Open Thread: Presenting at Code Freeze 2008

Jamie Thingelstad’s Personal Website

Open Thread: Presenting at Code Freeze 2008

I’m presenting at Code Freeze 2008 in January. The title of my presentation is Innovation in Product Development.

Everyone wants to have the next hot product. We are constantly “pushing
the envelope” and “thinking out of the box”. We have the aspiration, but
in many cases it doesn’t happen. In this discussion we will review key
aspects to fostering innovation in a development team, creating room to
play and ultimately making great products.

I’ve got some ideas for my presentation and a theme I’m thinking of winding it through. However, I’m curious if you all have anything to say on this topic. What do you think drives innovation in product development? What are the key contributing factors that you see?

Let me know what you think.

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Written by Jamie

December 4th, 2007 at 12:25 am

Posted in Events, Techie

Tagged with Code Freeze, innovation, Presentation, Product Development

2 Responses to 'Open Thread: Presenting at Code Freeze 2008'

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Nose at the grindstone style work greatly hampers innovation. I worked for six years in an R&D shop that was being leap frogged by the market. We were working on Medical Imaging Software, but the engineers working on the product never used it, never saw it used, and never saw the environment in which it was used.
Need is said to be the mother of invention, and the only way to identify and explore need, is to be exposed to the industry in which it takes place.
On the other hand, folks who are exposed to an industry, either from inside or as marketing, sale and support staff, will have less of a notion of what current technology can do. They only see what technology has already reached the Marketplace.

To innovate, the current and future needs of an industry have to come into contact with current and future trends in technology.

In my opinion, the best way to do this, is to expose the technology staff directly to the industry; either through cooperation with sales and Marketing, or better still with direct contact with the end users or the target audience of a product.

The most innovative products often come from spin offs from consulting projects. This is because that is where industry need meets available technology head-on.

IMHO of course.

In other words: Engineers must be exposed to clients, trade shows, and

Charles Filson

14 Jan 08 at 10:45 am
To foster innovation, companies should always focus on customers and not always technology. True, technology enables innovation but seldom is the seed. An almost obsessive attention should be given to users.

Many companies are taking an “ethnographic” approach to innovation…actually observing customers and understanding the target demographic. A great example of this was Whirlpool’s recent innovation of placing its frontloading washers on a pedestal. It came from them observing a woman who had placed her Whirlpool dryer upon cinderblocks, to make it easier to load and unload it without having to bend over.

Paul Olstad

15 Jan 08 at 8:07 am