When it comes to generating new ideas for product development I make it a habit to prune.Productive pruning like anything is a skill one gains through time. I describe it as a highly developed sense of mental gardening. Learning from practice what to keep and nurture and what to cut. I compare it to pruning rose bushes.

The secret to maintaining a beautiful strong healthy rose bush is pruning. Pruning ensures that your plant stays healthy, so it can produce larger flowers with stronger stems. Pruning eliminates the dead and damaged parts of the plant which helps to ensure it’s long term health. Those of you who garden can appreciate the skill of knowing what to cut and the patience required to maintain such a beautiful result.

I can appreciate how challenging it can be be to ignore the immediate in favor of the distant. Long-term thinking that competes with so many short-term decisions requires discipline and solitude. How many of you catch yourself saying I just need some time to think? Isolation, or a certain level of sensory deprivation can translate to being able to free associate, to think without interruption, and visualize the result of your idea. Complete isolation cannot coexist in today’s working environment. However with disciplined focus in the from of subtle sensory deprivation, it can.

How many of you get your best ideas in the shower? The shower is like an interruption-free zone. No telephone, email, text messages asking you for a response. You are able to think without interruption. Productive pruning in the form of subtle sensory deprivation can free you to be creatively more productive.

I compare it to a neighbor down the block from a dear friend of mine. Her neighbor’s rose garden is located in the front yard so as to share its beauty and grandeur with those who walk or drive by. It had been several years since moving next door and my friend had never actually observed her neighbor pruning the roses. Mostly she just appreciated and admired the result of her neighbor’s faithful tending. It was by happen-stance that she noticed the neighbor’s wife in the front yard and mentioned to her how much she admired their roses. The wife commented that its all her husband’s doing, he does it all by himself….he’s blind.

Blind? Imagine being able to produce such beauty all in his head. Visualizing the long-term result though his mind’s eye.The absence of one sensory sharpened his focus to productively prune for a more healthy plant in the long run.

It’s been many years now since I started subconsciously pruning, making decisions that resulted in the cutting away of distractions that serve to decay ideation instead of promoting it.

Developing your own creative rhythm through productive pruning, requires patience and constant tending, however just as in my example of the blind rose gardener, just “think”of your result.

Loralee Lyman of CartDarts, a division of Flipside Design, LLC, specializes in branding and product development design.

For more information, visit www.DelectableDesigner.com

So, you draw the conclusion that it is not ever going to work and then you mentally move on to never review, re-examine or reconsider that particular product idea again?

To me, repeatedly thinking about different perspectives and reconsidering alternatives, helps me to expand the failed or suppressed idea that can then lead me an insight toward a potential product solution. Assumptions of what will or will not work are something we all have to contend with. Whenever called upon to assist, customers will tell me all the things that did not work. They explain in vivid detail the things they have tried and what they have experienced. When they describe a failed product, seldom is mentioned any details of internal resistance toward the failed product.

Instead of opting to re-examine it, it’s as if they stopped exploring the product idea any further. They just know that the product failed and assume that any new product idea that remotely resembles it, will likely produce the same result. At times, it can seem like assumptions are the biggest obstacle to a great product idea. Assumptions can become a mental blockade, preventing inspiration from piercing through. To me, it is far easier to tear down an idea than it is to present one. Show me an enthusiastic person with a brilliant product idea and I will show you a whole team of veterans armed with reasons and assumptions as to why the product will not work.

Assumptions and the resistance to change can serve to subversively sabotage the best of product ideas. Never was it more apparent then the recent example of two companies that we helped.

We developed a new product idea for a customer within the capabilities of their production process. The initial public response was positive, however it was not a product that was fully appreciated by the team producing and promoting it. Within a couple of weeks, despite a positive response and palatable momentum from the public, the company decided to discontinue the offering.

