Product Management

What is ‘best practice’?

Are you doing what’s best, or simply seeking the protection of the herd?

It’s an enticing idea: ‘Best practice’. It suggests a clearly defined path to success; a recipe for perfectly honed websites, trouble-free projects, delighted users; a silver bullet.

But what is ‘best practice’?

I don’t mean best practice for UX design, or best practice for SEO, or best practice for project execution. But the concept of ‘best practice’ itself.

 Where do best practices come from? How do we recognise them? How do we adopt them?

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Building innovation into project management

If your organisation is going to do any sort of substantive innovation, it needs to take on risk. That needs a different style of project management.

Why do you do projects?

For most organisations, the answer is usually something to do with change. “We need to add new features to our product. We need to improve the user experience in our online shop. We need to upgrade the technology running our site”.

That’s kind of odd, when you think about it.

Four ways brands can make early adoption easier and less painful

A recent trip to Japan got me thinking about the disadvantages of being an ‘early adopter’ of new products and technology, and how brands should encourage and reward those of us who get in ahead of the crowds.

Japanese technology shops are particularly fun, with blaring advertisements and garish coloured banners everywhere. 

In one, I found ‘easy to drink from’ vacuum mugs in a wide range of colours with a variety of sophisticated caps and drinking spouts. 

The humble black screw top I had bought in the UK was completely upstaged by these colourful, feature packed newcomers.

Five brands using crowdsourcing for product and marketing ideas

During a recent discussion about a colleague’s obsession with Lego I was informed of the toymaker’s forays into crowdsourcing new product ideas.

This isn’t a particularly new tactic and I’ve flagged up examples of crowdsourcing in the past, but it’s a topic that’s worth revisiting as more brands get on board.

So in order to inspire your own campaigns or product development, here are five other brands using crowdsourcing…

Six lessons Immediate Media can teach you about publishing

How does a publisher move from brand engagement to an enterprise transactional model?

It all revolves around thinking like a retailer and utilising your brands to capitalise on new revenue streams.

Immediate Media is a combined publishing house formed with BBC Magazines, Magicalia and Origin, with around 70 brands.

The group has been investing in technology for a while, enabling digital elements to be added to its subscriptions, as well as integrating advertising and product sales.

The magazines are chiefly publishing special interest content, from sports to weddings etc. With 80% of Immediate’s revenue coming from selling content, it’s clear that there’s a balance to be found between product development and monetisation.

Let’s take a look in more detail…

Stats and soundbites from Spotify

Spotify might still be loss making, despite revenues of $435m in 2012, but the service is incredibly popular and many think it might be gearing up to IPO.

These rumours have started since Spotify in December secured some $200m in credit lines and recently acquired a music algorithm company, Echo Nest.

If this does mean Spotify is about to get serious about profit, it comes at a time when competitors are more easily found – from Beats Music to Milk, Samsung’s new service.

I listened to Spotify’s Chris Maples (VP, Europe) at last week’s Digital Media Strategies 2014. There were some interesting titbits, from stats to Spotify’s approach to iteration and mobile, that I thought would be worth sharing here.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on Spotify’s future or its approach to subscriptions and product development.

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