Work

I work with small and medium-sized companies that serve technical markets. My focus is on getting growth through market-driven innovation by first answering two main questions.

1) What are the best opportunities for growth through innovation ? By working with the team on strategic planning, I help create a portfolio of options. A detailed view based on market research, technology landscape assessment, risk analysis and quantitative modeling provides a basis for well-informed decision making.

2) What is the best approach towards specific new developments ? Putting a focus on upfront planning at the pre-development stage can more than double success rate. With a market-driven approach, my aim is to build a reliable set of INPUTS to the development process. With good quality inputs and a structured process carried out by a cross-functional product team, innovation risk is greatly reduced.

To jumpstart dormant ideas and move a program forward I like to break things down as follows:

• NEEDS ANALYSIS : A clear understanding of business needs and end-user needs is foundational to desgining a successful product. A systematic process for getting inputs first from internal and then from external sources is used. One-on-one interviewing and actual observation in the user’s work environment is very effective. Surveys and focus groups are used for concept testing and hypothesis verification. The end-result from this phase is a compact, prioritized set of desired outcomes for the product in its usage and associated metrics that become inputs for product ideation.

• PRODUCT IDEATION : Being armed with good information about market needs, allows the team to focus on generating relevant ideas. Typically, there is no dearth of good ideas. A cross functional team should be used in brain-storming sessions. Fundamentally, it is about synthesizing market needs with technological capability. Specialized techniques, that offer some structure can help dig deeper. But it is important to start with information rather than starting with ideas.

• VALUE ESTIMATION : A realistic financial model with sufficient detail aids risk assessment and decision making. The value of a new product development depends on several factors that interact with each other. Building a quantitative model that considers each of these factors shows the investment levers that are best used to increasing net value from a project. Using proven models for market adoption rate verified against comparable benchmarks makes revenue growth projections more reliable.  The estimated value and corresponding financial metrics provide targets against which project success can be measured.

• CONCEPT DEFINITION : A clear functional definition of the product speeds up technical development and results in a product that fits the need. This is more than a traditional requirements document and provides the engineering team a good basis for developing technical specifications. For software, screen mockups are used to develop a shared common understanding. For hardware, concept sketches and rapid prototypes are important in reducing uncertainty early-on in the process.

• BUSINESS PLANNING : A concise business plan with appropriate visuals, facilitates peer review and project approval. The business plan brings all of the elements together in an understandable form. It consists of results from market assessment and needs analysis, key product functions and value propositions, development proposal, financial model with valuation and ROI, risk assessment and a market strategy.

• DEVELOPMENT & TESTING : Progressive testing through development stages helps verify financial model assumptions and reduce uncertainty at an earlier stage. After the front-end planning and definition is completed, I continue to work with the development team through implementation. While the engineering team conducts performance tests, it is also useful to test, at each stage, the completed aspects of the product against users. Key business assumptions can be verified and risk reduced through testing after each development stage.