I promise, this will be my last post about product camps for a little while. But, I am in a unique position to share some thoughts. I have attended three of these events over the last four months – starting with Boston in November, Minneapolis in January and Atlanta in February. And, I’m not a sponsor.

What did I learn? Well, the obvious response is that I learned a ton about product management and marketing topics, as well as networked with great people in the field with whom I share challenges and opportunities. All of the events were well worth attending.

What was different? The logistics were changed. The number of attendees varied. Each product camp had some shared sponsors, and some unique to their market. The Boston and Atlanta product camps followed tradition and had food brought in (boxed lunches), while the Minneapolis event was a “catered” affair using the facilities’ services.

What struck me as the greatest difference were the presentations that each city had for their audience. Boston had more people step forward for social media topics and more “instructional” sessions; Minneapolis seemed to have more “strategic” and leadership sessions; and, Atlanta had a larger focus on development issues (as related to product management) than the other two.

Looking in from the outside, the takeaway here is that each product camp knew their market and responded with a format that worked in each city. In product marketing, we adhere to one rule – Know thy market. These camps did, they responded to what their individual market sought, and it worked. I would say that each was highly successful and I am confident that the other attendees would agree.

(If you haven’t attended a product camp, and invest in yourself and do so. A list of planned events can be found here.)

How iQuote can help you to forecast. We have just added some figures to the Management Portal that displays Value of Exported Quotes. If a Saved quote gets re-exported we only show the latest export value (avoids double counting but does make historic numbers fluid). This will give the Sales Management a good view of utilisation but it doesn’t differentiate between an open or closed quote.

Pipeline View.
We’ll soon be introducing another view of quotes: ‘pipeline’ will give total values for all active quotes. Useful for forecasting…! Assuming all Sales (and Customers) use iQuote and that when a quote is won or lost it is removed iQuote will show your pipeline for HP and the Business Unit. OK so life isn’t always that simple but we will add new features that move you towards that goal.

Understanding potential future business is a key component in Vendor Management.

Was almost ecstatic reading the below!  Thinking of having our whole team memorize this before we get onto the next great debate on the next great idea

Development knows what can be built;
product management knows what should be built.

Marketing knows how to communicate;
product management knows what to communicate.

Sales knows what one customer wants to buy;
product management knows what a market full of customers want to buy.

Courtesy: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/strategic-role-of-product-management

For me marketing is to plan, manage and execute a strategy to acquire a customer and second to maintain and grow a customer profit.

But how can I maintain or even grow the customer profit?, simply, by understanding the customer so well that the product and/or service fits him/her and sells itself.

Marketing is practised by:

1. Analysing marketing opportunities,
2. selecting target markets,
3. designing positioning strategies,
4. developing marketing mix programmes and
5. managing the marketing effort

By analysing marketing opportunities, I understand to keep looking for new ideas/businesses, never stop or think that there is no more ahead, always keep moving.

There are opportunities out there in the market, but almost always companies are too immerse into its business that they are blind and can’t see what is ahead or even worst what is happening around.

- New products and/or services
- Improving existing products/services
- Complementary new or existing businesses
- A 180 degree change in the business model
- A 360 degree view

Samples:

3M: founded in 1902 its main business was mining. In 1925 the Scotch tape is created and 3M start moving towards new businesses. Today 3M market from health care and highway safety to office products and abrasives and adhesives.

Zara: this company studied the marketing mix variables and saw that global supply network management, store layout and design, were more important than marketing expenditure on advertising, the opposite of Benetton.

Zed: we in Zed (I am a project leader within the TV Division) are constantly looking for innovations in entertainment and in different platforms PC/Mac, mobile, online, console, TV and cinema.

Marketing managers must be alert to see market opportunities everywhere. as Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, noted:

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small any more. It will be the fast beating the slow

In this blog, I am not going to talk about usability or accessibility, although without these to elements the design is worthless, so I will write about these in a future post.

As the proverb say “last impression last”, in the same way, the visual appearance of the website is the first thing the visitors will notice.

