Product Quest Podcast

Episde 58: Platform Thinking with Daniel and Tommaso

In this episode, Jonathan Edwards, Yann Vermuth, and Scott Burleson talk to Professors Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza from the School of Management at Politecnico di Milano about their book "Platform Thinking" (more at: https://platformthinking.eu/). They talk about the different kinds of platforms and how platform thinking can be used to think about businesses and foster innovation.
You will learn how renowned companies, such as Uber, Airbnb, Apple, and Google, but also others are revolutionizing the industry by leveraging platform models in unique ways.
How can platform thinking lead to strategic opportunities? and how can traditional businesses' develop their own platforms?
Gaining insight into the true nature of platform-based businesses helps foster innovation and creativity, and to develop new avenues for your business.
Tune in to this episode and start your journey on the path of platform thinking!

Episode 57: Artificial intelligence and Jobs-to-be-done

Many listeners will know that this podcast has a JTBD affection to put it mildly. In this episode we will do something very Un-JTBD like: We will talk about a solution! It’s a solution that everyone is talking about right now: Artificial intelligence. What we want to do today is look at AI from two perspectives. The first one is how AI is or might be useful in the context of the Jobs-to-be-done philosophy and practice. The second one is more general: What customer jobs might AI help address? When we think about a company context: What jobs is AI well suited to do? It’s the PQP-Team only this time and we jump right in.

Episode 56: The Wheel of Progress with Eckhart Boehme

Our guest today, Eckhart Boehme, is a strategy consultant and the developer of the Customer Progress Design method. He is the co-creator of the Wheel of Progress, a canvas based on JTBD and inspired by Bob Moesta's 4 forces model. More recently Eckhart has been experimenting with AI tools and has developed an AI-based app that helps with analyzing customer interviews and processing the data.
Eckhart is also an expert on Clayton Christensen's work and prior to becoming an independent consultant, he worked at Microsoft for over 18 years.
Eckhart is the founder and managing director of Unipro Solutions (website: unipro-solutions.com). You can also find additional information about his tool, the Wheel of Progress, which we will discuss today at wheelofprogress.com in one word.

Episode 55: Business Builders with Dan Adams

Wermuth and Jonathan Edwards. 
Today, we welcome our special guest, Dan Adams. Dan is the founder and president of The AIM Institute and is author of New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth.  He’s a chemical engineer by training and the holder of many patents, including a listing in the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. 
He has also recently published another book, “Business Builders,” which will be our topic for today.

Episode 54: Product Management with Bart Jaworski

Today we will dive into the challenges of becoming and being a Product manager with Dr. Bart Jaworski. Bart is a Senior Product Manager at StepStone, he has worked as a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft and is a LinkedIn Top Product Management Voice. Through his online courses on https://drbartpm.com/ he has trained over 18.000 people in various aspects of Product Management – from how to land a PM job to running Design Sprints and much more.

Episode 53: People, Innovation and Teams with Sebastian Hamers

In our podcast we often talk about innovation frameworks, models, theories and so on. While these topics are important, innovation success also depends A LOT on people and how they collaborate – or not. With our guest Sebastian Hamers of human insight, we want to talk about people and how they are best put together to achieve high innovation performance teams.
Sebastian has worked in and studied innovative entrepreneurship and business development in depth. Be it at the University of Twente and hop to spin out patents and technologies developed there. He worked at a Growth Accelerator Program before joining human insight where he is the managing partner.

Episode 52: Leah Tharin and Solopreneurship

Today, we welcome our special guest….and our first repeat guest, Leah Tharin. And, well well well, where to begin? 
Last January, I was captivated by Leah’s writing on a topic that I knew nothing about, Product Led Growth even as I myself lead Product for The AIM Institute.. 
In getting up to speed, I found Leah’s writing to be concise, educational, entertaining, sometimes irreverent, often funny, but always…USEFUL. And I’m not the only one. 
She had 12k followers on LinkedIn when I reached out to her in January. I think it was around 15k by the time she appeared on the podcast. Today she’s over 34k and by the time you crazy people hear this episode, I expect she’ll be over 40k. 
And… as a result…, Leah has created some new opportunities for herself recently. And we are certain to get into that. 

