Global Product Management Talk

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 086 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: You’ve likely heard of the curse of knowledge or sometimes it is called the curse of the expert. It occurs when our knowledge leads us down predictable paths, likely not considering other possible solutions to problems but only those that are familiar to us. This is cognitive bias and is the topic I asked my guest about, which lead to discussing open innovation and how to manufacture serendipity. His name is Kevin Stark and he is the VP of Technology Solutions at NineSigma, a global innovation firm. They have helped Kraft, NFL, NASA, L’Oréal, Unilever, PepsiCo, Pfizer and other companies create an open innovation workplace, leading to breakthrough products. As you will hear towards the end of the intervi

Cindy F. Solomon chats with Amy Lightholder about the value of hands-on immersion into learning Agile and managing products. 

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 085 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Product managers often work in diverse teams and need good team management skills to be successful. To explore managing teams, I invited a frequent keynote speaker and coach who companies invite to teach them about improving teams and their work. He is Dr. Todd Dewett, a best-selling author, popular trainer on Lynda.com, a TEDx speaker, and an Inc. Top 100 leadership speaker.  His latest book is Show Your Ink: Stories About Leadership and Life.  He is also a former award-winning professor who has since spoken to and advised hundreds of thousands of professionals around the world.  When you listen to the interview you will no doubt hear that he has huge enthusiasm for helping people. In this discussion, p

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 085 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Product portfolio management is concerned with selecting the right products to develop, making trade-off decisions, and generally maximizing the value of the product portfolio. It is an important activity in organizations that have more than one product, but it is also an activity that is difficult to learn about. I sought to find an expert who could discuss what is really involved. That expert is Carrie Nauyalis, the NPD Solution Evangelist for Planview. Carrie began her career at Planview implementing portfolio management solutions and training clients around the world. She has the experience and knowledge to know what is involved in product portfolio management. She is also well-versed on many other ne

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 083 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Trends can be a product manager’s best friend. They can propel products, increasing adoption by customers, or if misread, they may have costly consequences of wasted resources, too much inventory, and lost opportunities. Product managers know about the importance of trends, but are often already overwhelmed and don’t make time to study trends. Are there ways to make trend identification easier? To find out and learn about identifying and using trends, I contacted Max Luthy. He is the Director of Trends & Insights at TrendWatching, a company that scans the globe identifying emerging consumer trends and changes in trends. He is also the co-author of the book Trend-Driven Innovation. In the interview,

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 082 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Product management is about change – the change that creating new products involves. Along the way, product managers need to learn about customers and their needs, consider problems from different perspectives, and collaborate with others. A person with deep experience in doing these things and helping groups and organizations identify and push through barriers of innovation is Chuck Appleby. He is a leadership and organization development consultant with over 30 years of management, consulting, and coaching experience in government, industry, and non-profits. In the interview we discuss two valuable tools for product managers and organizations wishing to solve problems for themselves and customers: Acti

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 081 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: How can product managers help their organizations become more innovative? That is the topic of this discussion with the author of Innovation Wars: Driving Successful Corporate Innovation Programs. The author is Scott Bale, a technology & innovation evangelist. Scott has been a serial entrepreneur, speaker at TEDx, and now runs Innovation Labs Asia, based in Singapore. In the interview, Scott shares a model for helping organizations be more innovative that consists of 4 C’s: ContextCulture developmentCapability, andCollaboration

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 080 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: When established companies decide they need to be more innovative, they often talk in terms of acting more like a startup. But acting like a startup is much more challenging in reality, especially for larger organizations. Instead, established companies can partner with startups. Doing so is the topic of the book, Collective Disruption: How Corporations and Startups Can Co-Create Transformative New Businesses.  This interview is with the author of the book, Michael Docherty. He is a leading innovation expert and entrepreneur with a variety of broad-based experiences from senior-level corporate roles, start-ups, consulting and venture capital. I expect you’ll find value in the discussion if you have inter

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 079 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: I read Crossing the Chasm when it was published in 1991. The third edition was released last year, with updated examples of how companies successfully increased the market for their new products. The book introduced me to the “target market model,” which had a significant impact on how I thought about the relationship between product growth and market segments. To explore this model, I asked Michael Eckhardt to tell us about it and what it means to cross the chasm. He is the Managing Director & Senior Workshop Leader at Chasm Institute, a consultancy to tech companies.  He joined Chasm after careers at Price Waterhouse, Harbridge Consulting, HP and PepsiCo, and has since worked with over 90 tech-base

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 078 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Project management is an important tool for product managers and an area where we have choices. I often hear Agile practitioners talk about the evils of more planned methodologies, like Waterfall and Stage-Gate. Like most things, these areas are not so black and white and the nuances are important. My guest, Chuck Cobb, is the perfect person to address these topics. He is the author of the best-selling book “The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile” as well as four other books on Agile Project Management and Business Excellence. He has also developed a very successful online training curriculum on Agile Project Management, including a free course he is offering to listeners. In this interview you w