The basic principles are:

1. Contrast using elements that differ somehow in the same space provides visual interest.

2. Repetition repeating design elements throughout a web page and a website, provides visual stability to the site design.

3. Alignment refers to lining up the top, bottom, sides, or middle of certain graphic elements on a page. This helps to create cohesion and a more logical user experience.

4. Proximity helps to show relationships between elements.

To do list:

- Look and feel of the website on the logo and company colors.
- Design concepts on purpose, requirements and visitor needs.
- Flexible design.
- Keep it simple.

In the previous blog, I explained the Discovery phase, so the next phase is Definition.

These are the steps I follow:

1. Google

What I mean by Google is that we do not have to invent the wheel, we have to look out there and try to make things better.

So working on the Meteor online store, I looked at Amazon, Best Buy, Apple and BBC as a reference for best practices.

2. Sketches

There is a very good video that I have embedded to explain how to create sketches. The video has been produced and presented by Adaptive Path a great UX company in San Francisco (USA), so let’s see the video.

3. Wireframes

Once you know what you need on paper, then you can prepare wireframes. I use for this Axure, without doubt one of the best tools for rapidly creating wireframes.

While creating wireframes these are my opinions:

- Start creating a story (user search a product, select product, checkout process)
- Create clickable wireframes
- Start wireframing core elements of the solution, do not create any “nice to have”
- Do not add colours or look & feel distractions
- When you finish, try to simplify the wireframe (cut it on a half)

A wireframe will look like this:

wireframes online store

4. Specifications

I know a wireframe is not a technical specification, but it will help developers to understand what is required and then visualise how they are going to develop the solution.

I am not a fan of long specifications and I explain why on this blog Are functional specifications good?.

But there are projects like an online store, where we need integration with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Entrerpise Resource Planning (ERP) or Content Management System (CMS), so one (1) or max two (2) pages technical document is a good element to have in order to explain the technical details but not specifying how these will be developed.

The technical document must be written by developers for every single person involved in the project, but in the mean time everyone must understand what is written, even if they are not technicians.

Once we have specified the solution considering at the top of every single decision the Business and User goals, the next step is Design, and this will be explained in the next blog.

When I started at MediaOne, my good irish boss Colm Troy told me “Carlose, we are going to start an exciting project on ecommerce so I want you to get your hands dirty”.

The parties were Meteor the Irish mobile communications provider with almost 20% market share (30 September 2009) and Sigma the leading distributor for mobile and digital lifestyle product and accessories in the Irish market.

Irish mobile market

In the previous image we can see the role of Sigma as a channel development partner or a distributor for Meteor, so when Meteor requires more products, is Sigma who negotiates with the manufacturers, in this case LG , Nokia and HTC.

Once you now the market structure and who is who, the next step is identify business and user goals.

1. Business goals:

- Revenue: maximising the volume of B2B sales
- Return on Investment (ROI): Enabling Sigma and Meteor to gain maximum ROI
- Process efficiencies: Improve experience for customers and telesales staff
- Customer loyalty achieved via a superior B2B technology platform
- Part of a larger Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach: CRM is best thought of as the amalgamation of
all the various customer touch points and the exploitation of that information

2. User goals:

- Easy search, navigation and accurate product info
- Providing simple and clear check-out processes
- Not requiring customers to opt-out of additional charges or marketing sign-ups
- Using secure connections to collect credit card details

After knowing this, the Discovery of the project is completed, the challange from now on is to merge the business and user goals and to have these at the top of every single decision.

The next step is Definition and will be explained in the next blog.

Although this might be simple, but to be honest all what you need to do is to

focus on your existing customers, figuring out what they require and make their life easier.

There is no point wasting your time and money marketing your products and services to people who aren’t interested in what you are selling. You need to communicate with the people who matter most to your business and do it better than your competition.

How can a company target the right customers?

1) Always you’ve to know who your customers and prospects are, this will help you to understand your business and plan the strategies based on your market.

2) Of course, not all your customers are profitable so you’ve to find the difference between the revenues earned from and the costs associated with the customer relationship in a specified period of time.

