by Greg Garson

The Durbin Amendment passed a few days ago and will be enacted on July 21, 2011. Senator Durbin was thinking about consumers when he envisioned this law. He wanted to take the money out of the hands of the “evil” banks and give it to the consumers. So, starting in July we’ll all see an annual refund of about $110 right? I mean, that’s our individual share of the $12 billion in revenue the banks are giving back. So we’ll all be able to have a nice meal because Durbin is so magnanimous, right? Think again. Consumers won’t see anything like that.

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by Nitzan Shaer

You may not think about innovation all the time. But it’s surrounding us—in the office, on the phone, in the piles of emails you click through every day. Somewhere in there you’ll find innovation. But just what is innovation and what are some of the most innovative ideas around today? There’s no better place to get the answer than TED.com. It’s one of my favourite web destinations. That’s why I set aside some time to find the 10 best TED talks on innovation.

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Ah, spring!  Time for new growth and limitless possibilities, and any product manager worth his or her salt would be remiss to pass up the opportunity to bring new innovations to market to spur growth.  The most successful new product launches uncover a real but unarticulated customer need.  But, especially in crowded categories, the earnest desire to suss out latent demand sometimes goes too far.

Take, for example, the latest campaign from Unilever’s Dove: “Go Sleeveless”which promises to make women’s underarms more attractive within five days.  I understand that the antiperspirant category is oversaturated (300 products by 25 brands with “nearly all American adults using deodorant, according to a Wall Street Journal report) so the search for an unmet consumer need in the category, while laudable, is nearly impossible.   [Read the rest of this entry...]

Some product managers in technology and B2B products think that the way consumer companies work isn’t applicable to the tech space.  In fact, on a recent panel, “Building Products that Win,” at Web Inno, one panelist joked he “runs away” from consumer-type focus groups.  But consumer packaged goods (CPG) vendors have really mastered the art of gathering feedback from their customers – via focus groups and other research methods.

Regardless of the” how” (focus groups, surveys, crowdsourcing, etc.), B2B product managers can learn a big “what” from consumer companies.  Let’s take Starbucks, for example.   [Read the rest of this entry...]

Last week I had the pleasure of moderating a WebInno panel: Building Products That Win.  Our panelists were Ben Foster, vice president of product at Opower, Adam Medros, vice president of product at TripAdvisor and Fareed Behmaram-Mosavat, director of product, Boston Studio at Zynga.  Many thanks to David Beisel and Rob Go for putting together this exciting panel.

The statistic that 95 percent of new products introduced each year fail (according to AcuPoll) is often cited.  While some may see that as discouraging odds, I view it as a motivator.  It’s a call to action to every product strategist and product manager: what can we do now, to ensure the new product on which we are working can fall within the slim margin of 5 percent of products that win?   [Read the rest of this entry...]

On March 2, 2011, I will be moderating a panel, “Mobile Commerce: The Tipping Point is Here.” The event, which is part of the Vilna Shul Speakers’ Series, organized by Doug Levin, will feature some of the greater Boston area’s best mobile visionaries.

I posed some questions about mobile commerce to Andrew Paradise (@andrewparadise), CEO of AisleBuyer (@aislebuyer).

Andrew Paradise, AisleBuyer

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On March 2, 2011, I will be moderating a panel, “Mobile Commerce: The Tipping Point is Here.” The event, which is part of the Vilna Shul Speakers’ Series, organized by Doug Levin, will feature some of the greater Boston area’s best mobile visionaries.

I posed some questions about mobile commerce to Mike Baker (@michaelkbaker) of DataXu.

Mike Baker

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On March 2, 2011, I will be moderating a panel, “Mobile Commerce: The Tipping Point is Here.” The event, which is part of the Vilna Shul Speakers’ Series, organized by Doug Levin, will feature some of the greater Boston area’s best mobile visionaries.

I posed some questions about mobile commerce to Mike Schneider, aka SchneiderMike, senior vice president, director digital incubator, Allen & Gerritsen.

Mike Schneider, Allen & Gerritsen

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On March 2, 2011, I will be moderating a panel, “Mobile Commerce: The Tipping Point is Here.” The event, which is part of the Vilna Shul Speakers’ Series, organized by Doug Levin, will feature some of the greater Boston area’s best mobile visionaries.

I posed some questions about mobile commerce to Mike Grimes, CEO of Modiv Media, (@modiv).

Mike Grimes, Modiv Media

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by Nitzan Shaer

To paraphrase a conversation we recently had, “mobile commerce is a train that’s coming.  You need to get on, or get run over.”  Pick your favorite stat: the number of smartphone users in the US (61 million), the number of consumers using smartphones for shopping (50%), and others; they all point to the inevitability of mobile commerce.

Mobile commerce is a hot topic for us (ok, everyone) these days.  In fact, we’ve assembled a panel of thought leaders on mobile commerce for an upcoming discussion – “Mobile Commerce: The Tipping Point is Here.” The event, which is part of the Vilna Shul Speakers’ Series, organized by Doug Levin, will feature some of the greater Boston area’s best mobile visionaries.   [Read the rest of this entry...]