Voice of the Product: Its role in Innovation

I read a fascinating blog post about how easy it is to see patterns in innovation in new products.

Innovation Perspectives – Voice of the Product

So, is it possible to follow a pattern to innovate?  Sure!

To paraphrase: “A majority of new and inventive products can be categorized according to only five patterns:

• Subtraction: Taking an essential component away
• Task Unification: Assigning an additional job to an existing product
• Multiplication: Making a copy of a component but changing it in some way
• Division: Functionally or physically dividing a component or product
• Attribute Dependency: Creating new (or breaking existing) dependencies between attributes of a product or service and its environment

The current startup I’m helping is doing two things:  Dividing and removing dependencies.  Stay tuned (and enjoy the article!)