Episode 51: Lead user Innovation with Frank Piller

Today we welcome Prof. Dr. Frank Piller of the RWTH Aachen University. Dr. Piller is considered one of the leading German experts for innovation management, open innovation, customer co-creation and product individualization. His research has received numerous awards, like the PDMA Co-Creation Award or the nomination for the “Innovating Innovation” award from Harvard Business Review and McKinsey. He previously worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management before becoming a professor in Aachen where he is now the Head of Chair of the Institute for Technology & Innovation Management. Frank habilitated in 2004 on Open Innovation and User Innovation at the TUM Business School in Munich, where he headed the research group “Customer Driven Value Creation”. I got to know Frank and his work in more detail by going through the Micro Master Program at the RWTH on “Managing Technology and Innovation: How to deal with disruptive change” which I can only recommend. All this screams for having him on the podcast and not lastly because in that course he mentions his appreciation of the Jobs-to-be-done approach which is something of a household philosophy here at the Product Quest Podcast.
 
Here are the additional links that we talked about:
 
Lead User Method:
https://evhippel.mit.edu/teaching/
 
Lead user input and cocreation for innovation:
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/reducing-the-risks-of-new-product-development/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1975523
 
Paper on AI and innovation and the double diamond model:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpim.12656 (free download)
 
Self Driving Chemical Labs
https://www.matter.toronto.edu/basic-content-page/ai-for-discovery-and-self-driving-labs
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-022-00231-0
 
The Nature article with the material science experiment I described:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1335-8   (Summary: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01978-x)
 
edX: Free Innovation classes
https://www.edx.org/micromasters/rwthx-managing-technology-and-innovation-how-to-deal-with-disruptive-change
 
Executive Program on Using AI for Innovation (taught entirely in VR)
https://thegemba.com/course/leading-intelligent-engineering-vr 
 
Innovation master program at RWTH:
https://www.business-school.rwth-aachen.de/en/programs/m-sc-management-engineering-in-technology-innovation-marketing-entrepreneurship/
 

Episode 50: Impact, Sustainability and ESG with Hannah Keartland

This is episode number 50 and we’re thrilled to have Hannah Keartland as a guest for this milestone episode. No pressure Hannah! Hannah is an award-winning strategic thinker with 20+ years of extensive and varied leadership experience as a director and on the board level. She has worked in finance, in for-purpose businesses, charities and as an innovation consultant. Today she’s all in on impact for example as a co-founder of the Impact Pioneers, an invitation only community of business leaders who want to have an impact in the world. She’s a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a member of their sustainability Committee and has several expert advisory roles. She lives and breathes impact and has so for a long time: She wrote her first impact report in 2007 – so, way before it was cool! She founded Keartland & Co and helps business leaders maximize and scale their positive impact on the world. Oh, and did I mention she’s a TEDx speaker? So, without further ado, Hannah, welcome to the product quest podcast!
 
Hannah: https://www.keartland.co/
Project Drawdown: https://www.drawdown.org/
WWF Sustainable Office guide: https://www.wwf.org.uk/media/57626

Episode 49: Servitization with Patrick McGowan

Today, we welcome our special guest, Patrick McGowan.  is the CEO and founder of The Service Design Group, a firm that specializes in service innovation. It should be no surprise then, that Patrick is an expert in service design. 
He has well over two decades of experience, first with IBM before launching his own firm. Patrick has a really interesting background though, having graduated from design school at NC State… which one of the most difficult bachelor’s programs to get into, at least here in North Carolina. I’m curious as to how he leverages that knowledge, but we’ll get into that in a bit. 
Patrick’s firm, The Service Design Group, has an impressive list of clients across industrial, governmental, biotech categories…. just to name a few.  
But on a personal level, Patrick is engaging, funny, super smart… just the person that you want walking into your door when you want to upgrade your service game.