We are not in it for the money - so what is your (company's) purpose?

A friend of mine just send me a link of a great speach from Simon Sinek about "start with why", according to Simon, the recipe for success. As he explains, it is not what you do or how you do it, the most important question to answer is "why you do what you do".
Interestingly, as he indicates, companies often claim that their purpose is to make profit but in fact this is not the case - profit should simply be an enabler and companies should have higher a purpose, a reason for exisiting. That is the recipe for success.
In his speach, Simon has some great statements: "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it". He explains that people's decision making comes from our beliefs and purpose and that the things we do merely serve as the proof of what we believe. This is especially so for the innovators and early adopters. "The goal is not to just sell to people who need what you have, the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe". The "why" question could just be the magic trick many companies need to be successful. Here the link to Simons website: www.startwithwhy.com
My lesson for today - we are not in it for the money. What is your belief, your purpose, your passion?

The Fuzzy Frontend of product development

There are a number of factors that positively impact the success of innovation with the core being management making the decision to allocate resources, to follow a structured process and to acknowledge that these projects do take time.
Interestingly companies do not have any problem investing in product development projects where they easily spend millions of euro's but still hesitate to invest 10% of that amount in making sure we develop the right product. And as you know: crap in is crap out.
The phase preceding the traditional structured stage-gate development process is called "The Fuzzy Frontend". The name already suggests that this phase is fuzzy and can not be described in a "one size fits all" process. It combines strategy and strategic decision making with market analyses and ideation activities. That makes this phase difficult to comprehend and manage.
Here is the original article explaining the Fuzzy Frontend: Fuzzy Frontend - Peter A. Koen
What I have learned: an outsinde in approach where a multidisciplinary team goes into a creative ideation phase based on a selected customer problem results in a wealth of patentable and great innovative product ideas. Validating different ideas with your customers lead to the confidence you should want to have before deciding to invest millions into development.
Here is a very high level & simplified picture I have created to explain the fuzzy frontend mainly based on the deliverables that result from each phase.

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."

Henry Ford

Predictable Innovation is not rocket science

One of the most exciting and inspiring things I have done in my professional life is defining a very innovative next generation product family including a 5 year product development roadmap. I can not wait until the first product will be released because I am sure it will be a great success! 
There are lots of discussions on what it is that ensures the success of product development and innovation and they often center around creative people coming up with that one great idea. Well, after this project (and being very lucky to have worked with some great poeple) I am completely convinced that that is not the trick. Successful innovation can be predictable, it is not something magical and it is not rocket science.
For me the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place when somebody said to me: "Rianne, it does not start with an idea, it starts with an unmet customer need". I know this sounds like a huge open door but in practice many companies / managers do not take the time nor make the deliberate choice to allocate the resouce to research (unmet) customer needs. Finding the one unmet customer need that can be addressed by your company's strengths and fits to your unique positioning against competition, is the key to successful innovation.
Want to know more - fill in "predictable innovation" in google. Here is something I just found:
Les McKeown on Predictable Success

Employees make a company successful

As Industrial Design Engineer, innovation and product development have always been my passion. I never expected though that managing and developing people is very nice and provides me much more fulfillment in my job then I ever thought.
Unfortunately in many companies, many managers like to work on detailed content and do not have a focus on people management. And in my experience, many executive boards do not have proper HR on their radar screen; getting & keeping the right people in the right places and making sure every person contributes, is motivated and has the possibility to develop his/her skills. I am personally convinced that this is an essential factor for a (sustainably) successful company. One great & inspirational example of this right kind of leadership can be read in an article from Harvard Business Review: Fiat's Extreme Makeover - an interview with Sergio Marchionne: "My job as a CEO is not to make business decisions - it's to push managers to be leaders". Sorry that the complete article is not available for free, this is only a summary.
HBR: Fiat's Extreme Makeover

The importance of proper market segmentation

Malcom Gladwell is one of my guru's. In his books, like "The Tipping Point" or "Outliers", Malcom explores interesting topics like "why & how does something become a trend" or "why are certain people more successful then others". He explores the reasons and dynamics behind these questions and illustrates this with many real life examples. Great stuff and indeed very inspirational. So, offcourse I entered Malcoms name on YouTube and found a great speach: "what we can learn form spaghetti sauce". This is a great example showing the importance of market segmentation. Interestingly what you again realize is that basic marketing is often still not practiced in many companies.