Clarity on PLM

A quick peek into some research on the use of social computing for product innovation and product development and some insight into what to expect in 2012. I teamed up with innovation consulting firm Kalypso last year to survey companies using (or planning to use) social media or other “web 2.0″ techniques to improve innovation. The research followed a similar survey in 2010, allowing us to get some insight into trends and future direction. Kalypso’s Amy Kenly and I teamed up to share the results and I thought I would share a bit with you here.

The Research (and my crystal ball disclaimer)

For those of you that know me, you know my regular disclaimer that I don’t really own a crystal ball (or even a magic eight ball), so I rely on survey-based research to get a view of what companies are doing and plan to do in the near future. Kalypso’s second annual “SPIKE” survey provided an opportunity to see what companies planned to, but also to see how much they accomplished of the plans they put in place in 2010. I will hit on a couple of the highlights here, but feel free to read the full Predictions for Social Product Innovation in 2012 post on the Kalypso website.

Key Research Findings

One of the main findings from the research was that in 2011 companies managed to gain benefits despite a lack of strategic plans. In 2010 we found that many companies were acting without a plan. In 2011, we saw that many were able to achieve some valuable results including more (and perhaps more importantly) better product ideas. In addition, they were able to use social computing to strengthen relationships internally and externally.

Source: Kalypso LLC

 A related finding is that quite a few companies took a step back from social computing in 2011. While the total percentage of companies (about half of companies in both 2010 and 2011, see chart in the Kalypso post) either have a plan or are developing a plan for social product innovation – there was a distinct shift from those that said they have a plan towards those that are in planning mode. We interpret this as a direct result of the fact we reported last year – that companies were acting without a plan – and that this is a healthy sign that they are taking a step back to strategize (hopefully taking into account the learnings of their early efforts).

Implications for Manufacturers

Social product innovation is still new and companies are still learning. There have been some false starts and some companies have needed to take a step back to put a plan in place. On the other hand, the benefits manufacturers are achieving from social product innovation are impressive and strategic. Not surprisingly, companies plan to do more in 2012 (see below). It should be an interesting year.

Source: Kalypso LLC

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on the use of social computing for NPD and innovation, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? How about my post on 2011 – The Year Social Computing Explodes in NPD and PLM, was my “crystal ball” clear on that one? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. And please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

A quick peek into some research on enabling service organizations with the right product information from Tech-Clarity Insight: Better Service from Better Product Information: Evolving to Visual, Product-Centric Service Communication. Service has become a higher strategy priority for manufacturers focused on keeping customers satisfied and taking advantage of higher profit margins in the service lifecycle. Providing technicians and customers with the right product and service information, particularly in a visual formats including 3D and animations, has become more important – and more attainable – over the last few years. The report highlights interviews with General Atomics, Nikon, and Whirlpool to understand the issue and how manufacturers take advantage of PLM tools to enable better service.

Backdrop: Strategic Importance of Service on the Rise

Ten years ago service was an afterthought for most manufacturers. In fact, most companies would call it a necessary evil. But even in the early 2000′s, The Service Lifecycle Management Approach: Strong Customer Relationships Result in Profit in the Service Industry indicated a shift toward a more strategic view. As one of the participants in that research explained, manufacturers were starting to realize that “Customer satisfaction is extremely important to building long term relationships. It is also good business, because it leads to greater profitability through customer retention and repeat business.” In other words, good service is just good business.

Service may be good business, but it is also a big challenge. This is even more true in today’s global marketplace where service techs may be located anywhere in the world and speak any number of languages. Product complexity has also risen, as explained by Nikon in the report and evidenced by Tech-Clarity’s The Five Dimensions of Product Complexity. Products are now more complex due to new materials, miniaturization, smarter product capabilities, and other trends. Without the right information at hand – or perhaps worse having the bad information – service techs are likely to waste time, incur higher service cost, and end up disappointing customers with machine downtime. See the report for more, but for now let’s talk about how to address the challenges and achieve better service.