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 077 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: I’m bringing back an incredible guest who I first interviewed way back in episode 10 – one of the first interviews I did. He wrote the step-by-step guide for implementing Lean startup practices, titled Running Lean, created the Lean Canvas tool, and blogs regularly about these topics at www.leanstack.com. His name is Ash Maurya. Now he has a new book about applying Lean Startup principles to go from new product concept to a product that is achieving predictable success with customers. The book is titled Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. And while it is written in the context of startup growth, the concepts apply to any product management effort that involves creating a new produ

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 076 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: The 2016 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey identified four skills that are responsible for a significant increase in personal income. Product managers that excel in these four areas earn 25% more than product managers who don’t. One of these skills is called “pitch artist” and is defined as, “the ability to stand up to peers, managers and executives and sell them your ideas and conclusions.” When it comes to being a pitch artist — effectively communicating ideas and influencing others — there is no better expert than Nancy Duarte of the Durate design firm in Silicon Valley. Nancy is a communication expert who’s been featured in several publications including Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 075 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  As the pressure to get products to market faster increases, little room is left for learning through mistakes. My guest knows this well and has helped numerous companies improve their processes and results developing products. She has worked all over the US, Europe and Asia, including traveling to Japan more than 100 times to help Japanese companies globalize. Her superpower is bringing people with diverse backgrounds and cultures together, across borders and boundaries of every kind, to achieve what none could do alone. Her name is Kimberly Wiefling and she shares the three elements needed for product excellence: executive sponsorship,cross-functional core teams, andthe customer.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 074 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: The topic for this episode is one I have wanted to explore for a long time – the connection between product management and content marketing. If you look at a recent marketing textbook, you’ll see sections that address product management and likely some coverage of content marketing as well. I have found similarities between the two and I went to the most authoritative source I know for content marketing – the folks at CopyBlogger, which is now Rainmaker Digital. They have been writing and teaching about content market for several years. My guest is VP of Marketing for Rainmaker Digital. He also creates educational content and digital products that help people develop and grow rewarding, profitable online

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 073 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: I have a great guest, Rebecca Kalogeris, to help us understand the pulse of product management. We discussed a number of factors, such as what department product management reports to in companies and what product managers say the future holds for the profession of product management, but I was most interested to learn the 4 skills that are correlated with product managers getting paid 25% more. Rebecca is the Vice President of Marketing for Pragmatic Marketing. Prior to joining Pragmatic Marketing, Rebecca managed product management and marketing teams at a variety of software companies. I invited Rebecca to discuss the findings from Pragmatic Marketing’s 16th Annual Product Management and Marketing Sur

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 072 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: My guest, Tracy Hazzard, is known as the “Product Whisperer.” She is CEO of industrial design firm Hazz Design and the co-designer of many consumer products you buy at retail stores every day. Tracy is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and for more than 20 years she has been creating for companies of all sizes, pushing them to rethink their product lines in order to increase revenue and customer satisfaction. She also co-hosts the WTFFF 3D Printing Podcast and is a regular contributor to Inc. Magazine. Among the topics discussed is her 7P process to successfully designing and launching consumer products: Prove It – concept has a marketPlan It – best plan for projectPrice It – competitive pr

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 071 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.   About the Episode: This discussion is about Voice of the Customer (VOC). When it comes to VOC experts, there are only a handful of people that match the experience of my guest today, helping hundreds of companies with VOC research and training many more practitioners. His name is Gerry Katz. He is also the author of several published papers on the topic, a contributor to professional books, guest lecturer at MIT, Harvard, and other top schools. During the interview, you’ll hear us discuss: what VOC is and is not,the 4-step approach for using VOC, andtips for conducting VOC interviews.  

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 070 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: To find out more about how Chick-fil-A innovates, I arranged an interview with Steve Nedvidek. He is a senior manager in Innovation for Chick-fil-A,  responsible for helping to build the innovation muscle within the organization. His primary duties are geared toward creating a culture of and competency for innovation at Chick-fil-A. At the end of the interview Steve shared that Chick-fil-A is a case study in Nancy Duarte’s new book, Illuminate, which shares the steps for effectively communicating your ideas and getting others to support them. Nancy will be a guest in a future interview. In this interview we discuss: The relationship between improv acting and innovationThree questions to increase organiz

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 069 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: If you want your own BB-8 droid, you can buy one from Sphero, a company in Boulder, CO. BB-8 is the adorable droid in Star Wars, The Force Awakens. Sphero fuses robotic and digital technology into an immersive entertainment experience. They make other droids besides BB-8. The original product is named after the company – Sphero. It is basically a white sphere a little lager than a pool cue ball that you control with your smartphone to roll around the room and play games with. I bought one after seeing it in a Discovery store. In 2014 the company did something really smart – they started creating education curriculum that teaches kids how to code using a Sphero device. What started as a meetup for kids t

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 068 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers.   About the Episode: Product managers must be effective communicators. We have ideas and product concepts to share, but the best idea will fall flat if not properly explained in terms our audience understands and appreciates. Further, if the idea is complicated, we have to find ways to make it easy to understand. This is the world that my guest, Lee LeFever operates in. He is the author of The Art of Explanation – Making Your Ideas, Products and Services Easier to Understand. In this interview, Lee shares the 3-step approach to explaining any product idea – the 3Ps of… planning,packaging, andpresenting.