In today’s business environment your organization must utilize virtual teams to maximize the company’s resources. Are your team’s leading this dynamic process with the best practices? Are they limping by? Or, are they somewhere in between?

If the virtual team is going to be effective, it needs a collaborative spirit and a shared mental model. The team leader’s initiatives provide the underlying foundation for this synergy. Join us to gain a first hand perspective into the new leadership model that recognizes the unique obstacles presented by virtual teams and the different behaviors that are needed for leading globally distributed virtual teams. Mike Ryan shares his insights from research that spanned five multinational and three domestic firms across diverse group of industries spanning pharmaceutical, consumer products, manufacturing, consulting, service, and distribution industries.

Innovation is the fuel that drives growth.  To avoid the pain of slugging it out in mature markets with “me too” offerings, companies are investing billions to introduce innovative new offerings.  After all, successful innovations offer immediate differentiation and the chance to command a premium price.

Despite all of the investment, the statistics on the success of new offerings are dismal with failure rates as high as 70% to 80%.  And of the offerings that do survive most are priced for short-term volume rather than long-run profitability.  In this session attendees will learn how to reverse these trends by:

• Tackling the tricky problem of defining the value of innovative offerings
• Connecting that value to pricing strategy
• Developing launch programs that avoid using low-ball prices to drive early volume

The media industry is undergoing a transformation to becoming truly “multi-platform” — providing information through a variety of media and not tied to any particular form. And where launching traditional print products sometimes took years and consumed millions of dollars (one magazine launch this year is rumored to cost $100 million), the development cycles for interactive products are much shorter, more incremental, and depend on much different technologies. This demands that media companies develop new competencies and sometimes new cultures to ensure success in a Web 2.0 world. We will discuss the product management challenges surrounding this shift, and explore how the new media NPD lifecycle works in several companies.

Even in best in class product management environments, product managers do some project management...when and how much is appropriate and what skills do you need?   Please join us in Somerset, NJ on June 7th to get some clarity around this confusing issue.

Today, many companies often confuse results with mission and vision.  Successful companies define their purpose for being and where there are going in other ways – and make money doing it.  Join us for a thought provoking evening on how you define yourself, strategic choices, and what opportunities exist for product managers in these types of companies.  A panel will discuss how success and social responsibility aren’t mutually exclusive.  The panel discussion will center on the following:

• Why did you found or join a for-profit company with a social goal?  Why not work for a not-for-profit company or do volunteer work on the side?
• Do you find yourself struggling with choices – make more money vs. do more good?
• Can you compete fairly with “normal” companies?  Are you at a disadvantage because you aren’t investing as much in the company financially OR at an advantage because you get the “sympathy” sale?
• Do you work harder or easier than your strictly for-profit peers?
• What do you look for when you hire product managers?  Is transitioning to the environment more difficult due to the different culture?  Do you have to be a vegetarian?

Developing a new product pipeline is difficult - at best. Does this sound like your world? Your competition is everywhere and both senior executives as well as Wall Street want doubledigit revenue and earnings growth, now. But while your team addresses the competition and manages the next line extension, the strategic initiatives with greater potential get “backburnered” waiting for the “right time”. Or do you have a technology that you have access to, but aren’t quite sure how to capitalize on?

Many companies use some type of concept development screening process, and yet don’t have the next breakthrough product in the pipeline. Maybe the problem is about the concepts that go into the screening process. Are they the right ideas? Join us for an exciting discussion of real life examples and success stories on how to identify the most compelling new product concepts and test them so that you select those with the most compelling value propositions. Remember the old axiom Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)? Well, it certainly applies here. Our discussion will focus on two key areas:

   • Key research elements to consider when developing a testing methodology
   • How to develop the best, most actionable concepts for testing

The presentation provides key, actionable take-aways you can take back to your job and apply directly.

To be successful as a product or project manager, you have to get things done through others, typically a cross functional team.  And to make matters more complex often the team doesn’t report to you; it’s a position of influence versus control.  So what do you do? 

Join us for Wendy Blumenstein’s presentation and discussion on:

• What you can do to motivate different types of people to deliver faster and better results
• Managing conflicting priorities in a matrixed environment
• How you can influence people for project success
• Strengthening team engagement & productivity

As part of the discussion, case studies will be presented on successful teams that reduced cycle time and increased revenues through better interaction and teamwork.

Agile product development has emerged in the software industry as a way to speed up project development cycles, while improving product quality at the same time. It combines recent technical advances with principles pioneered by Toyota in the 1950’s. The process includes creating smaller miniature software projects, called “iterations” within a short timeline (“timeboxes”). Each of these iterations is a complete increment of the software (integrated and tested) and could potentially become a software release (although in practice, commercial software releases tend to have several iterations integrated before ramping up a formal release). The methods and techniques of organization turn out to easily improve product quality, but surprisingly lead to much shorter development times. Get an introduction to the ideas behind Agile, why they work and the main management practices used in software development today.

