PDMA Connections - August 2024

It's time to register! Gear up for an incredible experience in St. Louis as we bring you four action-packed days of education, innovation, and networking opportunities.

Discover your innovation path at the PDMA Conference with specially tailored journey tracks: Ideation & Discovery, Development & Delivery, and Innovation Governance & Tools.
Customize your experience by following one track from start to finish, or mix sessions across tracks to suit your unique professional needs.

Whether you're looking to ignite your creativity, streamline your processes, or integrate cutting-edge AI technology into your products, the PDMA Conference is your gateway to advancing not just your career, but also the capabilities of your organization. Join us as we explore new frontiers in innovation and lay down the foundations for the products of tomorrow.

The nomination period for the 2025 PDMA Board of Directors is now open. Are you or a fellow PDMA member aspiring to take on a rewarding leadership role in our growing profession? Submit a nomination today! As per PDMA bylaws, all individual members in good standing, excluding PDMA Student Members, are eligible for nomination. Self-nominations are both accepted and encouraged.

The members of the PDMA Board of Directors serve as stewards of the Association, reflecting the views and interests of all members. The Board provides leadership, a shared vision, and a sense of mission for the Association, while also ensuring the fiscal health of the PDMA.

This year, the Nominations Committee is particularly interested in candidates from the Academic Community. An ideal candidate for the board will possess the following characteristics and attributes:

Proven Performance: A solid track record of contributing to the success of programs, events, or projects.
Commitment: Demonstrated commitment to the organization and its mission and goals.
Time to Serve: Availability to fully participate in association activities and meetings, including monthly video board meetings (1-2 hours) and project work between meetings, potentially serving on a committee.
Understanding of Teamwork: Well-developed interpersonal and communication skills essential for effective teamwork.
Sound Judgment and Integrity: The ability to make tough decisions.
Communication and Teaching Skills: An enthusiastic willingness to mentor and teach future leaders.
Ability to Subordinate Special Interests: Commitment to prioritizing the greater good over personal or constituent interests.
Strategic Thinkers: Intuitive and interpretive skills, with the ability to see the big picture.

To review the board member position description and complete the candidate recommendation form, click HERE. Please note that the deadline for nominations is September 23, 2024. Board terms begin on January 1, 2025.

For any questions regarding the nominations process or submissions, please contact Executive Director Eric Ewald at PDMA Headquarters at (651) 290-6280 or via email at eewald@pdma.org.

Products today often get released by team member heroics despite the process. Most teams are dealing with chaotic processes that few understand. And yet, every organization is unique—so your planning process should be too. Most organizations need a small number of living documents—fewer than 10—to guide market insights and product innovation.

Innovate your planning process to better align with the agility of your organization using the Quartz Open Framework. Throw away outdated methods and define a process as nimble as your organization.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and the Snyder Innovation Management Center at the Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University thank the prominent innovation scholars who generously shared their time and insights with doctoral students at the 2024 PDMA Doctoral Consortium. Over 50 participants, faculty and doctoral student fellows, from Europe, India, and the U.S., attended the consortium held from July 30-August 2, 2024.

On a historical note, the PDMA was founded in 1976 by 3 professors, including David Wilemon, a Syracuse University faculty member and PDMA’s 3rd president, to professionalize new product development and its academic study. Grounded in and building on its founding goal, the 2024 consortium agenda featured faculty sessions on cutting-edge research and small-group meetings to provide feedback to doctoral students on their dissertation proposals. In addition, a company visit to Baxter to see “innovation in action,” and a dinner cruise helped facilitate formal and informal networking to build an international “community of learning” among innovation scholars.

Recent kHUB Postings:

In this kHUB Culture and Teams webcast, "The Creative Alchemy of Lean Culture," Christian Wolcott of Semoto discusses flow, collaboration, and reflection implementing Lean Culture as part of your organization’s Lean Culture. Chris shares the value of Lean Culture on continuous improvement, a balanced efficient system that delivers high-quality results that can identify and remove obstacles to improve collaboration and innovation. Lean thinking, much like lean manufacturing and innovation practices, can help achieve your goals of increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved quality, and enhanced customer satisfaction. Learn more.

