Circles of collaboration – delivering global products successfully

Products can be physical like shoes, apparel or computers, or they can be software platforms. As you move from year to year, a physical product line needs significant investments in manufacturing to refresh. And the process of determining what bets should be made to maximize that investment is critical. Software products need refreshes too, and although they seem pretty malleable, are also a complex undertaking. These challenges are enhanced in a global scenario. It’s critical to keep up with: Local market pressures:  consumer/customer trends, innovation, competitive product parity Internal demands: budgeting, sales schedules, marketing calendars, inventory flushes Partner needs: Supply of material, manufacturing, distribution, tooling etc. While technology systems, analytics and processes play a big role, I wanted to highlight today the need for what I call the “circles of collaboration”. Much like Google circles, but perhaps much more productive; J Product innovation and development happens in multiple groups or circles of stakeholders (an obvious observation I guess) . And the significance of these groups varies in scale and magnitude along the product lifecycle depending on where we are in the product cycle.     Of course, we all know that product lifecycle is iterative. At the very beginning, the collaboration circle that leads the innovation process includes heads of businesses, category product managers and the target markets. As research and market analysis yields gaps and points out white spaces, product concepts are born & qualified. Efficient and contextual collaboration at this stage leads to a healthy pipeline of the most viable product innovation candidates […]