Introduction
Innovation is typically what separates market leaders and market followers — it is the ability and means to develop, implement, and market a new idea that delivers value to a particular customer. In today’s blog, we will look into how product managers can go about innovation and bring a positive change to the customers they serve.
But wait, what’s the difference between ideation and innovation? The simplest differentiator is that ideation is about generating a broad set of ideas and fleshing them out while innovating is about taking a specific idea and developing it into a viable product or service. So, before we get into the innovation-specific points, we’ll do a quick review on the general ideation process.
Understand Your Customer
Before we can innovate, you need to understand the pain point(s) you want to help people overcome. Define your persona and their situation — what’s the reality of the world your customer lives in? This step involves thorough market research — whether it’d be through interviews, empathy exercises, etc. Only when you can understand your customers on a deeper level can you begin to imagine a better future for them.
Generate Ideas
Once you’ve armed yourself with knowledge, it’s time to generate ideas for innovated ways to help your target customer make progress. The goal here isn’t just to brainstorm ideas, but also to connect the dots in ways others have not. Encourage wild thinking, welcome diverse perspectives, and foster an environment where every idea, no matter how crazy, is considered. Remember, today’s crazy ideas could become tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
Focus Your Efforts
Once you have a range of ideas to choose from, the next step is to focus. Which are the most important aspects of your ideas to test? Identify the riskiest parts of your ideas and concentrate your efforts there. Is it the technology needed? Market viability? User acceptance? By understanding your ideas’ risks, you can work to ensure your innovation has a chance of success in the real world.
Identify your Signals
What signals would tell you if your idea works, or if you’re at least going in the right direction? Innovating isn’t just about having a good idea, it’s about knowing why and what makes it good. Some ideas for signals could be around user engagement levels, capturable market share, etc. Understand what your ideas’ most appropriate signals are so you can measure your progress accurately.
Pitch it to the World
It is at this step that you cross the line from ideation over to innovation. Now that you know what signals to keep an eye out for, you’ll want to prototype and validate whether or not your idea has any merit to your target customer. This could be a pilot program, a beta test, a proof of concept, etc. Your goal will be to see how people react to your idea — look out for changes in user behavior, gather feedback, and start to figure out if your idea’s “barking up the right tree” (for those unfamiliar with that saying, it essentially means “going the direct direction”).
Iterate on Your Innovation
As you collect feedback and analyze its meaning, gauge what the next steps should be for your innovation. Are you on the right track? Do you need to pivot? Or perhaps your innovation doesn’t deliver any value at all and you need to scrap it (and that’s okay if that happens). This step requires a combination of data analyses, intuition, and humility. Be prepared to make some hard decisions here, especially if an innovation you were excited for might not be as fruitful as you’d have hoped.
Conclusion
Innovation is, like ideation, a key foundational aspect of a good product manager. A good product manager not only has ideation on lockdown, but also can execute on said ideas to deliver innovative solutions to their customers. Similar how you would iterate on your ideas to flesh them out before you start building something, innovating will have you iterating on a specific idea after you’ve built its initial version. Remember that innovation is not a one-time event and that it is instead a continuous process. Keep pushing the boundaries of your ideas and you’ll not only find success in your products but also become an excellent product manager.