3) Once you know the profitability of each customer, you’ve to decide which customers you want to attract or keep from losing. Please note that customers that are not profitable today can be tomorrow and also some customers are very active users of your products and provide you with good feedback and references.

The next step is to create a customer profile to understand their characteristics, attitudes and buying behaviours. The following questions will help you on this:

1. Who are they, where are they located?

2. How aware are your customers of your brand related to your competition?

3. How much do they spend?

4. How often do they buy from you?

5. How do they buy and where?

6. Why are they buying your products, what reasons do they have?

7.  How do they use your products?

8. What will they improve in the product, buying experience and relationship with you?

The more you know about your existing customers the more you will make them feel special and increase their loyalty

A user center project approach relies on the user and the business goals to design and develop cost effective solutions.

At the beginning of the project to gather all the requirements (Discovery phase) is the key foundation where the solution will stand.

A project team will start working at this stage, we call this team “User Team”:

1. The agency team: business analyst, developer and project manager

2. The client team: real user, intended user, tester, designer and product manager

The purpose of gathering these people is to write user stories. Each user story contains a short description of user valued functionality called story card.

For instance a story card can be this: “A property seeker can view properties that match a post code look-up”.

Notice that this “card” is the visible part of a story, but the most valuable thing is the conversations between the agency and user teams.

The User Team then, is responsible to write the stories because they are the best to express the required functionality and also because they have to express these to the development team.

These stories must be written with details, but too much detail can affect the approach to develop the story. One approach is to write a test cases in the back of the story so the developer will know the criteria to accept the functionality described.

For instance a test case can be this: “A valid post code will be a 6 digit code – AB1CD2”.

How to write the stories:

1. To clearly identify these stories, start by considering the goals of each user using the solution.

2. Write short stories for the functionality the team will develop soon, and write high level stories considered in future project phases.

3. Include the user role in the story, e.g. content administrator, system administrator, frontend user and so on.

Once the stories are completed, the team will estimate the development length of each story, prioritise these and then prepare a release plan.

This is the seventh post in my Customer Research series.

Usability research for consumer electronics products can be very costly.  There are companies that specialize in doing it the right way, with high end audio/video equipment and multi-stream video editing and compositing integrated into the program.  The deliverable is typically an incredibly insightful presentation with snippets of video that tell a compelling story all by themselves.

Since I work with startups and small businesses, I have never had the luxury of doing it “right”.   My theory is that some research trumps no research.  So I butcher best practices until they become unrecognizable but affordable (deepest apologies to Scott Weiss who taught me how to do it the right way!)

I usually start with a research protocol that clearly states the questions we want to answer, provides a guideline for recruitment and lists the props required for the session, which includes a mini-DVD camcorder and a tripod.   Then I design the session, which is videotaped throughout.  I try to stay inside of 1h if at all possible.

Let’s say I am comparing the usability of two smart phones for working moms aged 35-45, with at least one child under the age of 12 living in their house.  The session could look something like this:

• Introductions and orientation – explain purpose of research to subject and let them know what to expect (5 min)
• Execute any paperwork, such as an NDA, a photo and video release forms, and a profiling questionnaire (5 min)
• Ask the subject to familiarize themselves with Device 1. Product manuals are provided to the subject. (5 min)
• Repeat with Device 2. (5 min)
• Ask the subject to execute a scripted task list for Device 1.  Tasks tend to be fairly specific – for instance, I could ask them to make a call, send and receive a text message, check traffic, take a picture, upload a picture to a computer, take a video, etc.  Ask them to verbalize what they are doing as they try things out (but do not offer hints or commentary – we are there to watch and learn, not to talk.)  (10 min)
• Repeat with Device 2. (10 min)
• Debrief – loosely guided interview to ask subjects to rate the usability of each task on a scale of 1 to 5, as well as answer some open ended questions about their general impressions and perceptions (20 minutes)
• Present the incentive check (typically $50-100, depending on the nature of the study).

