Innovation Strategies for Product and Service Development

95% of new products & services fail because they don't meet real customer needs... 👇 Why? ---> Lack of Market Understanding ---> Ignoring Customer Feedback ---> Inflexible Product Development ---> Poorly Defined Value Proposition Innovation doesn't have to be a shot in the dark. How? By embracing methodologies that put the user first and foster agility. Introducing two transformative frameworks: ---> Lean Startup: Rapid Prototyping & Iterative Learning ---> Design Thinking: Empathy-led Innovation & Creative Problem-Solving Each approach brings its unique strengths to the table. Lean Startup ensures your product evolves with real user feedback. Design Thinking dives deep into user needs, uncovering innovative solutions. Together, they're a powerhouse for user-centered innovation. ➟ Understand your market. ➟ Listen to your customers. ➟ Stay agile in development. ➟ Offer compelling value. -- Found this useful? Share the insight. ♻️

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

Here are the 3 steps to bring new ideas to life: 1. Test desirability. Got a game-changing idea? Let's see what the market thinks. Speak with those who matter - customers, leaders, partners. ...what "job" would they hire your idea for? ...what pain point are you solving? ...how urgent and valuable is it? ...what do they use today? Blend these findings with desktop market analysis. ...where will your industry be in 5 to 10 years? ...what market forces will emerge? Iterate on your idea, as needed. Determine its MVP, ideal future state, and the "bridge" state that will connect the two. 2. Test viability. Now you have an idea your customers seek. Time to think about $$$! ...what is a worthwhile $$ target? ...what will your revenue model be? ...what people, processes, and technology are needed? ...why will you outperform competitors on revenue and cost? (See my pinned post on business modeling for a how-to on this step.) 3. Test feasibility. Now, you believe you have an idea that can bring more $$$ in than $$$ out. ...how will you build it, technically? ...what phases are required to get to your ultimate vision? ...what tools can help reduce costs of the build? - What are you doing to bring your innovative ideas to life? Share your thoughts below. Let's learn from each other's experiences! #BusinessModels #innovation #Growth