I talk to you about innovative product development, inspired by the book “
Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love ” by Marty Kagan. There is a big difference between leading companies and others in the product creation process. The key concept is “product discovery”: exploring and testing ideas before investing heavily. This is integrated with “product delivery” or “construction.” The author of the book stresses the importance of prototypes, which in HW I prefer to call “pretotypes,” and tools such as Lean Canvas and Story Mapping. There is too much focus on Scrum, when instead it is important to create truly useful functionality. The book is recommended for those who want to truly innovate.
I am returning to a topic that is central to me: the development of innovative products that have the potential to make a big impact because they go beyond incremental innovation. This summer I had a chance to read a book that I suggest to everyone, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Kagan.
I found it particularly interesting because the author brings personal experience in the direct development of major software products, combined with that of many years of consulting.
I have found many things in common with those I have encountered in hardware product development: from the marketing methods, to the way products are made through the relevant roadmaps.
There is one statement by Marty Kagan that I subscribe to 100%:
“there is a big difference between how the best and most companies make their products.”
I wondered why companies, though famous, continue to use outdated methods.
One answer I give myself is that they make too many incremental innovations, for which the classical methods do not show major limitations.
Much of incremental innovation is often micro changes to the product, almost adjustments, that look much more like an efficiencyist practice than an exploratory practice.
The Development of a highly innovative product is a complex and adaptive process, which requires adjusting the plan based on a careful assessment what emerges and Therefore, it requires new ways of development.
What I find to be the essence of the book is product discovery, or the process of discovering and validating product ideas before investing heavily in development activities. The development process that Marty Cagan describes consists of the integration of product discovery loops with product delivery loops, which, in the case of hardware products, I prefer to call product construction because it evokes to me their manufacture. The author places great importance on discovery because it is the part of the process that ensures the effectiveness of the process itself.
Marty Kagan argues that the difficulty is not so much in doing product delivery, which so many people do, but in doing product discovery. To be able to do that you really have to have experienced real product development, otherwise the approach comes across as absolutely theoretical.
The author brings his experience in developing prototypes by describing the different types aimed at verifying, with selected customers, specific aspects of the product itself. I found myself when he explains that in many cases the prototypes are very different from the final product as, in my direct experience, are the hardware prototypes that I like to call pretotypes, inspired by Alberto Savoia.
The focus on discovery, which is functional for delivery, leads to the need to focus very much on the backlog and the Value brought to the customer and the company.
In the book In fact, the author devotes few words to Scrum!
This is not to say that Scrum doesn’t have qualities, but on the subject of product development there is no greater waste than delivering product features that have no market impact.
I found myself very much with tools such as the Lean Canvas and Story Mapping which are also fundamental in the world of physical products.
The book is full of inspirations that are applicable, with necessary adaptations, to the development of many types of products.
I will return to some topics that I have found in common in the development of innovative hardware products with or without integrated software.
Pretypes are quick and inexpensive demonstrators to test key ideas before creating complete prototypes. I am talking about an automated palletizing project where we made a pretotype of the most critical component, which was the tray, in just 15 days. We saved several months and significant investment. This pretotype allowed us to validate the best materials with which to build the final tray.
It is very important to balance innovative bets in product development projects, using Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s innovation pyramid. Especially effective is the Lean Canvas, which
In this interview with Antonio Panareo of Story Time, we talked about the agile innovation factory that I established during my last corporate experience. Establishing this agile factory was a real gamble and I talk about the experience I had with my teams.
The European community is promoting with Industry 5.0 a new way of doing business to bring value not only to shareholders but also to all stakeholders. No one raises the question of what organizational models are possible for Industry 5.0, which cannot be those of Industry 3.0 and 4.0.
