Lots of things can go wrong across product development. You’ve been in this meeting. The program review is going fine. Engineering is on schedule. Finance likes the margin. Supply management found a cheaper component and saved a few dollars a unit. Marketing has the launch plan ready. Every slide is green. And somewhere in the ... Read More

It can be a challenge to recruit customers for VOC. The reasons for customer reluctance to interviews are murky. Perhaps heavier workloads, interview fatigue, tighter corporate policies or skepticism created by research requests that become sales calls. Regardless of the cause, these four strategies can help: Reduce the Number of Customers to Recruit for VOC ... Read More

DISCOVER, a new book by Scott Burleson, is now available. Its full subtitle is From Customer Noise to Product Signal: A Jobs-to-Be-Done Guide to Customer Interviews and Product Insight. The book is now available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover formats. DISCOVER is best understood as complementary to Blueprinting. It begins with the same ... Read More

Guided AI is democratizing secondary market research, making it accessible to engineers, scientists and other B2B professionals. It will completely change who does the research, why they do it, and how often. Early adopters will penetrate adjacent markets and develop new products faster and better. Let’s see how. In the pre-AI age, most B2B secondary ... Read More

Do you know a business leader that doesn’t want to accelerate growth? Me neither. Sadly, they’re missing a hidden brake pedal silently working against them. This same pedal causes salespeople to miss quotas this year… and R&D to launch mediocre products in future years. Let’s remove that pedal. (Watch in 3-minute video.) What is this ... Read More

It’s helpful—but shortsighted—to ask, “How can AI assist me?” It ignores the end game when AI becomes more than your friendly helper. Some ask, “When will AI replace me?” A better question is, “What work can I master that AI cannot?” For this, we’ll consider the Digital Waterline. (Watch in 5-minute video.) AI already does many ... Read More

Over time, certain patterns become impossible to ignore—and when they do, it’s worth stepping back and talking openly about them. One of those moments is when we hear someone say, “All customers want is a lower price.” That statement isn’t a conclusion. It’s a signal. And it deserves attention. 1. Product Decisions Are Happening All ... Read More