An awesome topic, worthy of a webinar.
Just a reminder that tomorrow we host the final webinar in our Transparency series, featuring Tom Grant [@TomGrantForr], Sr. Research Analyst at Forrester Research.

Technology-driven companies today have little tolerance for waste, mistakes, or failures in the product innovation process; the cost is simply too great in this post-recession environment. But there is opportunity at every step – from requirements through execution – to turn innovation into a strategic weapon.

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DMNews originally posted my commentary on the iPhone 4 issues in the July 26th issue. They were kind enough to let us repost our comments here to share with our readers.

Ever since the antenna problems in the iPhone 4 were first uncovered, there’s been a plethora of experts and consumers insisting Apple is making mistakes that will cause long-lasting damage to the brand.

One mistake they made was briefly mentioned by Steve Jobs at the company’s press conference: the break in the external antenna that forms the casing clearly indicates where to put your finger to drop a call. What could have been a product feature to help users from interrupting the signal strength was unexplained and misunderstood by the public.
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So far in this series of posts, I’ve described three ingredients for turning innovation into a core business process:

1. Create an integrated product innovation framework
2. Replace the many truths with a single, shared truth
3. Embrace the voice of your customer

This trio lays the foundation: It defines the process ground rules. It ensures that there’s transparency throughout the organization. And it opens the door to discovering what the market really needs.

The fourth ingredient ties it all together, and is simply this: Make objective decisions based on what is best for the company.

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The brainrants blog recently posted on “How to… Retire a Product Gracefully” covering the often painful process of putting a product into its grave. What really caught my attention was the criteria of good reasons to kill a product, because most of them are also cautionary tales on innovation shortcomings that could have been avoided.

The product didn’t sell despite aggressive marketing & advertising. Yup, it’s true. Marketing is important, but there are other factors. Is the product something people want? Does it have features competitors don’t have. Any product that’s selling like hotcakes won’t get retired, so this is really the heart of the matter and if you make the right products at the right time, with the right features, this should (almost) never happen.

Competitors outmaneuvered you. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t catch up. Identify competitive threats early and keep the pace up. Keeping products alive despite aggressive competitors is why fast-paced innovation is so critical.

The product is obsolete. This may be the one circumstance where no amount of innovation can save the product. No matter how great your cassette player is, if you’re really listening to the market you know they don’t want one anymore. Many of our clients have to kill many of their products almost every year, but they keep coming out with the next object of desire.

Retiring a product is often as hard as admitting a big mistake and that mistake might be a decision you were enthusiastic about a year ago. We all make mistakes, and sometimes, you’ll have to take some of Brainrants exit plan tips.

We’ve just announced our new Transparency webinar series – featuring industry experts including Tom Grant and Roy Wildeman of Forrester Research Inc.; Brian Lawley, the author of Expert Product Management; and renowned blogger Scott Selhorst!

Absolutely a fantastic line up – brought together in this series to help product managers increase organizational agility and enable faster, confident decision making through transparency, real time analytics, collaboration and communication across the entire product innovation lifecycle.

For more information, visit our webinar page. We hope you can join us for these exciting events.