Product or service? It used to be that products were defined by their tangibility and services by their intangibility—or simply services were what products were not. Today, the boundary between what is a service and what is a product is increasingly blurry (e.g. is the Blackberry a product or a service or both?). To be more competitive, businesses are enhancing their products with services (“softening products”), and enhancing services with products (“hardening services”). But, to do this successfully, it is essential to understand the nature of the relationship between tangible and intangible elements of offerings. For example, the degree of association between a service and objects (iTunes and iPod, Cingular wireless service and Motorola Razr) or a service and places (e.g. Best Buy and Geek Squad). Each option carries with it implications for effective new offering development, “packaging” and marketing.

IBM’s IPD management system is all about people and process working together to deliver successful solutions.  Designed to optimize the development and delivery of successful products and offerings, the intent of this systematic process is threefold:  to determine which products and services have the greatest marketplace potential, which investment opportunities hold the most business promise, and then to manage the delivery of the product/solutions.

Front line employees, those closest to the customers and the action, can be a powerful component of any innovation program. Engaging a wider and more diverse slice of the population leads to new perspectives and new ideas - beyond those that the "usual suspects" come up with. Front line innovation is also a powerful mechanism for employee engagement - unleashing passion that helps to create a shared sense of responsibility for any business's future.

This presentation will explore the value of front line innovation through examples of companies implementing the program. The speaker will also describe the principles involved in designing a successful front line program, provide mechanisms in use by companies to foster innovation engagement, and potential pitfalls to watch out for.

Conventional marketing wisdom is quite clear that long term corporate growth is driven by a company's ability to listen to customers and meet their needs with high quality products and services. Many companies have their traditional roots in cutting edge product innovation, not marketing prowess, which has driven their historical success. The company's culture, processes and behavior is largely driven by development and manufacturing excellence.

Turning a technology powerhouse into a more market driven one is no easy task. This presentation will review the many aspects of making this transition, focusing on the spreaker's experience first hand at Philips Medical Systems and the concerted effort to make Philips Medical, and all of Philips more market driven.

This session is designed to present the Virtual Distance Framework and Methodology to enhance innovation and performance and mitigate some of the risk that arises in these environments.  Attendees will leave with a fresh, unique take on what causes specific problems to arise.  Participants will also leave with strategies for improving both individual and team performance.  In addition, participants learn how Virtual Distance can be quantified using analytical and predictive tools.  With these measures in hand, organizations can pinpoint critical areas that used to be considered “soft” and intangible.  This allows organizations to collect baseline data that can be used as a guidepost for quantifying future improvements and communicating those to shareholders, customers, employees and other stakeholders.

In a recent cross-industry study of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) best practices, 74% of the companies surveyed said that they had a formal PLM process in place. However, nearly half of them said that their processes weren’t really being used. This disparity between process implementation and process adoption is particularly remarkable given that a growing number of today’s businesses are dependent upon innovation and new product success for their business future. This session will examine why so many companies attempting to deploy process frameworks for product development either have limited success or fail. It will look at how even the best-designed system can be undermined by factors ranging from unfavorable corporate culture and lack of visible management support to inadequate tools and lack of alignment with business strategy. The presentation will feature case examples of companies that have successfully implemented a deliverables-based PLM process, the challenges these companies faced, and the critical factors that enabled them to establish a process framework that consistently delivers substantial, measurable business benefit.

An appraisal of marketplace acceptance should be at the heart of a decision to move a product concept out of the front end and into commercial development. It is prospective customers’ acceptance or rejection of the product concept that controls demand for your new product.

This presentation champions interviewing by telephone as a quick and inexpensive tool for gathering accurate information about prospective customers' acceptance of a product concept. Desirable customers will describe how and why they value the benefits of your product concept. Many will specify where your concept’s benefits fall short of what would excite them about a commercial product. Some, the lead users, will offer to work with you to reshape the concept to improve the benefits.

Six Sigma for Marketing Processes

Recent 2004 PDMA survey data indicates, 16 % of product failures are caused by “inadequate market analysis” and 14 % by “lack of effective marketing effort.” Our new book “Six Sigma for Marketing Processes” address these issues by showing how six sigma tools, methods and best practices can be applied within the product development process to make fact based decisions, reduce risk and grow revenues according to plan. The first printing sold out quickly in part because co-author Skip Creveling wrote a bestseller on product development engineering in 2003 called “Design for Six Sigma.”

