, then prototype and test those ideas with beta users in a controlled environment. Well, the first-hand experience is mandatory for all the product managers as it not only fosters trust in your product but also enables iterative refinement, leading to enhanced usability, empathy, and stronger market positioning.

é muito útil para trazer praticidade e a??o às ideias que muitas vezes n?o saem da cabe?a, além de organizar, traz etapas muito claras de como um pensamento inovativo pode ser desenvolvido e implementado.

Embrace design thinking principles to spur creativity and develop solutions centred around user needs. This approach involves steps such as empathising with users, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. A prime example of design thinking in action is the development of the original iPod by Apple, which transformed the music industry by focusing on the user experience, simplicity, and accessibility

Recognise that innovation requires you to change your mindset. Instead of designing experiments to validate or prove yourself right, start trying to prove yourself WRONG. We all have our own biases and these manifest extensively when innovating. Only by looking at your idea through multiple challenging lenses can this bias be overcome to create better and more consumer centric innovation.

Understanding that innovation is not a linear path but rather one filled with uncertainty, risk, and occasional setbacks is key. That's why leveraging techniques like lean techniques to develop MVPs and swiftly launching them into the market is crucial. By doing so, we can gather valuable insights from real-world users through surveys, interviews, or user testing, enabling us to validate our ideas, learn from mistakes, and pivot when necessary. It's this continuous cycle of testing, learning, and adapting that ultimately leads to breakthrough innovations.

In product innovation one shall think about the client first, since what one builds is not a product. Actually what customers buy is a product. One needs to use value proposition canvas to think about that. Another dimension is business model. Think about EasyJet, there is nothing innovative in planes taking from A to B. But an innovative business model makes EasyJet innovative - cheap flights. Business model innovation is often more important than the product.

Cultivate a culture that prizes experimentation. Adopt rapid prototyping and carry out tests with actual users early in the development process. This hands-on approach is crucial for gathering direct feedback. Google’s development of its search algorithms, through constant testing and tweaking based on user interactions, exemplifies how iterative testing can lead to superior products.

Melhor decis?o é sempre come?ar, mesmo que seja uma entrega pequena através de MVP1, validar o conceito, testar na prática como produto e servi?o está funcionando, ajuda a ter flexibilidade na mudan?a de dire??o, colhendo feedback, mas acima de tudo aplicando de maniera rápida e efetiva. Vale avaliar processos agile para colaborar com esse processo de experimenta??o.

Innovation flourishes through collaboration. Engage with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including customers, to co-create solutions. This process ensures that multiple perspectives are considered, leading to more innovative and widely accepted products. LEGO’s Ideas platform showcases how co-creation with consumers can lead to successful and innovative products by allowing users to submit and vote on new set ideas.

In my experience as a strategic designer, collaboration is the biggest challenge in innovation and the one that will teach you the most about the job. Empathy and negotiation are key, we work with people and for the people, all academic knowledge and even industry related experience won't lead to innovative products if not with assistance from all sorts of experts. Think of the pilars of validation (desirability, feasibility, viability) technical experts, business experts and user centricity experts need to be actively involved for any idea to at leat have a chance. The experience you get from every minute you spend building bridges across the multiple experts and customer side stakeholders will make from you a better inovator.

Collaborate and co-create (up to a point) Diverse input is key, but don't overdo democracy. Innovation often needs a stubborn champion to push against the "safe" options. Co-creation is great for refinement, but the breakthrough idea might need to be fiercely protected at first.

The power of many minds will always be superior to a singular, top-down approach. But there are principles to optimize this approach, here’s how I like to think about it: - Assemble a diverse team: Surround yourself with individuals from different cultural backgrounds and professional skillsets. This will immediately give you a wider spectrum of perspectives and help you improve skills you can’t just with books. - Foster open communication: Encourage active participation and open communication within the team. You’ll see the value of creating a safe space here more than most other places! - Utilize co-creation: This can seem radical but involve even your users in the innovation. Consider workshops, hackathons and online communities.