The Research Findings

Customers want their equipment serviced quickly and accurately. To do this in a complex service environment, techs need to be enabled with the right product information and service instructions. They need to be able to access and use that information quickly, and it should be the most up to date information possible. As Debra West-Maciaszek for Nikon explains in the report, “Looking for information doesn’t help the field service engineer, and the customer is in their face saying ‘fix my machine’.” The report highlights a number of key factors that can help manufactures develop better, more timely service information at lower cost:

• Use visual illustrations to improve communication and cut through language barriers
• Leverage existing assets (including CAD) to develop illustrations faster and more accurately
• Move to 3D to provide a more realist representation of products
• Incorporate animation to demonstrate service procedures clearly
• Provide rich product data behind the graphics to give service techs the details they need to do their jobs
• Take a product-centric approach to service information and illustrations, including specific documentation for different configurations
• Manage service documentation and illustration change holistically with product change

One of the key points is that visual communications offers tremendous advantages. First and foremost, it just fits the world we live in. I like to ask people to try to write text instructions for tying a shoe. It takes a lot of steps, and is very difficult to comprehend without pictures (do I hear some of you reciting “the bunny goes into the bunny hole” as you think about it? Even in native language text-based instructions miss the mark, and with variable language and reading skills in the global workforce the problem only gets worse. Graphical communication for products is the way to go. This is valuable for service and beyond, see Showing Off Your Products – 3D Technical Product Communications for more.

Another aspect of the findings is that there is a great opportunity to leverage PLM for service information. PLM has the right product-centric approach and houses the CAD and product specification assets that companies need to develop effective service communication. It also offers the opportunity to include service information as part of the product lifecycle, incorporating graphics and instructions into the umbrella of change management and allowing information to be tailored to specific product configurations. As the report concludes, “It is a natural extension for PLM to manage product-centric service information in the service lifecycle such as illustrations and documentation.”

Implications for Manufacturers

So what can manufacturers do with the information in this report? First, they can review (or develop) their service information strategy to ensure that it is providing the most up to date, graphical, tailored service information it can. Evaluate what technicians need to get their jobs done, and look for ways to leverage existing CAD and PLM assets to deliver it. The service lifecycle is getting a lot of attention in corporate strategies, and PLM solutions are now extending their capabilities further into the lifecycle. The time has come to see how PLM can improve service performance and profitability.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on providing service technicians and customers with better product and service information, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

How can social computing solve product lifecycle management (PLM) problems? Here’s a peek into some research, Issue in Focus: Social Business Collaboration and the Product Lifecycle: Combining the Power of Social Media with PLM, that helps clarify things a bit. I’ll start with some of my thoughts on the value of social computing for product innovation and product development and then poke some fun at myself for totally missing something in regards to social computing in PLM (again).

Some Thoughts on Social Computing in PLM

First, let me step back. For those of you that follow my blog, have seen me present, had a drink with me, or passed me in a hallway you have probably heard me wax on about how Facebook fails for product development. I have probably overused it, but it was a powerful moment when a COFES attendee in my presentation on social computing and PLM said “We will not design an airplane on Facebook!” It was a passionate, and brilliant, statement. What that led to was the basis for my views on social computing and PLM. In short – the concepts behind social media sites like Facebook can provide a lot of value for product development, but sites like Facebook, twitter, Dropbox, and others are not the right approach.

There are major gaps that would need to be filled, but one of the primary issues is that social media sites don’t have any connection with the context of product development – the product. They also have no domain expertise (or interest) in PLM. See the post for more details, including a clever (if I don’t say so myself) chart on the differences in using social media for personal use versus product development.

A Bit of Mythbusting – Why I Might be Wrong

So I had my ideas set. I believed that the only possible way that companies could get to a socially enabled PLM solution was by integrating social computing techniques into PLM. In fact, vendors like Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, and PTC have been hard at work doing just that. But something happened recently that made me ask the question. What if I was wrong!? Now I have been wrong before, and I like to confess to it. In fact, to be fair, I missed the impact that social computing would have on product innovation processes in my 2010 Predictions for PLM. My crystal ball failed me, I didn’t even ask the question in my 2009 survey. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. But I am a firm believer that the use of social computing in PLM is both highly valuable, and entirely inevitable. It just makes too much sense.

A new company came along that made me think differently. No, it’s not Facebook or anyone like that. It is a new company called Nuage. They have a lot of PLM and product development expertise, and decided to come at the problem differently. They are building a platform for companies to collaborate first, and then adding in proven PLM capabilities. I have to admit I was surprised that they would do that, and I promise to follow up more on them over time. What they convinced me was the a social computing platform could be socially enabled as opposed to an existing PLM solution “going social.” My myth that the only path was for PLM solutions to add social capabilities was busted. There is a bit more to the story, but that is for a different time. For now, back to the research.