This format is great at providing a sanity check for the out-of-box experience for consumer electronics devices.  Can the end user figure out how to set up a new device and get it working without groaning and gnashing of teeth?  Lots of times they can’t.  I’ve learned so much about what’s wrong with the current packaging design and documentation from watching subjects struggle through product setup.   It is very hard to keep quiet and not offer suggestions along the way… but the learnings are priceless.

As with all other kinds of research, I am aggressive about inviting engineering team members to be observers in these sessions.  This is the best way to help them understand who they are designing for and why certain feature enhancements are necessary to ensure an awesome user experience.

A fun article appeared today on Silicon Alley Insider:

Silicon Alley Insider: What’s It Like Working for LinkedIn by Nicholas Carlson

It’s a short piece that covers the basics of working for a hyper-growth, late stage web 2.0 startup.  The piece begins with the following:

During a recent trip out to the Bay Area, we swung by the LinkedIn world headquarters.

We learned that LinkedIn may be the “serious” social network, but the people behind the site know how to have fun.

They wear gorilla suits to the office. They play frisbee golf around cubicles. Sometimes, they build robots modeled after each other.

Sounds like fun, right?  The article has a 24-slide series of photos to illustrate the trip.   The slide show is called:

LinkedIn is Made by Robots and Men in Gorilla Suits

It turns out that I am, in fact, the Man in the Gorilla Suit.

On Slide 17, you see a picture of the large stuffed gorilla that sits next to me at work:

I asked Kay, “what’s with the stuffed bear?” Her answer: “Get your facts right, it’s a stuffed gorilla. Sheesh.” It belongs to VP Adam Nash…

On the next slide, they provide the snapshot from the FAQ page on the company store, where I’m posing in gorilla suit, wearing a LinkedIn t-shirt:

…who is sometimes known to wear a gorilla suit around the office.

As my brother would say, “It’s funny because it’s true.”

It turns out that the Gorilla suit is just about my favorite Halloween costume.  Originally an eBay purchase in 2005, I wear it every year to the office.

So now you know.

When I worked at IBM a very successful sales executive was fond of telling me  ”Customers don’t want choice.  They want to be told what to buy”.

I was reminded of this recently when I was purchasing a GPS unit.  I landed on Garmin as the brand of choice, and then researched which product to buy.  Well, that’s no easy task (see their store).  Between the prices of $120 and $500 there are no fewer than 25 current products, and 12 products in the $200-300 range.  I gave up, went to Best Buy and asked a sales person for the difference between a couple Garmin units – they were forced to read bullet-point descriptions off of price tags trying to come up with an intelligent answer, which they were unable to do.

Why does this happen?  Creating different products at unique price points make sense.  For example, Apple’s iPod line starting with the Shuffle, then the Nano and ending with the Touch (and I guess you can slot in the Classic if you need massive storage).  But a dozen very similar products from the same company within a $100 window?  There is no way the benefits of this “choice” are not outweighed by design, manufacturing, inventory, training and support costs – and I haven’t even mentioned the biggest issue – customer confusion.

At least with technology, customers expect that the company they’re buying from are the experts and are relying on them to specify what they need and should buy.  Creating confusion by giving customers broad choice is simply asking a competitor to enter the market and simplify the problem.  It’s also lazy – what’s really being said is you don’t know or care what the customer wants, so you’ll throw everything out there and let them figure it out themselves.

It seems though engineering-driven businesses can’t seem to help themselves.

A Product Roadmap can have many different definitions, but overall it’s a document that tells the story of how the product vision will be developed, evaluated and executed over a period of time. It’s not a project plan, though the product roadmap may be supported by one or many project plans. And it’s not a requirements document, though it may depict high-level product features or new product concepts. So, you may be wondering why a product roadmap is important for a company like ours? And how the product roadmap differs from the Company vision and long-range goals? Well, check out this excerpt from an article on product roadmaps from Pragmatic Marketing:

When you have a one-product company, it’s important to separate the Product Roadmap from the roadmap for the company. As the company grows, strategies and tactics for funding, acquisition and partnership are separate from the product vision. You want to be prepared for the day when there’s more than one product line (for example, when the same software is applied to a new target market, requiring different messages, marketing plans and campaigns.

