What are the key skills to develop before beginning a career in Product Innovation?

1.Financial Insight: "Master business finances for innovation success—budgets, statements, revenue models." 2.Strategic Innovation: "Linking innovation to business strategy for sustainable product success." 3.Compelling Value Propositions: "Crafting clear, persuasive value propositions for innovative ideas' success." 4.Innovation Metrics Mastery: "Identifying KPIs crucial for measuring and driving innovation achievements."

Understanding customers need beyond just their wants is helpful in guiding innovation. Knowing what customers don't want, how they use the product, what they think of the category offerings, and what would make them stop using a product are all helpful.

In my experience, that would be customer empathy. The ability to listen to the voice of the customer is key. So many times we create products for which there is no market. Another related aspect is the ability to receive feedback and act upon it.

Understanding customer needs and problems forms the basis of product innovation, and innovation more broadly, so having research skills - from creating, running and analysing interviews, to understanding research methodologies, interpreting data, etc - is a very important skill to have coming into a Product Innovation role.

Sin lugar a dudas, la empatía con el cliente, el usuario final y los stakeholders son la clave de la generación de estrategias de negocio disruptivas y el pilar fundamental para la innovación. Comprender aquello que no se dice pero se siente, se desea, se cree o se percibe en cada una de las partes interesadas de un proyecto, empresa o negocio es el santo grial de la innovación. Esto se logra a través de técnicas generativas de diseño y una apropiación del Design Thinking como una filosofía de vida. Técnicas, métodos y metodologías que llevo enseñando por una década en las mejores Universidades del país.

1) Ideation: PMs need not ideate themselves. PMs should be great at defining the problem and then facilitate ideation sessions for cross functional teams. Good ideas really come from diverse set of people viewing the problem from multiple lens. 2) Prototyping: Being able to create quick and dirty prototypes is a superpower to communicate an idea and get feedback from users. Playing with a prototype enables the user to see the vision and experience it physically rather than having to imagine it, resulting in deeper and richer inputs. Prototypes can be made using rudimentary tools like just PPT, and it can get more sophisticated and detailed if required with design softwares.

It's important to know why you're doing this - you want to put these in front of actual users of the tool to get feedback, not just to crystalise what the experience might look like for stakeholders

Being able to develop ideas and then turn those ideas into tests is the core function of product innovation. This is probably the hardest skill set to have already experienced, since this is the most unique part of this role. If you've had project management experience, or you've had to think of ideas and/or roll ideas out in previous role, that's probably enough - there are plenty of resources, frameworks, models, etc that you can learn from in the role.

A Product Manager should use wireframes to sketch out the basic structure of a page or a feature, helping to conceptualize ideas before investing time in detailed design. Share wireframes with stakeholders, including designers, developers, and business stakeholders, to gather early feedback and ensure alignment. Prototypes are interactive, clickable versions of a product that allow users to simulate the experience of using the actual product. Use prototypes to effectively communicate your vision to stakeholders, making it easier for them to understand the user flow and interactions.

Generate prototypes, of any sort, of any construction, as quickly as possible and get them in front of customers. Then, listen and observe rather than attempt to justify and explain.

Understand the trends - where is the market going? A new product will arrive months or years after your research. Look especially at demographics. Who are your buyers? Who is aging in or aging out? What do new entrants think?

This is core to any field not so specific to this alone. Post consumer need understanding it's the first thing to do to figure relevance

Understanding the market is an early part of the product innovation process to help understand whether something is worth doing, and/or to identify trends, opportunities and gaps to explore. As with customer empathy, having any research background or skills will help you in this area, although market analysis skews more towards data analysis and interpreting that data into insights, so any work with spreadsheets will help. There are frameworks, tools and methodologies that can be followed step by step and learnt in the role.

Market analysis is an ongoing process that should be revisited periodically to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs. It plays a critical role in shaping the product development strategy and ensuring that the product meets the expectations of the target audience. Here are some of the steps to how to conduct market analysis in product development: 1. Identify target audience 2. Competitor analysis 3. Market size and growth 4. Value proposition 6. Pricing strategy 7. Validation and iteration

Market analysis is obviously one of the most important lessons to assess risks and opportunities. But more importantly, once you truly analyse the market, you get to find out the secrets and what is behind the curtain into the industry you are about to go in to. This will help you when making the decision to commit to what path you want to take…

In my experience, I see people focused on the technical feasibility during innovation and neglect the importance of identifying the results that the business should achieve. Feasibility is important as well but product innovation needs to be sustained in the area of commercial value too.

Business acumen is key in translating innovative ideas into viable products. This involves understanding business models, financial implications, and strategic planning. Develop this skill by learning about market economics, revenue models, and cost-benefit analysis. Strong business acumen ensures that your innovative products are not only creative but also economically feasible and strategically aligned with market demands.

This is an important skill for the sell - even if you have the perfect product, if you can't link it back to strategy, can't show the financial pathway, can't present a clear value proposition, then it won't get across the line. Unless you've been in a strategy type role, having sales experience can help here, since you're key goal is to show value to prospective clients, and KPIs are an integral and understood part of the role.

Business acumen is a critical skill for product managers as it involves the ability to understand and make decisions based on the broader business context. It goes beyond product knowledge and involves a deep understanding of how the business operates, makes money, and achieves its strategic objectives. Here are key aspects of business acumen in the context of product management: 1. Finance Literacy: Budgeting, Profitability, Revenue 2. Data-driven decision making: Metrics, KPIs, Data analysis 3. Negotiation skills 4. Customer retention

Effective communication and collaboration are vital in product innovation. They involve articulating ideas clearly and working harmoniously with diverse teams. Enhance these skills through active listening, clear expression of ideas, and collaborative problem-solving exercises. Good communication fosters a creative environment, while collaboration brings together different perspectives for a well-rounded innovative process.

You almost always can't do product innovation in isolation - you need buy-in from other stakeholders to get stuff done. Having experience in roles that already require a level of communication, such as sales, marketing or management more broadly, can lay a good foundation for stakeholder management.

Communicate a clear vision for the product innovation, outlining the strategic goals and objectives. Ensure that team members understand how their contributions align with the overall vision. It promotes a culture of constructive feedback. Encourage team members to share their opinions and insights. Here are some of the communication tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, etc. to facilitate real-time communication.

After consumer empathy to me this side the most important. It's critical to communicate and translate consumers need into meaningful vision for the organisation through new product development. Let's say the leadership, the sales team and marketing team don't get the vision then the PD journey is dead before it starts

Strategy and problem-solving skills are two very important skills that in my opinion contribute to the success of a product manager. It might be an innate ability, but it certainly in my experience allows the product manager to have both crucial product management success traits: execution on the one hand and innovation and product sense on the other hand.