Ways to Foster Innovation in Product Development Teams

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

In “The Venture Mindset”, we explore how successful companies foster innovation by prioritizing people over rigid processes. However, placing people over process does not mean that there is no process at all.     Chaos doesn't necessarily translate into innovation; moreover, it can easily destroy ideas. The design should facilitate cutting through quite a bit of the internal bureaucracy and keeping the development team small, independent, fluid, and protected from internal politics. Let's examine two examples of this principle in action: Case Study 1: Gmail at Google Google's approach to Gmail is a textbook example of the power of trusting talented individuals: 1. The project started with a single engineer, Paul Buchheit.  2. Leaders provided a vague directive: "Build some type of email or personalization product."  3. There were no strict feature lists or rigid processes.  4. Google executives supported the project and bet on its potential. Result: Gmail revolutionized email services and became one of Google's most successful products.    Case Study 2: The Happy Meal at McDonald's The Happy Meal's success shows how intrapreneurship can thrive even in traditional corporate environments: 1. Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño, a McDonald's franchisee in Guatemala, developed the concept.  2. She created a children's menu without approval from headquarters.  3. McDonald's world conventions allowed for idea exchange.  4. Executives recognized the potential and scaled the idea globally.  Result: The Happy Meal became a worldwide success and a staple of McDonald's offerings.    Here is what you can do to support the employees in your company:  1. Trust your talent: Give motivated individuals the freedom to pursue their ideas.  2. Provide resources: Offer support and necessary tools without micromanagement.  3. Create "racetracks": Design systems that allow for rapid development and testing of new ideas, with clear funding mechanisms, simple rules, guardrails, and milestones.  4. Embrace calculated risks: Be willing to bet on promising projects, even if they're unconventional.  5. Scale successes: When local innovations show promise, be ready to implement them more broadly.    How does your organization balance structure and freedom to foster innovation? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! #stanford #stanfordgsb #venturecapital #startups #innovation #technology #founders #venturemindset 

Most companies claim they embrace failure. But walk into their Monday meetings, and watch people scramble to hide their missteps. I've seen it countless times. The same leaders who preach 'fail fast' are the first to demand explanations for every setback. Here's the uncomfortable truth:  Innovation dies in environments where people feel safer playing it safe. But there's a difference between reckless failure and strategic experimentation. Let me show you exactly how to build a culture that genuinely embraces productive failure: 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 Stop asking "Who's fault was this?" and start asking: "𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘺𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨?" "𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘶𝘴?" "𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?" 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 '𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬' Monthly meetings where teams present their failed experiments and the insights gained. The key? Leaders must go first. Share your own failures openly, specifically, and without sugar-coating. 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 "24-𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞" After any setback, give teams 24 hours to vent/process. Then require them to present three specific learnings and two potential next steps. This transforms failure from a dead end into a data point. Most "innovative" teams are just risk-averse businesses in disguise. They've mastered innovation theater, not actual innovation. Don't let your people think they need permission to innovate. Instead, start building systems and a culture that make innovation inevitable.

I’ve been a huge fan of Tom Fishburne for years since we were classmates at Harvard Business School. Tom started drawing cartoons on the backs of HBS business cases, which evolve to become his famous and insightful Sky Deck cartoons.  I was always on the lookout for them. I invite my connections across all industries to subscribe to Tom’s insightful newsletter. Last week’s issue particularly resonated with me. Tom highlighted that labeling an idea as polarizing can quickly kill it, as businesses usually avoid such ideas in favor of safer, more universally appealing ones. However, there’s power in polarization. Trying to appeal to everyone often results in appealing to no one. In a cluttered world, the last thing a company can afford is to create indifference. Several years ago, I was helping the innovation group of a large carrier and saw firsthand the graveyard of idea killers. Many innovative ideas, often originating from those in the field who directly experience pain points, did not make it past the first round of evaluation. To help this carrier effectively evaluate innovative ideas and develop a repeatable process, we implemented a few key strategies: 1. Idea Champion Program: We assigned champions to promising ideas to advocate for them, gather feedback, and iterate on the concepts. 2. Cross-Functional Evaluation Committees: We created committees with members from various departments to ensure diverse perspectives in idea evaluation. 3. Fail Fast, Learn Faster: We encouraged a culture where failure is acceptable as long as we learn from it quickly. Prototyping and piloting ideas in controlled environments helped us make informed decisions. 4. Customer-Centric Approach: We focused on ideas that directly addressed customer/staff pain points, involving these stakeholders early in the development process. 5. Regular Review Cycles: We established regular review cycles for all submitted ideas to ensure they received proper attention. By implementing these strategies, we helped the carrier create an environment where innovative ideas could thrive. This process not only brought new solutions to the market but also fostered a culture of creativity and continuous improvement. Remember, the goal is not to avoid polarization but to harness it. Great ideas often provoke strong reactions, and that’s where their power lies. By creating a structured process to evaluate and nurture these ideas, we can ensure that they have the opportunity to make a significant impact. https://lnkd.in/eWfV_a-t