By separating the two roadmaps early on, the company is ready to scale and change independent of the product, and vice versa.

Now, there will be many stops along the road as we develop the stories in the product roadmap and we’ll frequently ask ourselves, Are we there yet? Do our products reflect the value needed to make them top of mind within our target customer groups? Are we growing market share? Do we have a whole product? And if the answer to those questions is “no” then we will reevaluate and make the necessary adjustments to the roadamp…but that’s okay. More on changing roadmaps from Pragmatic Marketing:

None of us, even if we have a great map, can see very far ahead in the changing landscape of business today. The Product Roadmap may lead you in a direction that proves to lead your company somewhere you didn’t want to go.

Be prepared to change direction and modify the Product Roadmap as often as necessary. And help the rest of the team be comfortable with and clear on the changes.

Nobody said a map can never change. But a lot of people expect it not to. The Product Manager’s job is to help keep people comfortable with the changes in direction, explaining them until everyone has a minimum level of understanding, acceptance, and agreement.

Contact me if you’d like to review or provide feedback on the 2010 Product Roadmap.

Google’s product management needs to get in the same room and work on there local ad strategy. Amazingly, Google has launched yet ANOTHER way to pay for a listing using a self-service platform that small businesses continue to ignore.  For an overview  go to Greg Sterling’s post on Search Engine Land. (you can read this post in the comments)

Get your listing on Google in 31 easy steps. (Clarification for those who have emailed/tweeted to me: This is sarcasm, there is no real step-by-step instructions to this)

1. Follow steps 1 thru 7 to set up your LBL in the LBC. (Free)

2. Follow steps 8 though 19 to set up an AdWords account with LBA (now called Local Ad Extensions) to link to your listing. (PPC)

3. Follow steps 20 thru 23 to set up an LLA to appear between the map listings and the algo results (Variable Fixed Fee)

4. Follow rules 24 – 31 to set up an Enhanced LBA (Fixed fee)

Um…what?!

Obviously I’m not a big fan of Google’s new ad formats. I mentioned my dislike of the LLA in my prior over-dramatic post.

We have a request in for a hedge fund in NYC for a Jr. VBA Developer (client seeking 3 years experience or less).  The candidate needs to have US work authorization (US Citizen or Green Card).  Brokerage experience is required.  The job opportunity is listed below.  Referrals are welcomed and appreciated!

Resumes may be submitted to Konian@CareersOnTheMove.com

Also note,  we have 17 openings for a risk management software firm on Long Island. Positions are posted at www.CareersOnTheMove.com. Positions include Client Support (Jr. spot), Technical Analyst (Jr. spot), Technical Trainer, various Software Development spots, QA, Director of Marketing (commodities exp.), Product Mgmt. and Project Mgmt.

I’ve taken an extended break from blogging. I have a myriad of reasons and excuses, but I’ll refrain from boring you with all that. The reality, I’m immersed in the garage phase of a startup company. The company will be a cloud-based services company and I’m juggling a number priorities such as prototype development and funding. Anyway, a great presentation, which I came across while considering funding options, is the following slideshow from Mint.com. It outlines their journey through the stages of funding.

Mint.coms Accounting for Startups

Some additional information about Mint.com’s funding strategy can found here.

It has been quite a long time since I posted here about eBay.  I still use the site regularly (I typically still list at least a few things every month), and while I may tweet about things from time to time, I rarely feel the need for a full blog post.

On January 21st, Ikai Lan (@ikai) posted this tweet:

What’s the big deal, right?  So what if Ikai found a better deal on Amazon for his Star Trek geekfest?

Here’s the big deal. This was my response to Ikai:

The issue here isn’t that I was somewhat obnoxious (although clearly, I was a bit obnoxious).  Ikai & I worked together at LinkedIn, so it’s not unexpected to have a little bit of fun with the back & forth on Twitter.

