PDMA Connections - May 2024

PDMA’s Inspire Innovation Conference unites product leaders, teams, innovation executives, academics, and solution providers from nearly every industry sector for the “event of the year” for product professionals. Bring your company’s brand to life by engaging with our attendees in person, and maximize brand visibility by sponsoring conference events and materials. Build lifelong brand relationships at PDMA’s Inspire Innovation Conference, and choose one of our high-impact options.

In this cutting-edge webinar, "How to 10x Your Product Management with Generative AI," we delve into the untapped potential of Generative AI to revolutionize your approach to product management. As an experienced product leader, you're well-versed in the challenges and opportunities of the digital era. This session aims to arm you with advanced AI tools and strategies, transforming your product management practice into a powerhouse of innovation and efficiency. We'll explore how Generative AI can be your ace in navigating complex market landscapes, driving product innovation, and crafting compelling customer experiences.

The most common method used to digitalize a portfolio, be it products or innovation projects, uses Microsoft Excel. But that won't scale, and it won't position you to take advantage of the benefits that AI can bring to better manage your innovation portfolios.

This webcast will present an approach, based on best practices working across hundreds of companies, that you can use to better manage your portfolios. It will cover how tools beyond Excel can be used to manage portfolios at scale, and what using AI in the future of portfolio management might look like.

Announcing the winners of PDMA Carolinas' Student Innovation Competition, held on April 18.

This year's competition drew 25 students and 7 facility advisors to participate. The top 3 universities represented were Clemson University, UNC Charlotte, and Rice University.

We were fortunate enough to have Dr. John Tudor as our keynote speaker, sharing the Foundations of Human Connections in Product Development: Purpose, Confidence, Resilience, and Trust are the keys to product success.

First Place Winners

Undergraduate Level: Bloom from Clemson University
Graduate Level: IVN from Rice University

Second Place Winner

Undergraduate Level: eWalk from Clemson University

Third Place Winners

Undergraduate Level: NephroGuard from Clemson University
Undergraduate Level: StepSync from Clemson University

We have 2 teams that didn't win prize money but are certainly worth mentioning:

Honorable Mention Undergraduate Level: Neura from University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Honorable Mention Undergraduate Level: Amputeem from Clemson University

Time is running out for PDMA’s Global Student Innovation Challenge 2024! The deadline for the student team submissions is June 1.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is pleased to offer the 5th annual Global Student Innovation Challenge. This challenge encourages and supports students developing novel, real-world offerings—including products, software, or services. Students currently enrolled at a university academic program, either in an undergraduate or graduate level, are eligible to participate. The top 3 finalist teams will be invited to present their projects as part of the PDMA International Inspire Innovation Conference, September 14–17, 2024 in St. Louis, Missouri USA. 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 open until June 1, 2024.

New kHUB Content:

In this recent kHUB Market Research in Product Innovation webcast Breaking Boundaries: Harnessing AI to Fuel Insights for Innovation, Kristyn Corrigan of AMS explores how Gen AI is propelling brands’ ability to obtain robust, actionable VOC insights for innovation.

PDMA’s local chapters continue to hold online events. We post the recordings and presentations from the local events on kHUB’s Local Chapter Content — on Demand for you to access and view at your convenience. Check out the following recent presentations:

Carolinas Chapter—April 18, 2024: 15th Annual Student Innovation Showcase
St. Louis Chapter—April 12, 2024: Product Management and the Art of the 1x1: Maximizing Organizational Impact

More JPIM Academic articles have been linked on kHUB! Clicking on the link in kHUB’s abstract, overview, and practitioner points allows you to access the full article in JPIM. We’ve posted some from the March 2024 special edition issue focusing on Grand Challenges. Check out the following:

How do we make things as simple, inexpensive, functional, and freely interconnected as possible? Simplicity in product design is the art of creating intuitive, efficient, and easy-to-use products. The kHUB curators have been looking into the TED Talk archives to recommend some related to innovation. In this Viewpoint blog post by curator Carlos Rodriguez, Simplicity in Design—TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights, we highlight 3 designers renowned for their dedication to simplicity in product design. Each link includes a brief intro with practitioner points from the curator.

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 April 2024. We look forward to working with you!

Individual Members

Sultan Alketbi
Eric Levinson
Keng Lin
Jason Nash

Balasubramaniyam
Ramakrishnan

Eva Rueba
Schnee
Kranti Vardhinani
Darren Webster
Tsai Ying Yang

Utieyineshola

Yusuff

Academic Members
Chengcheng Guo

Guanyu Huang
Juan Leiva
Ingrid Martin
Jiancheng Wang

Corporate
Members
Samuel Gemeda

Student Members
Ruigang Bu
Kun Chen
Christian Leon
Te An Liu
Zhengshun Luo
Chao Tai
Zhenpu Yang
Li Yin
Mingwei Zheng
Yi Zhong

Are you looking to become more involved in PDMA? We’re looking for you! We want to expand kHUB’s network of curators/editorial board. PDMA kHUB is the centralized digital content management and access platform for the extensive PDMA Body of Knowledge. The kHUB editorial board is responsible for content aggregation, curation, and creation for the key areas. kHUB offers easy access and brings to life PDMA thought leadership in a way that showcases our unique expertise and enduring impact for product development and innovation management professionals throughout their careers.

Learn more here, fill out this form and/or contact Sue Burek, kHUB administrator (sburek@pdma.org, 585-314-4611)