Resisting the Steve Jobs “Innovation Temptation”: Eight REALISTIC Steps to Creating Great New B2B Products Your Customers Will Love Sure, Steve Jobs has created products we all love. But his method of creating products without his customers’ input won’t work for most businesses, especially B2B suppliers. Dan Adams offers his advice on how you can ... Read More
For artillery, archery or cancer treatment, you 1) scan the terrain, 2) detect the high-value targets, and 3) then commence firing. If you have weak reconnaissance, faulty satellite imagery or a blindfolded archer, it doesn’t matter how good your payload is: You won’t be successful. In NPD, this means 1) diverge to all possible customer outcomes, 2) find which are important and unsatisfied, and 3) develop your solution. Most B2B companies need to improve #1 and #2. A lot.
More in video, New Product Blueprinting—the Future of B2B Innovation
Our research into the views of B2B professionals regarding organic growth revealed: The #1 driver of profitable, sustainable growth is strong value propositions. The #1 differentiator between strong and weak value providers is front-end work. The #1 most desired area to improve is market insight. See a pattern? Today’s key to growth isn’t an improved stage-and-gate process or hiring more R&D staff. It’s understanding customer needs better than competitors.
More in article, Market Satisfaction Gaps… your key to B2B organic growth
Tipping the first domino is a first-order action, the second tipped domino is the second-order effect, and so on. Strangely, if the first order action feels satisfying all by itself, you’re probably headed for trouble with subsequent effects. So it might feel good to slash spending to hit this quarter’s numbers… but your future growth will be stymied. In fact, your slow growth today is probably the culmination of many first-order actions you’ve long since forgotten.
More in article, Stop Stifling B2B Organic Growth with 2nd Order Effects
Dan Adams has the honor to present at PDMA Webcast on July 16, 2020. Dan will be presenting on Virtual VOC: How to understand B2B customer needs… without the plane ride. Learn the 10 advantages of virtual VOC and get 8 tips to do great virtual VOC. About PDMA The Product Development and Management Association ... Read More
Dan Adams will be presenting two webinars on innovative business practices in Summer 2020 for AATCC. Drive organic growth… with B2B-optimized customer interviews – June 29, 11:00 AM (EDT) How to reduce risk in major R&D projects… with confidence – July 23, 11:00 AM (EDT) Learn more or register for either of these events at ... Read More
Who do you admire as a great business leader? Steve Jobs? Henry Ford? Jeff Bezos? And why? Because they were good at financial reviews and quarterly investor calls? Of course not. They impressed you because they marched to a different beat and transformed their companies… and even whole industries. So let’s spend less time pleasing Wall Street analysts and behave like the great business leaders we admire… and could ourselves become.
More in video, Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth series, Video Lesson #30