The problem is that Ikai is a smart, technical guy.  He’s also someone who looks for a good deal.  If someone like Ikai thinks that Amazon has a cheaper price on an item like the complete DVD collection for Star Trek DS9, then eBay has a real problem.

eBay’s Value Problem

When I wrote my Eulogy for eBay Express in 2008, I talked about four key value propositions that eBay navigates: value, selection, trust and convenience.  One of the motivating factors behind eBay Express was trying to find a way to leverage eBay’s huge advantages in value and selection, while shoring up perceived weaknesses in trust and convenience.

But here we are in 2010, and while eBay has the item, apples-to-apples, for over $100 less than Amazon.com – Ikai didn’t know it.  And you know what?  If a low price falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound… or a sale.

eBay’s Value Problem is actually a Search Problem

The point is, despite the fact that Ikai is an engineer working at Google, he couldn’t find the item.  So a $115 price advantage was nullified.   Why?

I’m not a 100% sure what Ikai did to identify the proposed “$350 price”.  When I searched on eBay, I found literally dozens of items priced below $300, many of which were from top sellers, and many of which that offered returns.  In fact, I saw items as low as $130, but I tried to find the lowest priced item that matched the quality of service Ikai would expect from an Amazon third party seller.

Of course, I’ve been on eBay since 1998, and I spent years working on structured data and search products at eBay, so I have a hunch why I found the items and he didn’t.

He typed the wrong query. My guess is that he typed something like this “Star Trek DS9 season 1-7” in the DVD category.  Makes sense, right?  Unfortunately, this only returns two items, the cheapest of which is $299.

Despite years of investment, the eBay search engine still doesn’t understand that “DS9 = Deep Space Nine”, and that “1-7″ is a range, and that “season” is an attribute that DVD sets for television series can have.

Now, what I did do?  Simple:

1. I typed the query “deep space (nine, 9)”
2. I selected the category for DVD
3. I selected “Buy It Now” for listing type
4. I sorted from highest price to lowest

Let’s review the tricks I used:

1. The () notation is how the eBay search engine does OR.  So I was able to find listings with both “nine” and “9″ in them.  To be fancy, I could have used “DS9″ in there too, but it wasn’t necessary.
2. Filter to DVD category to clean out other clutter.
3. I figured Ikai didn’t want to bid on an auction
4. Sorting from high to low is a counter-intuitive trick, but if you assume that the collection will be more expensive than individual DVDs, it makes sense.  I use this all the time with high priced items, since quality tends to float to the top.

I then scanned down the list to find the cheapest collection sold by a credible seller (someone with high feedback and % satisfaction).  And then I tweeted it to Ikai.

Would anyone else know how to do this? Would anyone else want to do this?

I do it, largely because I still love eBay, and because I actually know how to do it.  Plus, I really appreciate saving money on items like this, so the $115 is worth a few minutes.

But all I know is that if eBay can’t leverage it’s intrinsic price advantage with buyers like Ikai, then it has a serious problem.  They can never beat Amazon or traditional retailer e-commerce sites on trust and convenience.  They can, however, beat them on price and selection.

But customers have to be able to find those advantages to value them.

Is it just me or have you also been experiencing this problem lately?

I’ve recently had a number of really unbelievably bad customer service incidents. One was with a wireless carrier — should I be surprised?? — and another, a real doozy that I’ll detail in the near future on this blog, with an online retailer. A third one happened at a restaurant during a recent trip.

The restaurant incident was small next to the other two but strange in it’s own way. I went for an early dinner at a Pakistani restaurant in the Bay Area. There were only a few customers in the restaurant at the time, and only two of us who had placed orders for food. The others were already eating.

The waiter brought out some food and gave it to the other customer. I looked over and thought, wow, what a coincidence. It looked like he had ordered virtually the same dishes I had. The customer started eating his meal and I didn’t pay much attention to him beyond that.

About 10 minutes later, the waiter brought out my order; or at least what he thought was my order. As he placed the food on the table, I looked at it and said, this doesn’t look like what I ordered.  The waiter started speaking out the names of the dishes, and the other customer — seated a couple of tables away — perked up, and said to the waiter, “I think that’s what I ordered.”

The waiter looked at him, somewhat puzzled and asked “Are you sure?”

“Yes, pretty sure”, the customer replied.