They sited the new product as not selling enough volume for them to continue. Their decision seemed counterintuitive to me as they had only given the new product a couple of weeks. Furthermore, those couple of weeks had shown a positive reaction from their customers. Imagine the thoughts that plagued my mind, how can you lose if your new product is just beginning to win? It was upon re-examination with this company that we discovered that if the new product continued to experience demand, it would have begun to compete with production of their core offerings. Sometimes details regarding internal resistance are not easily detected when doing the initial analysis of a new product request. An innovative product idea and the pursuit of that idea is never easy. However, when a new product begins to compete with established products, it can have a compounding effect on a new product’s life span.  Just as it is easier to tear down an idea than it is to present one, the same holds true that it is far easier to kill a product then it is to nurture one.

Sometime later we were approached by a another company with a similar product development design assignment.

We created a similar product, with a different name and appearance. The big difference was that the new company eagerly embraced and nurtured the new product offering. Because the initial public reaction was positive, they committed toward a continued effort to market and highlight the new product. Within a couple of months, the product proved to be a staple in their product offerings.

Had I made assumptions regarding the product idea and relegated it to ‘flop island’, I would have never reviewed, re-examined, and re-presented the idea. Good ideas require concentration, objectivity, and re-examination. Dismissal requires none.

If I had as a mental policy to relegate all discontinued product ideas to ‘flop island’ I would have never reviewed,  re-examined or reconsidered that great product idea again. Continual thought devoted towards different perspectives can help you dispel assumptions when considering a new product idea.

Loralee Lyman of CartDarts, a division of Flipside Design, LLC, specializes in branding and product development design. For more information, visit www.DelectableDesigner.com

The general perception of marketing, or marketing’s function within an organization, is contrasting. Ask someone in your sales department what marketing is, and you get one answer. Ask someone in your marketing department and you’ll get another answer.

Whether theory, practice or application, the truth of the matter is you cannot have an impact unless you can relate to your subject and the people you are trying to appeal to. If you cannot relate to the people or products that are before you, the first step is to admit it.

It is challenging to reach people quickly in mass in a memorable fashion to generate a response. There are many outlets for information about your product or service to be conveyed. Traditional means of marketing evangelism have evolved. Present day digital lifestyles combined with ever-increasing attention deficit has deemed it so. Awareness is no longer the obstacle; generating a reaction is.

An example of ineffective marketing is a local fine dining establishment that I recently came to know. The food was outstanding, and the service and personality of the various staff members was enjoyable. So why were they struggling? I arranged a few days later to meet with the owner. I asked the owner why he felt they where struggling. His response? “Lack of awareness.”

Awareness alone was not the answer, meaningful response in the form of increased customers was. The restaurant owner after employing just about every traditional advertising method as well as new media in an effort to create awareness of their unique offerings had fallen short in creating any meaningful response.

If awareness was the answer in the mind of the restaurant owner, then why was it that all his efforts to create awareness had failed to generate a response? He had failed to understand and relate to current customers as well as relate to potential customers. He had created the awareness they lacked in order to be more successful; he just fell shy of creating a response.

Effective relationship marketing is like telling a joke to your friends. Either they laugh or they don’t, and if they don’t laugh, no amount of explaining why it is funny will make your joke any funnier.

To really appreciate effective relationship marketing, you need to ask yourself a couple questions. How many times have you heard or watched a certain commercial? Did you respond to it? Why did you respond, or better yet, why didn’t you?

It’s hard to relate to an unknown. It is only through understanding that you can begin to create response.

