Team, environment, and strategy… The people that make up your team, the environment and culture you shape, and the clarity in your strategy are the most important factors to successfully managing innovation.
Ditch quick fixes and focus on your team You can wrap amazing processes… what works at Amazon, the newest framework, what works at Google, buzzword of the week… but at the end of the day they won’t matter without carefully editing the team, setting up the right environment for their success, or pointing the team toward the star you believe is true north.
Xerox PARC The 20th century witnessed a shift from individual inventors like Thomas Edison to institutions. PARC is responsible for foundational inventions in modern computing, ranging from the desktop computer to ethernet to object-oriented programming.
UberCab An excellent example of market innovation is the first iteration of Uber, then known as UberCab. Uber leveraged existing technologies and cars, remixing them to bring an exciting new experience to the world.
Freeletics At Freeletics we leverage a wide array of hardware and software innovations to bring our product to market. Without these, our market innovation would not be possible.
Common Goal Alignment around a common goal is absolutely required. In large organizations, imagine what your team’s goal might look like as a small startup.
How to assemble your team Experience and education matter, but focus on soft skills and the conversation details with candidates. I focus on the following nine traits.
“Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude that hate it (artists). Fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who love it (politicians). ” – Nassim Taleb
Shaping a product environment One of my goals as a product leader is to build autonomy in my team while aligning across development teams and departments.
How to shape the product environment I use one tool (operating plan) and two processes (weekly product review and monthly roadmap review) to achieve this.
Team Operating Plan The operating plan is similar to a business plan for the team. It’s designed to help each team reflect on past learnings and create their future.
Monthly Roadmap Review A monthly forum to discuss the rolling roadmap with engineering leaders and representatives from each department in the company.
The Why Your team will move mountains for the mission. I use every opportunity possible to reiterate why I wake up every day and why I moved around the world to work on Freeletics.
The Future To steal from IDEO: a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings. Do everything possible, including sketches to illustrate your vision for the future.
When to communicate strategy Every day, everywhere. I use my personal communication, meetings, and all-hands as opportunities to reinforce the why, the vision, and principles.
“It's the doing of it. It's the process. It's the getting there. It's the journey. The journey is everything. It makes the destination worthwhile. You can only have a worthwhile destination after a worthwhile journey.”
Don’t get lost It’s easy to forget about the journey when focused on outcomes, measurements, and goals. The journey matters just as much as achieving them.
stephenwalker
mol
.jpg){kind=avatar}
prosaiyo
paytner
questresearch
cr
otake
familyalbum
croudmarketing
upura
xtone
ncdc
decorecruit
trallard
caitiem20
akosma
aleyda
destraynor
addyosmani
swwweet
mthomps
jacobian
holman
malarkey
paulrobertlloyd