The waiter asked him, “Do you want this food as well?”

Much to my surprise, the customer said “Yes” and the waiter took the food over to his table.

The waiter returned, gave me a very brief apology — “Sorry about that sir.” — and went back to the kitchen.

I eventually got my meal. It was a small incident, but I still can’t understand the following:

1. How, at a very slow time, with only two customers ordering food, had the waiter completely forgotten who ordered what?
2. Why, after making the mistake, they thought that “Sorry about that sir” was all that was needed?
3. How the other customer failed to realize he’d received entirely the wrong meal and didn’t alert the waiter?
4. How that customer expected to eat two full meals of food?

Customer service may be dead, but in this one case, at least one appetite was very healthy.

Question: Should I have expected more than a simple apology? Or was my expectation too high?

Saeed

Time is running out on the #1 topic – creating jobs.  The Sunday papers and TV pundits are all finally agreeing on the same thing- this could be a jobless recovery through the next 4 years.  The stats are overwhelming in their magnitude.  One pundit said “we would have to create 150,000 net new jobs each month for 48 months just to lower unemployment to 9%”.  An article in the press says unemployment will increase before it comes down, through at least this year.  Driving by Port Elizabeth yesterday on the NJ Turnpike, I saw mountains of shipping containers, where 2 years ago not a single container or trailer chassis was in sight.  Nothing is coming in our out.

Contrast this to a picture on the front page of yesterday’s NY Times news section.  In full color there were 7 workers making wind turbine blades.  The very kind of work we can do here if it were not for the little fact that China is rapidly becoming the world’s leading supplier of wind energy parts. Same way we’re dependent on OPEC for oil, we could be dependent on China for wind turbines.  European companies are responding to the Chinese market by opening plants there, and I suppose GE and our suppliers could do likewise, but that does not help our unemployment situation back home.  The article also mentioned how Chinese state owned banks back these new ventures.  I’m not trying to say all of China’s new energy generation will be green, but I am trying to point out that vision, on the part of a people, a government and banks can rally a country to prosperity.

Vision on a grand scale can have immediate impact.  There’s an early stage maglev train project under development for a high speed line between Washington, DC and Baltimore, 40 miles away.  This project is estimated to provide 16,000 man-years of construction work and another 500 man-years of annual operation/upkeep. That doesn’t even include the rolling stock.  So the real way to bring down unemployment is not just by opening a few stores here and there and basically waiting  it out.  Our only way out of this is to put on our vision goggles and think big.

We need a national dialog on our next ‘man on the moon’, that huge scary, audacious goal capable of energizing the population.  Perhaps we can have a national focus on reversing pollution, or racing China for wind turbine leadership, just as long as it has two traits, 1- it’s a huge leaping goal, and 2 – the average person ’gets it’ and feels it.  The list is long. It has to take on the form of an Industrial Policy, combining tax credits, education, financing by our banks/PE funds and most importantly, it has to have the status within our society formerly accorded hi-tech.  It has to be so important, it’s hands-off to our current political stalemate. The President’s new budget can be debated but one part is unfortunately clear – without ascribing blame, we’re in over our heads in debt and there are only a few ways out.  We can either hope and pray for some breakthrough political compromises (sure!) or hope for massive growth.  Since ‘hope is not a strategy’, we need to plan and execute.  The default path is to wane and I deeply fear that is the path we’ll take by doing nothing.

Moribund societies think in terms of former glories, limited current resources, structural unemployment-brain drains and their “proper place in the new order”.  They think small and personal and their overall society reflects this lack of vision.  We need to redefine ‘too big to fail’ to be a positive, constructive part of our new shared Industrial Policy.

Rich Eichen is a Managing Principal of Return on Efficiency, LLC, who’s website is www.growroe.com and is one of their senior turnaround leaders/CROs, Program and Interim Executives with over 25 years experience reshaping companies, Operations and key initiatives. He can be reached at richard.eichen@growroe.com

This is the sixth post in my Customer Research series.