I have been most fortunate in my career and life to be the lucky recipient of sage influencers — an eclectic bunch to say the least. I am a big fan of what I refer to as “the surprise” — the person you rarely meet, never knowing the profound impact they will have on  you over time. It is never who you think it might be. That’s why I refer to them as “the surprise.” The more you scratch their surface the more you are pleasantly surprised. Their words first capture your mind and ultimately your spirit. Their distant whispers are there to greet you like a megaphone as you progress and grow.
I have had many “surprise” people in my life: the scruffy former war veteran farmer who has written several novels; the multimillionaire credited with inventing the make-up brush who, on the surface, could count as his closest friends all the people that we only know as brands today; the founder of a nonprofit who always figured a way to make things happen; my IT guy who helps me on the off hours check-off the items on my bucket list. Even a dishwasher at a diner I frequent, talk about a surprise — he speaks five languages and studies philosophy in his spare time. You almost want to time your meal around his break time just to have the opportunity to exchange impressions, interpretations and the exchange a few ideas.
Take Michael, a hair designer who just happened to be a former executive of a major snack processor. He taught me the value of a system, so that no matter what – whether you are slow or very busy – you have a way of working that will always supply your customers with a consistent quality of both product and service. I think he was one of my biggest surprises – pink highlighted hair does not exactly scream former Frito-Lay executive to most people, but that he was.
Sometimes business can be a bit callus when it comes to the day-to-day. You can find yourself feeling a bit like you are pushing an elephant up a hill in a wheelbarrow. When it comes to challenges you either pack up and go home or you go boldly forward.
How many of you have heard “if it were easy everybody would be doing it?” Personally, I am very grateful for all the challenges and surprising influencers in my life. I hope my application of their wisdom in my day-to-day life, along their teachings has been somewhat informative for all of you. I am very appreciative of all your feedback over the past year. I hope that highlighting what I have learned along the way has helped you in your day-to-day. I am very grateful to the Fresh Cut readership and the opportunity to express my experiences and observations.
Onward and upward – bring on the new year.
 Loralee Lyman of CartDarts, a division of Flipside Design LLC, specializes in branding and product development design. For more information, visit www.DelectableDesigner.com. 

Imagine for another minute you were raised on bacon-flavored bananas. Would you know the difference between what tastes good and what tastes bad? Or what is bad for you, or what is in fact good for you? I think I am not alone in remembering a flavor from my youth. I am sure you all have one or two fond memories surrounding a flavor.

Bacon bananas reminds me of a camping experience from when I was a kid. Our family, along with another family, would plan every meal beforehand so as to maximize the fun time. The mothers would be pampered and catered to. The husbands would prepare the meals and the children would do the dishes in order to give moms a much-deserved rest. I will never forget the year Bacos® came out as a product. Bacos®, for those not familiar, is an imitation bacon flavored vegetable soy protein product that is crunchy like crumbled bits of bacon. It is actually good on salads or in scrambled eggs. However my father, who fancied himself as a kitchen king of sorts, was rather delighted to introduce Bacos® to all of us because not only was it shelf stable for travel, it would potentially save him lots of time when preparing our breakfasts, since real crispy bacon takes time to prepare, his flavor profile inspiration was why take the time to cook crispy bacon to go with our pancakes when it seemed perfectly logical to him to simply add Bacos® straight into the pancake batter. This flavor inspiration did not exactly translate well to everyone’s palette. I hid my pancakes in a shoe box so as to not hurt his feelings. Looking back on it, his logical approach wasn’t that far off. Who amongst us doesn’t love a little maple-cured bacon. The point being, we need to make every morsel count.

I have to giggle a bit when speaking towards this topic because when I was young, I did not care for spinach. However, when I became a young adult I couldn’t get enough spinach. I ended up loving it both sauteed and fresh. Imagine my mother’s surprise! I came to realize that palettes can mature and change. Palettes can also become dull. By that I mean that they become bored with the same flavor in a multitude of applications.

Historically, my product observations have brought me to the conclusion that, as it relates to product development of fresh lifestyle products, it is far better for our industry to infuse our flavorful goodness into less than healthy items, than it is for us to inject their flavors into ours.

How many different products can you create with basically the same flavor? You can bet if Bacon Bananas experiences any traction, bacon coffee, bacon toast, and bacon juice will not be too far behind. If this sounds outrageous to you, try a little grocery shopping; start looking for bizarro products based in this type of logic, and you will begin to spot the Bacon Banana products in the marketplace.

