A Lesson on Product Development from -- a Bra?
All true -- as unbelievable as it sounds.
I once was rejected from a pool of candidates for a job at Avaya because I told the interviewer that when releasing a the most recent version of a previous employer's mobile office suite, the product requirements AND the feature set remained fixed for the final 2/3 of the development cycle prior to release. I'm sure that he was likely an advocate of the Agile Programming development method (hey, I think it's a great method as well and has it's place) and believed that the feature set would remain fluid based on constantly changing user input much later in the process. Well, having worked in many different industries spanning consumer durables products like ladders and windows, as well as high tech products like software, hardware, and even online Software-as-a-Service, I can say that the real answer to that question of "how late is it acceptable to continue to make changes to your product" actually depends on the product, the customers being served, and the environmental variables involved. My adversarial interviewer at Avaya wanted to hear his preferred answer parroted back to him, and was unwilling to listen to the reasons why our particular mobile office suite, already quite mature on the old, stale Palm OS platform by then, was not going to be seeing late-breaking feature changes and additions. No matter, for whomever he eventually hired didn't make much of a splash--the project I was interviewing to lead was shelved or fell into obscurity 8 months later as a result of shifting priorities. I guess he didn't see those late breaking "customer requirements" on the horizon, for all his openness to last minute changes. Oops. Back to bras
So what does all this have to do with bras? Well, as I blogged about earlier, my wife and her friends have been working on a special benefit project-- designing a bra to benefit the American Cancer Society in our area that is hosting an Unhooked bra design competition to benefit cancer research. My dear wife and pals have spent over 30 hours in total working on creating a very uniquely decorated pink bra using the theme Milk and Cookies. This theme ties in to another nonprofit benefit that is the passion of Jen DeFazio, one of my wife's dear friends, who some years ago conceived of the Stacking the Odds benefit event for breast cancer. In this event, individuals (or teams?) stack Nabisco Oreo cookies to see how many cookies they can stack up upon a base of a single standard Oreo cookie. It's a fascinating premise for a competition and I can hardly wait to see it this year. Anyhoo--the bra design you see below represents how their design finally came together. "Um, what about this whole product development angle and bras? You lost me..."
Yeah, understandable-- just bear with me here. (Fitting bra pictures into a marketing blog is not so easy, folks.) Well, it all comes down to being flexible to changing concepts and circumstances and needs. The initial concept for the bra design was Jen's. Milk and Cookies -- makes sense; ties in to the Stacking theme nicely. Jen wanted a pink bra to convey the color of the pink ribbon used by Susan G Komen for the Cure and other breast cancer foundations. She also wanted to find someway to tie the milk theme in in a fun, lighthearted way. And, well, the cookies were obvious. I observed seven ladies working on this project the other evening. During that time, they realized that they could not use perishable items. This posed a problem. Cookies had to be simulated. Hmmm. A quick search on Wikipedia turned up a bit of suitable Oreo cookie art (since removed!) that was reborn as a reversed iron-on for dark brown or black felt. The ladies had wanted to position some sort of vessel behind the D-cups connected to the taps in the tips of the bras, to be able to turn on the milk at will. That seemed untenable as well. Warm milk was, well, icky. Rolling white paint around the interior of the cups seemed to do the trick nicely--indicating the idea of a full milk container. But, well, they weren't going to connect to the taps too well. Hoses and other intricate connectors were postulated--and rejected. After some debate, and the first day of long hours designing expired, the ladies left for some sleep. A new day and the challenge still faced them. What to do about the milk? Voila! Inspiration at the grocery store-- pink milk in the form of Dean's Strawberry Milk. This was particularly relevant, since Deans Dairy had been a past sponsor of Jen's Stacking the Odds event in eastern Ohio. It was all coming together. Now, the Milk Chug was positioned within the bra, full size Oreo's were mocked up with a half-eaten cookie left with it's crumbs next to the empty milk container, and the bra design we finally mounted on a presentation board embellished with gold ribbon icons.
Flexibility in the design concept had ensured success. If any of the initial concepts had been held to too stringently, the design would have come off too forced. Creativity and serendipity each had a role to play in creating the final product. Often in product development we fail to be open to serendipity because we become too focused on our initial thoughts of where we are headed. Like the Avaya head of R&D, we have our preconceived notions of the answers we're looking for and fail to ask new questions that might illuminate the situtation, or fail to open our eyes in mundane circumstances -- like the Jen in the grocery store -- to see new possibilities that enable new creative solutions. Where do you need to open your eyes to new possibilities in your business. Where could your customers help you see differently? Yes, I can help... Mike Compeau
Red Zen Marketing
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau
724-734-1624
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