The Research Findings

The research reiterates findings from previous Tech-Clarity research, including Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development and Tech-Clarity Insight: Product Collaboration 2.0 – Using Social Computing Techniques to Create Corporate Social Networks in regards to the value that social computing in PLM can offer. In addition, it defines what a social business collaboration platform requires to become a socially capable PLM solution, including the ability to:

• Manage business processes
• Put conversation in the context of products and projects
• Integrate effectively with underlying data and documents
• Provide security for IP
• Allow people to easily share and discuss product development information
• Understand the complex relationships between product data
• Provide the right level of control

Of course the main finding from the research was that there are two potential paths to achieve socially capable PLM, not just one. In fact, there are probably three:

• Add social computing capabilities to existing PLM solutions (or wait for your vendor to do it)
• Implement social business collaboration solution and implement PLM capabilities into it (or find a vendor doing it, now an option)
• Some combination of the two

This is a pretty interesting development, for sure.

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean to product developers? The concept of adding PLM capabilities to a social business collaboration platform is worth investigating. There are four things to remember from the report that I believe are important for manufacturers to take away from the research (but go ahead and read it yourself, you might find more):

1. New product development is an inherently social, team-oriented, collaborative process that can be significantly improved with social computing.

2. The greatest benefit will come from combining the collaborative power of social computing with the control provided by PLM.

3. To realize the potential business value of social product development, the next generation of solutions will need to combine both social computing techniques and proven PLM best practices in a seamless way.
4. New market entrants lead to the possibility that social business collaboration software can be enabled with best practice PLM capabilities.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social business computing and PLM, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

Note for frequent readers: I typically do not mix research results with mentions of specific vendors, however without mentioning a credible new market entrant I didn’t think the post would make sense. If it weren’t for somebody willing to take this new approach, I would still be sitting back believing that PLM would have to go social and that the other option wasn’t viable (due to lack of focus and interest by the social media sites, for the most part).

What I learned as a follow up to my report on Product Data Accessibility is that there is a lot more angst about finding product data than I ever realized. I was amazed at the discussion generated by my blog post about accessing all product data regardless of how it is stored. In particular, there as a lot of PDA discussion on LinkedIn. For those that can’t access it (I was told you have to join the group) I decided to share some of what I learned from it here.

What I Learned

One of the key findings of the report was that “accessing product data and centralizing it are not absolutely linked.” That really seems to resonate with people. One person I spoke with (Skype, not in the LinkedIn thread or my comments) reiterated that point, saying that “you need control, but regardless of where you are with that you have to be able to find data.” That brings up some interesting thoughts about PDM. My report on the business value of Product Data Management highlights controlling/securing data, finding/reusing data, and sharing data as primary benefits of PDM. There is clearly overlap in finding/reusing data between PDM and PDA. My view is that PDM and PDA are complementary solutions, and the discussion seems to indicate that there is no requirement to have one in place before the other, either can help regardless of whether the other is in place. One example brought up in the LinkedIn group is how useful search can be after an acquisition, and not having to wait for systems to be migrated. This need (and opportunity) was echoed by others.

Time for a Maturity Model?

I have seen maturity models for PDM and PLM (among others), but given a lot of the comments and the research for the report about the need for product data accessibility I thought I would take a stab at a few levels of accessibility:

1. The Wild, Wild West – No formal accessibility strategy. From the discussions I have had, this is very common. Searching on document names and looking for things where they are “supposed to be.”
2. Basic Search – Ability to search for information in known locations based on known parameters, perhaps with some full text search thrown in.
3. Advanced Search – A formal strategy based on an index, most likely including helpful capabilities like saved and shared searches. One comment mentioned Zakta.com that offers guides for searches, although I am not familiar with the solution (but I guess I should be). I am feeling a matrix might be applicable here, though, because there are different approaches that include text, attributes, metadata, or shape (like what ShapeSpace or Siemens PLM’s Geolus solution offers), and I am sure others.
4. Access and Aggregate – Accessing disparate data and pulling it together to get a more full view of the product. Perhaps this is two levels, depending on the intelligence behind the aggregation, or maybe there is another matrix forming here. For example, using semantics to intelligently discover relationships like Inforbix does is more powerful than simply aggregating on part numbers.
5. Search Based Applications – Accessing, aggregating, and acting on product data. This would include Search based applications (SBA) such as Dassault Systemes’ Exelead (focused more broadly products) and Inforbix xApps. Perhaps another capability that belongs here (or another level?) is the ability to develop composite applications that can both access and update underlying data? Or maybe that belongs somewhere else, not sure.