There is no diplomacy on shelf. Failure to communicate quickly is failure before you start. There is no equality in product success; competition isn’t everybody racing against each other for a tie. There is a natural impression that takes place in the market. It has to do with every little aspect as to how your product is perceived, not the least of which is the name you give it.

When considering a product name, is it better to be explicit? Graphic? Descriptive? Should you hyphenate it with your company name so people will know it’s from you? Is it better to be creative and clever with lots of bright colored blurbs of information as to what the name stands for or means? Or, should you opt for an all-inclusive naming approach and attempt to have the name say it all? Vitameatavegamin – that should do it! After all it’s only a name.

A better approach would be to have a name that reflects the individual product line, backed by the company name where the public at large already has a general perception of trust.

An example I like to explain is: First think of your company’s name like your family’s last name. Think of yourself, your sibling, your spouse, your children and their children. You may all share the same last name, however, everyone has a different first name, each name you associate to a personality. That personality congers up a mental picture of a unique individual. Not to be confused with others members of your family. However, the general perception to the family’s last name is shared. People associate something to your family’s name separate from the individuals in it. The same importance you place on naming the members of your family should be the same level of importance placed on the family of products your company has to offer.

If you happen to be a boxing fan, then you might appreciate the famous George Foreman, widely known for both boxing and his grilling products. He not only has a product named after him, he named each of his five sons the same first name George: George Jr., George III, George IV, George V, and George VI. Imagine growing up in that household how often would you get blamed for something one of the other Georges did (Gaads)! Like most families each child is different and their individual qualities are referred to and generalized by their family name (example: “Jane” is friendly, like her Mom “Jill Smith”). So too, should your products and their names be a reflection of your company.

Do you ever find it difficult to tend to business and be creative at the same time? I am reminded of a famous quote by Andy Warhol:
“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art… Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”

I think of effective upper managers as observational artists. They not only make organizational observations, they create appropriate actions to address
their observations. It is a full time pursuit. Being good in business is an art, and those charged with polishing a process and making it smooth are the artists.

Maintaining relevance has to do with momentum. Momentum is that invisible force that can propel an idea of emphasis into a product, and a winning product into a line of products, then ultimately into a sizeable organization. Today, fronting marketable ideas in order to maintain relevance is “The challenge” presented to these observational artists.

The “me too” product is not innovation; it more akin to maintaining a market presence. Maintenance is what tends to occur when you’re done being a pioneer, becoming more of a settler, and in that transition you tend to give up your appetite for adventure-causing you to lose momentum.

Maintaining hard-earned ground in the form of self space or market share without sabotaging accomplishments to date becomes the distraction from innovative pursuits. Mental energies focused on maintaining instead of innovating is the beginning of momentum depreciation.

Every large organization today can point to its humble beginnings in the form of an “idea”. That simple idea represented the very first step, eventually developing into a walk, then ultimately running. What is difficult to see is the invisible force of all that momentum which brought it to its present destination. It is difficult to protect an invisible force. How do you protect what you cannot see?

In every organization, those humble beginnings of momentum cannot be measured-only felt. It is a unique emotion reserved only for those brave enough to explore it. Teaching others the importance of protecting something as far off in a company’s distant past is challenging. However, when that precious momentum is lost, it suddenly becomes measurably tangible in the form of profit and loss. Momentum, like time, can only be spent, and like time, you can never save it-you can only protect and respect it.

Today’s market requires momentum to be maintained. The beginning of the innovation process starts with an Idea. Once you have a product idea, the window of opportunity is very short. Few can afford to lose hard earned market momentum polishing and maintaining all of their internal processes, at the expense of the time and energy required to develop new products.

With innovation demands exponentially increasing more each and every year, companies have come to rely on independent innovators, this practice of open innovation is void of any egalitarian corporate style towards developing products.

Group participation with regards to innovative products tends to water down the product emphasis to the point of non-relevance. Dragging out a long process even further losing precious lead time that spends their company’s momentum instead of building upon it. With a proliferation of recommendations, it is challenging for even the most seasoned among us to filter everyone’s injection towards an idea. Layering recommendations on top to such an extent is difficult to get to the essence of what is, in fact the viable candidate. I have grown accustomed to leaping into motion to create for processors. I find that leading companies of today don’t care where a good idea comes from as long as the ideas come to them.

