595: How to innovate and help your company – with Chad McAllister, PhD

Masterclass on how to innovate for product managers Watch on YouTube

TLDR

In this kick-off to a new innovation series, I’m breaking down what innovation means inside organizations, dispelling myths, sharing insights from a recent one-day innovation workshop, and emphasizing customer-centric value. I introduce tools like the Bain Company’s Elements of Value Pyramid, discuss how innovation creates organizational tension, and highlight Amazon’s mastery of balancing innovation with execution. The episode sets the stage for the next deep-dive on specific innovation processes.

Introduction

 This is the start of a new series on how to innovate and what it means to innovate inside an organization. Recently I had a great opportunity to do a one-day innovation workshop, and in this episode I’m bringing you some of the highlights from that workshop.

For those of you who might be new to the podcast, my background is product innovation and product management. I started in electrical engineering and then became the person who spent time with customers, understanding their problem, developing prototypes of what solutions might look like, and then leading teams to make those prototypes into something real for the customer. Along the way, I got fascinated by a innovation problem, and that drove me back to do a PhD in innovation. I fully intended to be working for an organization after that, helping to lead innovation in the organization. Instead, I found myself teaching, and I’ve continued that. These days I have the pleasure of teaching graduate innovation, product innovation, and innovation management courses, as well as helping companies with innovation.

Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers

Creating Value for Customers:The workshop started with an icebreaker that had participants take a product they had with them, like a pen or laptop, and describe the value that product creates for them. Real innovation is tied to delivering customer value, not just invention.

Elements of Value Pyramid:Bain & Company’s Elements of Value Pyramid breaks value down into four levels: functional, emotional, life-changing, and social impact. The product must meet a functional need, but meeting emotional needs is also important and frequently overlooked.

What Innovation Is:Innovation can be defined as is a process of devising a product concept that satisfies the customer’s unmet needs. Innovation can also be described as a process that consists of activity phases and decision gates which produces new or improved products. Another definition of innovation is a process for developing a successful culture of innovation, bringing together the different individuals and groups across the organization for ideas to be created, developed, and implemented. In all of these definition, innovation is a process for delivering new value for a customer.

Innovation Myths:Lone geniuses don’t often create innovations. Instead, innovation is usually done by a team. Innovation takes place over time, not in a eureka moment. Another myth is that failure is fatal. Since innovation involves doin