When I do qualitative research, invariably someone would say: “oh, so you are doing focus groups!” which usually makes me cringe.  The reality is that 99% of the time I am not doing focus groups.   I may be doing detailed interviews or observations which are 1-on-1 techniques.  Or I may be doing a photo essay or journal study.  Or I may be doing roundtable discussions.

For those, I adhere to the same best practices one uses to run focus groups:

• Include no more than 8 participants per session.
• Craft a screening questionnaire and recruit carefully to ensure you get the right crowd.
• Separate the genders. You get much more candid discussions that way (especially for younger demographics).
• Control the discussion. Ensure everyone at the table has a turn (including the reticent ones).
• Record the discussion on video for future reference.

Such a roundtable discussion becomes a focus group only if two more criteria are met:

• The moderator is an independent third party who is engaged by the company to do this research.
• The discussion is held in a research facility with one-way glass.

I’m old schooled.  I insist on using an independent moderator for focus groups.  In my experience, employees tend to be too close to the products and services provided by the employer.  They have assumptions and expectations that may impact their ability to be impartial.  A third party moderator has no such baggage. He or she is free to learn about the product by asking probing questions, then lead a discussion where more probing questions are asked.  The resulting quality of the discussion tends to be much higher and more unbounded for this reason.

As for the facility, the one-way-glass room has superb benefits. It allows a lot more people from the company to observe. It also  removes employees from the participants, helping to foster a more genuine discussion. It costs more than using the company lunch room, but I have never felt like I didn’t get my money’s worth in such a facility.

What’s your take? Would you do a focus group in a hotel meeting room? I would love to hear your thoughts.

On January 27th, many of us in the technology world were closely following the real-time coverage of the much anticipated Apple iPad launch. My gut reaction after Steve Jobs’s hour plus long unveiling and demo of the device didn’t have as much to do with the poor naming choice but more confusion over the target customer for this device. Is the iPad innovation for innovation’s sake or are there target customer personas behind this product? Don’t get me wrong, the device is gorgeous and makes for a beautiful demo. But, it seemingly falls halfway between an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and a MacBook as far as capabilities go. The iPad essentially has all the features of the iPod Touch, plus a full sized touch keyboard, slick photo management/browsing, rich maps and calendar apps, native game APIs (as well as several native games from the likes of NY Times, EA and MLB.com),  iBook book reader with iBook store (and most importantly partnerships with major publishers Penguin, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster, etc.), and a light productivity suite called iWork. That said, I’m not sure I understand who will be willing to spend between $500 and $750 on a juiced up (much less convenient in size) iPod Touch that lacks the horsepower of a full-fledged (almost as convenient in size) MacBook. In other words, who’s pain does the iPad address.

Yes, the iBook feature is compelling (ala Kindle) and the native games may catch on with the gamer crowd but the value proposition didn’t smack me in the face like the iPhone or iPod did when they were first launched. One obvious target is students and teachers who may choose the iPad as their digital learning/teaching device given the apparent tight partnerships with book publishers (e.g., lugging around text books will be a thing of the past) and the iWork productivity suite. Macworld had a good article a few days ago that spoke to the potential of the iPad for helping businesses perform services like patient care, selling houses, restaurant service, interior design, and roadside assistance.  Maybe, but it’s not like the iPad is a cheap alternative to existing domain specific devices that serve some of these industries. The article also proposed that the iPad consumer market is the technologically challenged population who are currently intimidated by the complexities of contemporary computers. Perhaps.

Whatever the case may be, given the commentary I’ve been reading (and based on my own reaction), the value proposition (i.e., pain addressed) is not immediately clear to many which is not a good start. Of course, I’m probably not part of the target segment(s) so maybe it’s OK that I don’t get it. But, for those that are part of the target segment(s), Apple better hope that they’re immediately realizing how this device is going address a very painful, very real problem or the iPad might be in for a long haul. The keyword is “real” because if the iPad solves an unrealized or non-obvious problem, then uptake will be dreadfully slow (aside from the early adopter crowd) and selling the thing will be very difficult. The eternal challenge for a company like Apple is always keeping innovation in sync with the needs of the market. Hopefully we didn’t just get introduced to the Newton 2.0.