Implications for Manufacturers

I am not suggesting that the above is ready for prime time, it needs some work in order to really be robust. And no maturity model should really include a level called “the Wild, Wild West.” But I hope it serves as a way to get people thinking about the different ways companies can access, aggregate, and use their product data to drive more business value.

I don’t see this as a replacement for centralizing and controlling product data. One commenter even mentioned it would be nice to link data to workflows. That starts to sound like  PDM and PLM to me. In fact, I think we will see incorporation of these capabilities in PLM, as well as offer independently. The value is clear, and there are options to pursue, so it’s time to take a look.

So those are some thoughts on product data accessibility, I hope you found it interesting. Who knew? I didn’t, if you did let us know about it. Another good resource on the topic is the Inforbix product data space blog. For full disclosure, Inforbix is a client, but they didn’t ask for this mention and I bring it up because Oleg has really taken the time to explore this issue and communicate about it. Let me know what you think.

Thank you to Siemens PLM for making iPads available to a few lucky survey respondents!

The winners are ………………… (that is a drumroll, if you can’t tell) ……………………….

• Brian Halter, High Steel Structures, USA 
• Mary Castille, Whataburger Restaurants Property & Facilities, USA 
• Lijun Li, Ningbo Saikesi Hydraulic Company, China 
• Xuehui Zhang, Ninghai Saiping Mould Company, China 
• Fernanda Cardinaly de Araújo Silva, Art Forms, Brazi

Official announcement on Siemens site.

Thanks!

Jim

You have probably heard by now that Autodesk has announced that they are entering the PLM market with the announcement of Autodesk 360 Nexus. I had the opportunity to hear about this in a “behind the scenes” look a while back and attended Autodesk University this week to take in the launch. Autodesk put a lot of emphasis behind the announcement, with CEO Carl Bass bringing up his famous anti-PLM rap where he said the only companies with a PLM problem were Dassault (Sytemes), PTC, and UGS (now Siemens PLM). His message now is that “we did not want to do PLM until we could do it right” and that the time has come. So welcome to the PLM community Autodesk!

What’s the Big Deal? Who Cares?

Autodesk promised that “everything would change” in PLM when the announcement was made. You can read Evan Yares’ view on what has (or hasn’t) changed. I believe that Autodesk meant that everything changes because they offer PLM in the Cloud. It is a software as a service (SaaS) and will offer a different way to buy PLM. The other reason they say things will change is that, as Steve Bodnar says, the solution is “insanely configurable” so manufacturers will not need to change their existing business processes. Those are both very interesting and potential game changers. For more of my thoughts on those, see the questions section below.

Whether you believe that cloud and configurability will really change PLM, one fact it clear. Autodesk has one of the biggest engineering user bases on the planet, and this will change the PLM market. They are serious about PLM. Having another player with the size, user base, and ability to deliver that Autodesk has will have an impact on the market. Will it take away business from competitors? I am not sure how much of that will happen in the near term. But will it get more Autodesk customers started down the path with PLM (with a lower risk model and a vendor they already know)? You bet. Will there be responses by other vendors? Of course, and the response will be based on what kind of traction Nexus gets.

So What will they Offer?

First, the solution is not available yet. You can learn more from Autodesk’s official PLM press release. Second, I will tell you that the solution looks really good based on some limited views. The interface is clean and modern, there are some benefits from starting a design from the ground up for use on the cloud (and on different devices over time). Third, for some more details I don’t want to recreate what others have already posted, so for a nice overview (with screenshots and all!) take a look at Al Dean’s take on D3D. Note that viewing the AC/DC video at the end is entirely optional.

So with that backdrop, let me share my thoughts on Autodesk’s PLM entrance. They are taking a different approach. They believe PLM has been too difficult and too expensive (see Steve Bodnar’s PLM Non-Starter Picture) and believe that a cloud offering is the answer. Applications designed and built for the cloud are very different, although there are others (including their largest competitors) that are also figuring cloud out. Autodesk sees themselves more like Salesforce.com competing with PLM vendors that are more like Siebel.

