Boston's Hidden Innovation Driver
Steve Robins
Marketing Leader | Scaling B2B SaaS Marketing & Product Marketing | EnergyTech, PropTech, InsurTech & 15 other verticals
Behind Massachusetts' universities, startups, and VCs, there's another major driver of innovation
Earlier this year, Bloomberg ranked Massachusetts as the most innovative state in the country (followed closely by California and Washington State) based on R&D, productivity, high-tech density, concentration of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) employment, science/engineering degree holders, and patents.
Everyone knows that innovation in Massachusetts is also driven by our high concentration of VC's who predict and fund the future, daring entrepreneurs who lead new companies, and brilliant engineers who create that future.
Often deep behind the scenes, and not grabbing the glory of entrepreneurs and VCs and world class universities lies another group. Each day these people work hard to bring innovation to life. And they touch a broad swath of other players in the innovation economy.
In order to create innovative products, you need people who make innovation happen. And those people are product managers.
Product managers drive innovation
Product managers research customer needs, develop strategies to meet those needs, and work with product teams to turn raw ideas and technologies into the stuff that people need, want and will buy. These skilled professionals are always looking for the intersection of what's possible, what people will buy, and what can be marketed and sold at a profit. So product managers sit at the critical inflection point between raw, unformed ideas and technologies on one side -- and execution and profitable growth on the other.
The outsize impact of product managers
In fact, product management expert Bruce McCarthy believes that product management has an outsized impact on innovation because each product manager drives the activity of nine or more design, engineering, and QA peers, as quantified in a 2015 study by Pragmatic Marketing.
More product managers, more innovation in Boston
So what does this mean for innovation in Boston? As it turns out, the Boston area has the third-highest per capita concentration of product managers in the U.S.A. – only San Francisco and Seattle have more. And each year Boston holds what is now the world's largest ProductCamp conference for those product managers.
So next time you're thinking about innovation, don't just focus on universities, investment and PhD's. Make sure you can build something people will actually want by including product management in your innovation calculus. Because product managers make innovation happen in Boston and around the world.
And be sure to check out my blog post on why Boston is a great place to be a product manager.
Steve Robins helps others create, market and sell better products and solutions. Steve is a board member of the Boston Product Management Association, and president of ProductCamp Boston, the world's largest. A marketing executive at EMC, Documentum, FirstBest and KANA. Steve Robins is the principal of strategic marketing consultancy Solution Marketing Strategies, founder of the top-rated Solution Marketing Blog, and guest contributor writing on martech from the CMO's perspective for SearchCRM.
B2B Tech Marketing
8 年The annual product camp is rather amazing. A conference for product managers run by product managers on a Saturday in April that attracts 400+ people? Also, the BPMA does a nice job of promoting the profession... To me, product management/product marketing is the intersection of the product roadmap and the companies go-to-market strategy; the two most important factors in growth....
Software Product Management | New Product Creation | Business Decisioning | Sales Acceleration | SaaS | M&A | Philanthropy
8 年Excellent perspective as PM's not often included in innovation discussions/rankings. PMs, or those with PM-like skills, play vital leadership roles in innovative products and technology companies. At the same time, I talked with a colleague recently whose company essentially had zero (0) product managers - more of an M&A business model - but now hiring PM's to figure out all their brands, portfolio and lifecycle management. And interesting I saw a "how to be a product manager" session recently in Boston. Academically, MBA's often associated with, but still don't believe there's a formal undergraduate degree in "Product Management".
Crisis Management & Communications Expert | CEO at Bishoff Communications
8 年Terrific post and great statistics! In fact the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative, (active from the late 1990’s to 2009) which identified 400+ world-changing (or nation-changing) innovations (in technology, medicine, & science, finance, education, culture, and social systems), all from our region since the 1600’s, also found five key common drivers—some that describe your thesis perfectly: ? a diverse mix of people, businesses, and institutions which foster and reinforce collaboration and networking; ? a driving entrepreneur or team of leaders, ? local funding; ? local demand to define or perfect the idea or product; and/or ? national or global demand
Building great applications to help people organize and share the family memories, history and important information.
8 年It is great to see the scope of the work going on here in the Boston area with Product Management skills. There is a great network of talented people here in the area who are taking product ideas, customer needs and building strong businesses around them. This is a huge business advantage for the area here. I think we all benefit from working together to build out strong business models to transform these ideas into success. There is a lot of sharing of ideas and approaches that enables people to be successful and that is one of the "secret" reasons the Boston area is a great one for innovations and new businesses of all sorts.
Consulting Engineer for Interdisciplinary Problems
8 年Interesting chart. But I agree with Sam Klaidman that the search as stated may miss a lot of people with previous or related Product Management experience. There are many such people in the Boston area. This increases the odds that "innovators" will have actual product, manufacturing, sales, or service backgrounds - i.e. some idea of what they are getting into. I have seen cases where people have so-called brilliant ideas but absolutely no commercial product experience - sometimes the results are not pretty.