If upper management charged with polishing a process and making it smooth, it should also be ready to receive ideas for that process. The best artists see, protect and respect the invisible force of momentum that will continue to sustain their organization’s competitive edge.

Product packaging is what I like to describe as “surface wrapped substance.” What goes in and on that product is the result of planning and intuition. The planning portion primarily consisting of various organizational techniques, steeped in logic, and the practice of being productive without waste.

Intuition on the other hand is generally thought of as a variable. Compounding that variable is that there is no measurable means or method to prove what you believe or recommend is correct. Intuition can take you down several paths; One might prove to be a wasteful practice of feeling you are productive with your thinking; another path, would be immediately knowing your thoughts will be productive. Feeling and knowing are two very different emotions. One is more faith-based, the other is based on instantly understanding. The mental challenge is that it is difficult to tell which emotional path you are actually on. Especially if you allow your reasoning and rational mind to dictate your gut.

An example of a rational thought process applied towards product development, would be to economize, recalculate or retool to maintain margins. If you can trim, you can help to offset losses. The only problem with this process is that there is a tipping point, you can only economize so much, until there is nothing left to cut. The product is trimmed to the point of no value. It is hard to know exactly when you have crossed that line since it is not immediately felt. It is easy to forget that packaging makes faceless commodities and ingredients into Products. Taking a formally four-color package and watering it down to one-color, or making the portions smaller in the name of savings is a bit short-sighted. Consumers’ perception and response towards such a rational thought process can affect sales to the point that no amount of economizing can offset.

I realize that over time we can lose touch with our intuition, it tends to get battered here and there, so one can begin to lose trust in it; siding less with intuition and leaning more towards reason and a perceived sense of certainty. The reality being, there is no such thing as certainty when it comes to product development. The only certainty is that your product will either fail or succeed, anything in the middle will eventually drift towards one of those two results. With that type of result why not create utilizing your intuition? Try placing your intuition ahead of your reasoning.

What is the worst that could happen? You become less efficient with your time because you spend more time thinking?
What is the best that could happen? You become more intuitive as to what your audience likes about your products?

When it comes to developing products, it helps if you continually strive to trust your intuition in spite of counter-influences, concentrate on your skills of persuasion and most importantly try not to lose patience or become discouraged. In the end, a product’s substance should be distinct and that is not always easily reflected or achieved.

Loralee Lyman of Flipside Design, LLC. specializes in
branding, product development and package
design. For more info, visit www.DelectableDesigner.com

Marketers can tell you exactly what they need to be successful. The challenge for staff and service firms alike, is the directive that is absent of a solution. On occasion, I run across marketing models utilizing communication-du-jour techniques in an effort to keep up with today’s audiences. Marketing techniques may have evolved over the years, but the objective remains fundamentally the same, which is to promote.

The challenge is communicating towards a targeted audience quickly to expand a message from a whisper to more of a shout. Successful marketers are those located at the intersection of “we provide” and “what people want”, and are trying to drive to the intersection of “say our message” and “create response”.

Marketing at the speed of thought is rarely achievable within the confines of an organization. Directives are rarely achieved without employing those well versed in several disciplines outside of an organization. At the heart of this is the decision to trust those outside a company.To be effective, one must not only know the objective, they must possess the skill to spot and employ the right talent to achieve the objective. There is a considerable canyon between knowing and achieving. Not everyone trusts his or her guides.

Do you have a trusting nature? Ever jump out of plane to sky dive- where you are strapped to an experienced sky diver? It would be difficult to imagine being harmed by a person whose goal is mutually aligned with your own to land safely on the ground. If you took a piece of paper out and drew a line down the middle and wrote all the good things that happen to your company as a result of trust, juxtaposed to all the bad things, on balance, has your decision to trust been rewarded more than harmed?

