Connected Devices/Product Innovation Process
Contents
Product Innovation Process -- Overall
The Connected Devices organisation is refocusing its activities on the Internet of Things. We are also changing our working practices such that we are not all necessarily 'riding the same train but ride multiple trains' i.e. parallel product initiatives. To help us manage the new Product Innovation activities, we are now testing a lightweight process. This is still in the early stages of definition but will have a few important characteristics:
- focus on building products with a clear value proposition aimed at the target customers.
- ensure new projects align with mission, and track to realistic goals.
- be open to enable anyone to surface a great product idea.
- ensure clear, consistent decisions by the Exec team.
- carefully select the places to invest with transparency of decisions.
- support rapid prototyping for new ideas or business models.
- fail “bad-ideas” fast.
- allow us to refine good ideas in order to build ever more compelling products.
- measure success in investing in innovation.
- and to be relevant to our customers, we need to move ever faster.
In essence, we would like emulate a tech start-up culture within the Connected Devices organization in Mozilla. To do this, we are using, where possible, tech industry best practices.
We are also incorporating the valuable lessons learned from other similar short-term practices over the years in Mozilla --the difference here is that we intend for this to become part of our normal working practices going forward.
Pilot Program for Product Innovation
We are currently running a pilot program that has introduced a lightweight process for product innovation. This pilot program is involving only staff from the Connected Devices team. This has 2 elements:
- Using the Lean Canvas model to clearly articulate the idea and the value proposition to the user.
- A lightweight Product Innovation Process for the key stakeholders to sign-off & provide resources to the Product Initiative.
Lean Canvas Model
Process "Gates"
Current projects in the process
A few projects have passed Gate 0 in the innovation process, with about a dozen more prepping for review. Here are the ones that we can talk about publicly:
- SmartTV - Building a web ecosystem for TV & connected devices of tomorrow - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_OS/Smart_TV
- MozVR - Bringing high performance virtual reality to the open web - http://mozvr.com/
- FlyWeb - Enabling phones to discover and interact with electronics around them without relying on the cloud - https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb
Product Innovation Decision Makers
The Product Innovation Board will make the final call on each product initiative. The Board is comprised of 4 sponsors during this pilot program:
- Ari Jaaksi, SVP Connected Devices (Chair).
- Jim Cook, CFO Mozilla Corp.
- Bob Lisbonne, MoFo Board.
- Katharina Borchert, MoCo Chief Innovation Officer
Future of Product Innovation Process
The process outlined above is still a pilot program, which is being tested with a limited group -- only with staff in the Connected Devices organization.
In the future this is intended to be an open process. We need to ensure the process works for our organisation. That is why we will first pilot the process, make any necessary improvements and then make it public. From that point we will endeavour to make improvements as and when required.
We expect some elements of this process will be opened up in the first half of 2016.
