PDMA Connections - May 2025

We invite you to become a key sponsor of the PDMA 2025 Ignite Innovation Summit, taking place September 13–16, 2025, at the Marriott Marquis Chicago. As a sponsor, your organization will connect with top product leaders, executives, and innovators from diverse industries, positioning your brand at the forefront of cutting-edge product development and management.

Our sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities are designed to maximize attendee engagement with your company, ensuring your brand is prominently featured throughout the event. Secure your sponsorship today and be part of an event that shapes the future of product development and management!

We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the 2026 PDMA Board of Directors. Are you—or a fellow PDMA member—ready to make a meaningful impact and help guide the future of product development and management? Step forward and submit a nomination today!

In accordance with PDMA’s bylaws, all individual members in good standing—excluding Student Members—are eligible to be nominated. Self-nominations are both welcomed and strongly encouraged.

Serving on the PDMA Board is a unique opportunity to shape the strategic direction of the Association, ensuring it remains financially sound and continues to advance the interests of our global membership. Board members act as stewards of PDMA’s mission, bringing forward the voices, ideas, and aspirations of our professional community.

We seek candidates who embody the following qualities:

Proven Leadership: A demonstrated track record of advancing programs, events, or projects.
Organizational Commitment: A deep dedication to PDMA’s mission, vision, and goals.
Capacity to Serve: Availability to fully engage in Association activities, including six virtual board meetings (2 hours each) and project-based work between meetings. Service on a committee is also expected.
Collaborative Spirit: Strong interpersonal and communication skills essential for teamwork.
Sound Judgment & Integrity: The ability to navigate complex decisions with fairness and objectivity.
Mentorship Mindset: A passion for mentoring and developing future leaders.
Broad Perspective: Willingness to put the needs of the entire organization above personal or local interests.
Strategic Vision: An aptitude for big-picture thinking and long-term planning.

To review the full board member position description and submit a nomination, please click here. The deadline for nominations is July 11, 2025, and terms will begin on January 1, 2026.

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

William Fisher, Oasis Engineering Ltd
PDMA New Zealand, President

Tell us a bit about yourself and how long you have been a PDMA member?
I learned of PDMA when I was studying engineering, as my lecturer(s) were involved in the association. I joined a few years after graduating and have been with the New Zealand chapter for roughly 7 years and president for 3 years. I love learning new things related to product development and how to design and make better products in a shorter time frame.

What is your role on the chapter board/committee?
As above. Really it is driving the direction for the committee and building momentum behind running events and connecting with amazing people and businesses.

What’s been the most rewarding part of your volunteer experience so far?
Meeting interesting people who become friends and gaining new ideas and ways of doing things.

What advice would you give to members looking to become more active in PDMA?
If you are someone working in the product development or management field, this is the best place to meet like-minded people, get inspired, and improve your skill set.

PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge 2025 submission portal is open and ready to receive your innovation ideas!

Gather your team members, secure your faculty advisor, develop your idea, prepare the supporting documentation and submit your proposal!
You, too, could be one of the finalist teams invited to present your project as part of the PDMA Ignite Innovation Summit, September 13–16, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
This challenge encourages and supports university students developing novel, real-world offerings, that include products, software or services.
You can review the rules and guidelines of the challenge as well as videos of the winning teams from previous years on our website.
Please thoroughly review the rubric to ensure you meet all the criteria.

The submission portal is now accepting applications with a deadline of June 1, 2025. We've already received several submissions. Don't be left behind!

In this engaging and forward-thinking webinar, discover how the PDMA partnered with AMS to revolutionize their approach to innovation through Voice of Customer (VOC) research. By gathering insights from both members and non-members, PDMA was able to tap into the true needs of their community and better understand the evolving demands of professional organizations. AMS leveraged its cutting-edge, fine-tuned Large Language Model (LLM) to extract detailed customer needs with unprecedented accuracy and speed, demonstrating its ability to match the performance of trained human analysts.

Recent kHUB Postings:

- Incorporating patient advocacy into the product design process is essential for creating solutions that truly address patient needs. The webinar Empathy-First Innovation: Integrating Patient Advocacy into Product Design by Ty Hagler offers an introduction to empathy-first innovation, demonstrating how to seamlessly integrate patient advocates into your development journey. Through a real-world case study of a medical device that revolutionized postpartum care, you'll gain insights into practical techniques for problem scoping, crafting empathy statements, and defining user needs.

- Guest contributor Jake McKee continues his series about Community-Driven Product Development (CDPD).

The traditional black box approach to product development isn’t just flawed—it’s risky. By the time you reach the verification stage, the fate of your product is already sealed. If something is off—whether it’s missing features, usability issues, or a complete mismatch with customer expectations—you’re left scrambling for last-minute fixes, costly pivots, or, worst of all, watching your product launch to indifference. In his recent article, How to Implement Community-Driven Product Development (CDPD) without Overhauling Your Process, Jake shares real-world actions, theory, tips, and practical steps to incorporate CDPD and its advantages without completely changing your current teams’ workflow or adding chaos to your NPD process.

In the last in this series of articles about CDPD, Jake McKee breaks down and refutes common misconceptions about Community-Driven Product Development (CDPD) in Debunking the Myths of Community-Driven Product Development (CDPD). He addresses such concerns as project speed, customers' unrealistic demands, extra work, confidentiality, and more. In conclusion, Jake shows that CDPD is a competitive advantage, not a risk.

- Even the best product strategy needs stakeholder buy-in to succeed. Instead of presenting dry specs and roadmaps, use storytelling to create emotional investment. By focusing on user transformation, you help leadership and teams see your product as a powerful enabler of meaningful change. Stories foster connection, trust, and alignment—especially across diverse business and technical teams. In his recent kHUB article 4 Keys to Strategic Storytelling that Drive Product Buy-In, author Jack Appleman shares 5 key takeaways supporting product managers’ communication to align stakeholders:

Tell Stories, Not Just Features
Use a Proven Narrative Framework
Highlight Dramatic Outcomes
Make the Hero Relatable
Start with the Transformation

kHUB Most Popular Content:

See what your competitors and peers have viewed in kHUB recently. The following content is among the most accessed last month:

Along with these still-popular classics:

What do quantum magnetometry, at-home COPD monitoring, and next-gen wound care have in common?

They’re all student-led innovations that took top honors at the PDMA Carolinas Chapter Student Competition Showcase (sponsored by Baxter).

The winning teams—representing Clemson, NC State, and Duke—tackled real-world challenges with powerful, forward-thinking solutions. Their ideas are now in the spotlight for PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge, where finalists will present at the Ignite Innovation Summit and JPIM Research Forum in Chicago this fall.

These student change-makers are solving the right problems—and asking the right questions. Curious to hear their pitches? Visit PDMA’s kHUB to access the recordings along with presentation slides.