Product innovation thrives on collaboration and co-creation involving stakeholders like customers, users, team members, partners, and experts. By tapping into diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences, more ideas are generated, more problems are solved, and more value is created. Involving stakeholders in brainstorming, prototyping, or testing fosters engagement and builds trust. This collaborative approach enhances outcomes, cultivating loyalty and positive relationships with stakeholders throughout the product innovation process.

Acknowledge that innovation is a perpetual journey. Stay informed about the latest trends, emerging technologies, and methodologies. Continuous learning can fuel your innovation engine and help you stay ahead. For example, the adoption of artificial intelligence in product development, as seen in Netflix’s recommendation engine, highlights the importance of leveraging new technologies to enhance user experience and satisfaction.

Don't forget unlearning Constant learning is a must, but beware. Industry trends and best practices can be blinders. The biggest leaps come from questioning the fundamentals. What assumptions in your field are ripe for disruption? Unlearn to truly innovate.

Continuous learning is the name of the game! Just when you thought this couldn’t get any cheesier ;) Here’s some ideas to anchor this part of your journey in: - Stay Curious: Never stop learning and exploring trending tech, ideas and favorite thought leader takes - Embrace lifelong learning: Participate in online courses, attend conferences and please, stay tied to industry publications on a regular basis. - Do NOT gate keep! Teach others what you know. This just won’t reinforce your own understanding but also raise the capacity to innovate and think differently in your team! Stay curious, my friends!

Indeed, Product innovation is an ongoing, dynamic process that extends beyond the product launch. Continuous learning and improvement are essential, aligning the product with evolving customer needs and behaviors. Staying updated on industry trends, technologies, and tools is crucial for refining product innovation skills. Regular feedback, reflection, and evaluation of the innovation process help identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, ensuring sustained relevance and effectiveness in the competitive landscape.

We have all ready the fable of 'Try and Try till you succeed'. Learning is like that - keep learning till you get it and once you get it - learn more and more importantly, share your knowledge. When I worked for TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) - one of the world's largest IT companies, the mantra was to do knowledge sharing once a month. It allowed envisioning what to share, how to share, and the self knowledge gaps. Then learning got better. Through this exercise, we are also able to seek feedback and evaluation to identify gaps in our innovation ideas or projects. Collectively, we win by sharing and succeed through learning.

Sem autocrítica, pode ser difícil haver algum autodesenvolvimento em qualquer tema que possamos tocar, sobretudo quando se refere a inova??o. Sem ela, como poderemos identificar oportunidades de melhoria? é importante aprender a lidar com a autocrítica de modo a aproveitá-la de uma forma construtiva.

Innovation should be goal-oriented and align with your business objectives or the needs and expectations of your product's end-users or customers. Examples of such objectives may include reducing costs to enhance affordability, simplifying features to improve user-friendliness, making a process or product environment friendly, etc. Once an innovation goal is established, employing an appropriate structured innovation, thinking, or problem solving framework or technique can often be very effective in guiding your approach. Methods such as SCAMPER, Osborn’s checklist, or even the 5-Whys technique may offer systematic ways to dissect and address the challenge at hand.

A SKILL is something we study and master through traditional learning in order to complete a specific task, operate a particular tool, or delivery a designed output An ABILITY is an innate way we do things as we interact with the world that is part of who we are and is used without thinking about it. This is the key to your journey to expand your ability to innovate. It starts with recognizing the difference because your abilities are what separate you. After all, they are innate. Learning a new skill gets supercharged by an ability. For example if you are "more innovative", you could take an innovation title OR you could build marketing skills and be way more innovative than anyone else which makes you stand out.

Instilling a learning culture within the organization helps teams to rapidly acquire new knowledge and explore innovative approaches. The psychological safety fostered by such a culture signals to employees that failure is not to be feared, but rather that their best efforts towards innovation are encouraged. This helps to do the best on Product Innovation.

Learn by doing. Seek out opportunities even outside your job requirements to grow and develop your skills. Pick an aspect of product job and take on stretch assignments. This is the fastest way to accelerate learning along with structured classes and/or books, online resources.