A reminder that kHUB links to JPIM’s Academic articles! This allows you to access the abstracts and practitioner points on kHUB before delving into the full article in JPIM. Several from the May 2024 edition of JPIM have been uploaded. Check out these (as well as many others):

·Valuation entrepreneurship through product-design and blame-avoidance strategies: How Tesla managed to change the public perception of sustainable innovations

·How marketers influence product platform decisions: A configurational approach

·Playing the political game of innovation: An integrative framework and future research directions

We have enjoyed some recent podcasts and blog posts from our recommended list in kHUB’s additional resources tab.

·Follow Sopheon’s Paul Heller with his Innovation Talks podcast series. Paul talks with AIM Institute’s Dan Adams about AI’s role in B2B selling in a July 15 post “Using AI to boost B2B selling performance"

·Chad McAllister’s Product Mastery Now podcast series interviewed Teresa Cain in a recent post “How to implement a 2-hour design sprint to solve complex problems.” Teresa says “With AI tools like ChatGPT making waves, it’s natural to wonder how they fit into the sprint process.” She advises caution: “Since ChatGPT doesn’t know your product or users, use it with a grain of salt.”

·Follow Teresa Torres’ Product Talk blog. She has some great insights regarding AI’s place in product discovery and customer insights in her June 19 post “Don’t Use Generative AI to Replace Discovery with Real Humans”.

·Dan Adams of AIM Institute writes about AI’s assistance in sales calls in his July 15 post Sales call preparation: Do it faster & better with AI. He shares tips and tricks to improve both insights and skills using AI in sales call preparation.

Check out the other podcasts and blogs the kHUB curators recommend. And speaking of AI in Innovation and Product Development—join us at PDMA’s Inspire Innovation Conference and JPIM Research Forum in St Louis, Missouri, Sept. 14-17 where some of the presentations and workshops will focus on Generative AI’s relationship to Product Innovation.

August 21, 2024
PDMA Minnesota: Accelerating Results with Change Management
Learn more

September 10, 2024
PDMA Carolinas: The Business Model Canvas
Learn more

Starting September 10, 2024
PDMA Pittsburgh: 2024 Fall Body of Knowledge Training
Learn more

Starting September 25, 2024
PDMA St. Louis: NPD Body of Knowledge Professional Development Training
Learn more

October 8, 2024
PDMA Carolinas: Together We Create: The Power of Integrating Customers into Your Product Development Black Box Canvas
Learn more

PDMA is growing! Meet and connect with our new members by signing into the PDMA community on our website.

PDMA welcomed these new members in July 2024. We look forward to working with you!

Individual Members

Omoloyin Adeloye
Budi Aryani
Brian Buck
Owen Cosmillo
Andris Danebergs
Danielle Fields
Kristin Galetka
John Hajdukiewicz
Bill Harpley
Hsin Hsia
Prince Jones
Shoko Kato
Cynthia Lusian
Melissa Maciorowski
Solomon Marini
Thomas McNally
Harmeet Saini
Soumya Samantaray
Thomas Simpson
Christine Valle

Academic Members

Nobuyuki Fukawa
Paulo Gomes
Scott Greenhalgh
Imran M. Ilyas
Jing Ma
Anna Margaritova
Ravi Mehta
Gao Ming
Daniel Robeson
Xiang Xu

Student Members
Michael Bierbaum
Jiayu Chen
Yingjun Fan
Keyou Feng
Donald Finucane
Vincent Hooper
Vidhi Jain
Ching Ching Lee
Yang Li
Lu Li
Haohan Liu
Eniola Oni
Yu Shi
Vlad Volkov
Annika Wambsganss
Juan Wang
Longchang Xie
Zhenjie Xu
Wenfu Zeng