Autodesk also believes that changing business processes is a big challenge for companies, and develop Nexus to be highly configurable. I believe this is a double-edged sword. On one hand a company that has well-defined processes can simply model their existing processes in Nexus’ workflow. That sounds great to me. The problem with a lot of companies is that they either don’t have processes, they have poor ones, or they have lots of them. The difficulty in standardizing on a process is an organizational change issue, not a software issue. In fact, from my experience too much flexibility can lead to some really hairy problems for vendors and customers alike. I am not going to get too far up on my soap box right now, but there is a lot more to be said here and I have some learning to do first. I have some follow up planned with Autodesk to understand how much Nexus is application and how much is infrastructure on which you can build a process. For now, let’s just say that Excel and SharePoint are highly configurable too – and what most companies end up with is a lot of non-integrated islands of information and process that don’t fit well together. Flexibility works well for those with very small companies or good information architects to oversee design. Wait, I thought I said I wasn’t getting up on my soapbox? OK, stepping off it now. I even delete another paragraph I wrote while I was up there.

Some Open Questions

The bottom line is that we all have a lot to learn about what Autodesk really delivering and how it will perform. The announcement will clearly have an impact, but also raises some interesting questions:

• Autodesk has a lot of architect and construction customers. The “AEC” industry (E for Engineering) is evolving to BIM (Building Information Modeling) – what are the positives and negatives of sharing ideas and capabilities between PLM and BIM users? It’s interesting to note that their link for lifecycle management solutions is the same but with two tabs – one for PLM and one for BIM. Of course their are other solutions in the suite than Nexus (Vault for one, which is the PDM solution), and those still appear differently. This is not a concern for me, in fact I think it opens up some interesting opportunities. It will be interesting to watch.
• Autodesk is known for shrink-wrapped tools, not enterprise applications. How will their business model and partner network adapt to this new paradigm? Clearly they will need some new partners with PLM expertise. These partners will also need to know how to implement enterprise change and not just tools.
• What will an integrated PDM system behind the firewall look like with a PLM system in the cloud? I think this opens up some interesting questions on its own. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this model, and it will be interesting to see how Vault evolves.
• Where is the support for software-driven (mechatronic) and systems-oriented products? Vault is primarily for mechanical designs, to my knowledge. Does an integrated (versus a single solution) PLM-PDM open up opportunities to add an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool to the suite to manage software development? Kinds of likes my model from Software and Systems Driven Innovation below. Hmmmmmmm.

This is the fun part, watching and wondering what comes next. From what I hear from Autodesk a big part of their plan is to watch how customers adopt the solution and use that to help guide direction and strategy. Autodesk realizes they are on a journey and that they (and their customers) have a lot to figure out. That recognition and a willingness to listen to customers gives me some comfort that Autodesk will be a real player in PLM. Time will tell.

So those are my thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I am just stating the obvious? Think I am an idiot? Let me know what you think. OK, but if you think I am an idiot please be gentle with your criticism. Stay tuned for more, the Autodesk PLM story is just beginning to unfold.

A quick peek into some research on … the importance of accessing all product-related information, whether it is stored in a formal system such as Product Data Management (PDM) or not. The report, Issue in Focus: Product Data Accessibility: Getting Value from All of your Product Data, explains the importance for manufacturers to readily retrieve product data and points out that there are emerging technologies that can help.

The Research Findings

I have reported on the importance of product data many times, including Tech-Clarity’s The Business Value of Product Data Management: Achieving Rapid and Extendible Benefits and Managing Engineering Data – The Role of Product Data Management in Improving Engineering Efficiency. In the PDM report, I talked about three fundamentals of PDM:

• Control and secure product-related data
• Improve the ability to quickly find and reuse information
• Share product knowledge with other departments

But the report discusses the reality that, as the report says, “Many companies don’t have centralized product data, and even those that do typically have a lot of product-related data spread out across the business that isn’t centralized.” Manufactures have to live with the following realities:

• Not all companies have been able to control their product data in this way (due to software or implementations costs or other factors like acquisitions that leave companies with multiple processes and solutions)
• Many companies are handling the control of their data manually
• Most companies have product data that will probably never be under control of a formal system, including documents and spreadsheets that reference parts and products
• Most manufacturers have important information in their ERP, SCM, CRM, and other systems that can be valuable

The report also makes an important conclusion that “accessing product data and centralizing it are not absolutely linked, and there are emerging technologies that help engineers access data without having to consolidate it in a central location.” These new technologies can help engineers stop wasting time looking for data. In addition, they can intelligently aggregate (‘mash up”) if you will, data from different sources to see the big picture and make better decisions.

