More than anything else, short time horizons restrain B2B organic growth. And this leads to “internal friction” in your growth machine, specifically in 4 areas: 1) available time, 2) required skills, 3) team motivation, and 4) organizational disruptions.  ... Read More

If we bring a prototype to a customer, this is “concept testing.” Something different from  voice of the customer research. But when these become conflated,  we fool ourselves into believing that we’re more customer-centric than we really are. This confusion results from how innovation and new product processes have evolved. In an earlier era, we ... Read More

Today's innovation methods will look outdated in the future, with these 6 “awkward realities”: 1) We test market needs by launching products at customers. 2) We don’t understand what organic growth requires of us. 3) We misunderstand the proper role of stage-and-gate processes. 4) We interview customers to “validate” our hypothesis. 5) We fail to fully engage customers in our innovation. 6) We are easily distracted from customer-facing innovation. ... Read More

Product managers are critical along the journey to become customer-centric. To that end, few investments are more important than product manager training. Before diving too deep into the product manager training strategy, let’s discuss this title, “product manager.” Since titles don’t always mean the same thing from company to company, let’s be precise in our ... Read More

Your “second objective” after customer insight should be customer engagement. These 9 approaches help: 1) Kill the questionnaire, 2) let customers lead, 3) discuss their “job-to-be-done,” 4) project your notes, 5) focus on customer outcomes, 6) probe… deeply, 7) don’t sell or solve, 8) get quantitative, and 9) use triggers. ... Read More

These 5 practices help you succeed in the first step of Blueprinting… selecting a target market and project scope: 1) Define the boundaries. 2) Seek diversity. 3) Schedule enough time. 4) Sync with your strategic plan. 5) Get key stakeholders on board. ... Read More

How critical is it to target customer needs? Imagine three situations where you might face the question of a bigger payload vs. a better targeting system: missiles, cancer treatment and gold mining. A bigger payload would be a larger warhead, radiation dosage and backhoe shovel. Better targeting would be more precise hits on enemy positions, ... Read More