Why should I change? Business is doing just great!
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: Product Engineering
Jorma Ollila: "We were very much looking at the Sales, when we should have looked much further into the future"
This is a comment from ex-CEO, ex-Chairman of the Board Jorma Ollila when he was asked in the interview why Finnish Nokia's mobile handset side lost to the competition, broke down and was later sold to Microsoft with known results.
We who have been on board the company, of course know that many other things influenced also. But one has to agree. Company was very much accustomed being a cash cow, and seemingly difficult to change the mode to cannibalise it's own product portfolio with disruptive technologies or new types of products. Somehow it was easier to make "delta products" - the same except some new improvements like better display or camera. But world does not work that way.
This gives us an important lesson - stay agile and stay almost paranoid towards competition (like Intel's Andy Grove wrote in his book a long time ago, at least when measured in the internet time)
Digitalization brings new possibilities. Something that was not possible suddenly is.
Artificial Intelligence, or Machine Learning has not advanced, except suddenly now it has, when big data and analytics have provided the data for the "machine to learn".
Big companies are suddenly been disrupted by the new entrants. Banking will never be the same, renting and taxi business have already changed.
How should you approach this? As world has become quite unpredictable, the only way is to experiment yourself out of it.
Use Lean Startup methods to navigate in a pragmatic way to find the best products and business models. This is not some "consultant foam" but actually very pragmatic way forward.
Write assumptions on your products and markets - and test them (today in many places Product marketing/ R&D write their use cases and implement them without much verification)
Start using minimum viable products to test the markets.
Many companies seem not just to have a portfolio of products, but also portfolio of business cases.
"Lets be careful out there"
Jukka Märijärvi,
jukka.marijarvi at landon dot fi
Requirements Engineering
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: Requirements
Requirements Engineering is often overlooked. But the right requirements actually mean both how well you are able to meet customer expectations and select the right work for your team. So they are the key for a successful product development and high customer experience.
Textbook divides Requirements Engineering into Requirements development and Requirements Management.
We discuss these and many others under this topic.
Portfolio Management
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: Portfolio Management
Portfolio management - here: products and services portfolio management - is an activity where company creates a portfolios of it's products and services. There should be at least two portfolios: the current ones under sales, and the future ones: the products and services that are under development and entering the sales later.
The purpose of the portfolio management is to optimize the profit ie. directing the investments so that the company gets the maximum return of the investments.
Metrics in Agile/lean practices
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: Software Development
What to measure when one has agile/ scrum based product development? Many we have met, measure burn down charts, but not really that much else. What should you?
Internal Start-ups
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: Internal Start-ups
Internal start-ups are an interesting new possibility where the well known start-up concept is transferred into corporate setting. Why would you do it?
First of all, many bigger corporations have the problem that how to keep innovation culture virile enough and on people's agenda. Many have corporate innovation tools where ideas are collected and then further processed. Based on my experience this process needs constant re-vitalization to keep active enough. It somehow needs additional elements to succeed.
The cookbook on Successful Internal Startups
- Tietoja
- Kategoria: General
Many of my colleagues working in big companies are wondering what it would be like to work in a startup.
And should they try it, as they are unhappy with their roles or corporate politics in their current jobs.
Ever though the reverse? What if you started a startup like operation in a big company?
We have written a book about it, the book is called The cookbook on Successful Internal Startups.
It is free - and no registration is needed, so don't worry.
Have a go, and share what feelings it raised.