Implications for Manufacturers

I am not coming out against PDM. PDM offers valuable functions that allow companies to control their product data. Capabilities like revision control, check-in/out, and approval cycles are important. For companies that need to manage complex relationships between files, including 3D CAD assemblies, there are important features in PDM. But if you find yourself facing one or more of the realities above (I would bet that includes 90% or more manufacturers) then you have to live in your current reality. And realize that your reality may change in the blink of an acquisition.

Manufacturers should check out the new class of technologies that is evolving aimed at allowing companies to quickly assemble their information in much the same way that a search engine like Google. These technologies are absolutely worth a look. Should we call the “PDA” for Product Data Accessibility? Or product data search? But both seem to fall short when you consider what they can do to not only find but assemble and act on the data. Time will tell. Will they replace the need for PDM? Will they augment an existing PDM implementation (or multiple implementations, as some companies have)? It really depends on your business, but I envision it serving all of these needs. But the simple truth is that companies need to access all of their product data and put it into context in order to make good decisions. A product data accessibility approach allows them to access their information quickly, regardless of the reality they live in.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on product data accessibility, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about product data and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

I had the chance to talk with … Rob Fisher of Madison Electric Products following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented his company with the Spike Award for Manufacturing for theirs Sparks Innovation Center. I think you will enjoy hearing about the opportunity that they saw and how they took advantage of it to develop some great new products.

Note: You can also listen to my interview with Spike Award winner for CPG Justin Winter and my interview with Spike Award Winner for Technology CDC Software.

The Sparks Innovation Center was created to gather product ideas from the large network of electrical contractors that Madison counts as customers. They realized that there were lots of potential product ideas in their customer community, and developed a crowdsourcing site to tap into that knowledge. I was impressed that Rob is as excited about helping the budding innovators in his customer base as he is developing new, successful products for his company (which they have done). This one is definitely worth a listen.

Rob’s presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. The entire virtual event was a great experience, and between the speakers and the award winners we all heard some great examples of social computing can help improve product innovation and product development.

Let us know what you think of their innovation center and crowdsourcing initiative. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Please feel free to check out the blog for more on social computing and product development or read a report on social computing and innovation.

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I had the chance to talk with … Robert Roy of CDC Software following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented CDC Software with the Spike Award for Technology based on their use of social strategies, processes and supporting technologies to improve innovation, product management, and product development. Rob provided some great insight on the processes that CDC Software uses to get product feature ideas from their customer base for release planning as well as how they use social computing tools to collaborate during their agile development process.

Note: You can also listen to my interview with Spike Award winner for CPG Justin Winter and my interview with Manufacturing Spike Award Winner Madison Electric Products.

The CDC presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. The entire virtual event was a great experience, and between the speakers and the award winners we all heard some great examples of social computing can help improve product innovation and product development.

Let us know what you think of their program. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Please feel free to check out the blog for more on social computing and product development or read a report on social computing and innovation.

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I had the chance to talk with … Justin Winter of Diamond Candles following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented Diamond Candles with the Spike Award for CPG (consumer packaged goods) based on their use of social strategies, processes and supporting technologies to improve innovation and product development. Justin provided some great insight on the program they used to get new product ideas from their customers.

Update: You can also listen to my interview with CDC Software for winning the Spike Award for Technology and my interview with Manufacturing Spike Award Winner Madison Electric Products.

I enjoyed hearing Justin’s presentation at the Spike awards. His presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. It’s a pretty cool experience. I was impressed with the way that Diamond Candles was able to share information with their customers, receive new product ideas from them, and then introduce the new products back to the customers. It was an interesting way to combine outbound marketing with crowdsourcing and gathering voice of the customer (VOC).

After talking to him, I even bought a candle. Wish me luck,  I hope I get one of the $5,000 rings in mine! If you don’t know what I am talking about, take a look at the Diamond Candles web site, their goal is to “make buying candles fun again.”

Let us know what you think of their program. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Feel free to look around the blog, you will see a lot of information on the use of social computing to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering.

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