‘Innovation’ is an overused buzzword for this one very simple reason – just about every company wants to be seen to be innovative. But are our most innovative products actually the most profitable for us? Most would agree that ‘new’ for new’s sake actually makes little sense, yet it is also natural for Product Managers to feel the weight of responsibility in developing new technologies or ideas that will disrupt and shift their market to the advantage of their organisation.

In the vast majority of instances however, great new ideas don’t come from the head of one particular product management genius who has shut himself away and simply thought hard. They come through ‘listening’. The company which has the wherewithal to garner and gather ideas from up and down and right around their organisation stands to benefit hugely. The Prodigy product management suite, incorporating powerful Salesforce ‘Chatter’ functionality provides companies with the ability to ‘listen’ in this very broad way, and then process what it ‘hears’ through a variety of channels.

Prodigy enables the informal gathering of input from a vast range of sources – clients, consultants, sales teams and members of the company’s own teams, from sales & marketing, HR, finance through to board director level. All of these sources can feed in considerable amounts of information and data to not only inform decisions, but to germinate concepts and ideas. This is how great ideas emerge, and the rewards come when those gems are discovered.

In this regard, Prodigy provides companies with two distinct advantages, providing firstly a variety of ways to share ideas with appropriate audiences, and then also providing a way to store research in an easily accessible manner. These key elements are a critical part of ensuring that the product team is on course with the right product ideas to take forward and develop, providing opportunities to present a full picture of the viability of these ideas.

Traditionally – and understandably – product managers have been more than a little nervous about sharing immature ideas, particularly if there have been limited opportunities to consult with trusted sources in the first instance. Prodigy allows these managers to tease ideas out informally via consultations with respected individuals or groups, before any need to mainstream them.

Once ideas have been processed and marked for future reference, Prodigy provides an easily accessible repository for storing them – in a variety of formats, with a clear, audited record of who said what, and when. Whatever these documents are – the results of broad market questionnaires, the result of detailed exercise with an external consultancy or feedback from an extensive set of interviews with a current and prospective client base – Prodigy enables teams to make valuable use of them as visible records supporting proposed new product ideas, along with the opportunity for to align key stakeholders to these new ideas..

Find out more about Prodigy here: https://www.prodigyproduct.com/