Together, these books show how marketing and engineering efforts can be integrated at the critical front end of the product development process; a proven industry best practice that’s hard to implement.

Implementing Integrated Product Development In The Product Centric Agile Enterprise

Stephen Armstrong will talk about elements from six well-known and understood bodies of knowledge: integrated product development, project management, process management, systems engineering, product data management, and organizational change management. These elements are framed within an overall enterprise-wide architecture. The techniques discussed work for both huge multinational organizations and smaller enterprises. The emphasis throughout is on practical tools for engineers, managers, and consultants responsible for project and product development

Cross Functional Team Leadership

In best-in-class companies, product managers are assigned to run cross functional product teams. Rarely do PMs have any authority, but they generally have full responsibility! We will touch on why cross functional teams are so effective and spend most of the meeting on how to ...

Creating Breakthrough Products (Product Management Skills Series) - Joint Event with IDSA

The Fortune 500 companies are managing innovation in ways that the
Fortune 5000-50,000 need to learn and integrate. Managing innovation in a competitive global markets requires, wholistic innovation that
is customer focused on a level that is much broader and deeper than
ever before.

Big Company to Small Company (and back): How to make a successful Transition (Product Management Experience Series)

The marketplace is hopping and so are Product Managers! The days of lifetime employment are long gone and PM professionals need to be prepared to transition and get up to speed fast to function effectively in multiple types of environments, small companies and large, pre and post acquisition. This session will address the job function in different and changing environments. Why scramble at the last minute when you have to adapt, think about this now and be prepared!

An Evening to See What You Think! (Product Management Experience Series)

Mark Perline, Market Research Manager for Pitney Bowes, along with Dr. Trudy Williams of The Company Crayon, Inc., will be presenting unique market research case studies from one of the world’s top companies in business technology and office products. The research approach: Concept Cartoons™, an award-winning, innovative format for visually conveying and communicating new ideas and products.

Market Launch: The Forgotten Phase of NPD (Product Management Experience Series)

Successfully launching new products gets tougher every year. In the past decade, the number of new consumer products hitting the shelves has skyrocketed by 59%, making it much more difficult for new products to win consumer attention.

If you've built a better mousetrap and plan to introduce it into this tidalwave of new products, it is more critical than ever to carefully plan and execute your launch using a strategic approach.

Here are some classic mistakes companies make when developing new product launch campaigns. Avoiding these pitfalls will greatly increase your odds of success.

Modern QFD and the Voice of the Customer (Product Management Thought Leaders Series)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a quality system for assuring customer satisfaction through the efficient delivery of value. You’ve probably heard the phrase “voice of the customer”, but did you know it comes from QFD? What tools and techniques exist for listening to the Voice of the Customer? And how can we accurately prioritize customer needs? Or customer projects?

New York SCIP & PDMA Joint Chapter Meeting: Predicting Outcomes: Winners and Losers in Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive Innovation, a theory created by Harvard professor Clayton Christenson, refers to the products or systems that create entirely new markets. Aurora WDC CEO Arik R. Johnson, a noted competitive intelligence strategist, will speak on how all organizations can gain competitive advantage by understanding and anticipating the threats and opportunities from their current and future rivals. According to Johnson, “Innovation is present in most businesses but it is usually neither recognized nor promoted.”

Using Strategic Alliances to Develop New Products: Road Warrior or Road Kill, it's your Choice (Product Management Thought Leaders Series)

Dr. Slowinski will describe the Alliance Framework, a rigorous, structured approach for forming and managing external product development relationships. He will also describe powerful solutions to problems that destroy most alliances including intellectual property issues, cultural mis-matches, and poorly designed decision making /communication structures.
Come prepared to share your non-proprietary tools and metrics. This will be a very interactive presentation.

Strategic Roadmapping (Product Management Experience Series)

Investment decisions impacting an organization’s product and technology portfolios are constantly being made at all levels. Furthermore, each functional area is striving to optimize their portion of the business within an environment containing risk and uncertainty. Alignment between these investments and product line, divisional, and corporate strategies is becoming increasingly complex given today’s fast-paced competitive markets.

This presentation details Agere's Strategic Roadmapping methodology that spans Sales to Supply Chain, and New Product Development to Portfolio Management, and also describes how we are utilizing roadmaps to successfully align product and technology investments to revenue and growth.

Product Development on a Shoestring (Product Management Experience Series)

Are you in the information and software industry or wish you were? Then learn from our speaker's experience in:

• Scoring tricks for selecting and prioritizing potential products (how to quickly decide what to work on when every department has their own “must have” project, product, or enhancement list?)

• Minimum requirements for transitioning from product development to execution

• How much analysis is enough? Alternatives to extensive (and expensive) market research

• Product R&D through pilot rollout (with case studies)