One example that I think is appropriate to share is a restaurant that we help. The restaurant added a new co-owner, a former Google executive, a marketing maestro in her own right. The objective was to expand their offering by adding a dinner shift. Taking on additional help and talent resulted in the need to inform and promote the public of their new hours and menu offerings. She immediately set out to execute her marketing strategy and quickly realized that the energy and resources required needed a more hands-on approach. She investigated the options, and together with her business partner, decided to entrust us with helping them to accomplish their objective.

They didn’t make it easy and they asked a lot of questions: What was our experience, level of expertise, our commitment to their goals, even questions about our customer service. It was a learning experience for both of us. We learned what was most frustrating from a client’s perspective, was trusting those you select to actually achieve the objective. In the end, both of us were mutually successful in our efforts and we continue to help each other grow.

To be effective, one must not only know the objective, they must possess the skill and employ the talent to achieve the objective. Knowing and achieving are only separated by one thing, a marketing maestro’s ability to spot the answer. How many of you talk about a problem hoping a friend or trusted colleague will tell you the answer? Rarely does talking enough about a problem present a solution itself. True Marketing Maestros listen, see the problem, and know how to properly respond to achieve the objective.

My advice to help marketers become “Marketing Maestros” is to ask lots of questions to determine trust. Truly effective Marketers know how to silence the words of frustration and effectively establish trust with others to promote their offerings.

Many a story I could share of all the innovative thinkers and leaders I have met over the years, some of which still grumble about a missed opportunity somewhere in the past. Some opportunities fade because of budget constraints, however surprisingly more are missed simply because of a sluggish protocol or chain of command. If only they had seized a particular opportunity when it was presented…if only. Hindsight can be a nagging thing at times…you can be so busy looking behind, you fail to see the new opportunity ahead.

Hindsight is a bit like sport stats to me…just about everyone who has an interest in sports can quote a team’s record and make assessments regarding the decisions made by team management that results in the team’s performance (good or bad).

When it comes to inventive products rarely does the word “quick” or “fast” follow. “Inventive” usually translates to an unfamiliar process of unknown steps and lead times. I am sure many a product development executive can attest to the Pepto Bismol method of calming stomachs when aiming for a proposed launch date. Polishing a product idea into perfection coupled with a deadline can frazzle even the strongest of personalities.

Fear of failure can be a big motivator towards checking and double checking every detail, adding to an already excruciatingly long lead time prior to launching. You have to admire and respect the shear tenacity and continued focus that is required to be mentally maintained in order to accomplish such a feat.

When it comes down to speed-to-market products, I fondly think of one my customers who has a special gift, that of unbridled enthusiasm complimented with the ability to make people laugh. He loves to point out all the things he has learned from his team’s failure to greet a particular opportunity with a timely response.

His humorous recollection of events leading up to that missed train would have everyone in the room roaring with laughter, so much so that others on his staff would chime in with a funny detail that would make the story even more absurd and hilarious. It was something, the way he would tell it…it almost made you secretly wish for another missed opportunity, just to hear his take on it.

What I came to realize over time was with the occasional missed opportunity comedy routine, was that as a leader he found a way to motivate his team. Observing his leadership style made me realize that as a leader part of his job was to protect his willing and capable staff from commercial pressures. By telling the lessons learned in such a humorous manner the lesson would resonate in the minds of his staff.

By creating an atmosphere that allowed for his feedback to be delivered in such a form, it allowed the lesson to remain in everyone’s mind, without the team losing their enthusiasm or resolve to keep trying. The end result was more hits then misses. He is living proof that good leadership can still find a way to continue to motivate a team to succeed even with the occasional setback.

So, is it better to polish a product invention prior to launch or launch a speed-to-market product and continue to refine and compliment them over time? It’s a tough question…one that can only truly be addressed by each company’s situation.

However I will simply add one should always remain mindful of their instinct. When it comes to new products, from a market perspective, first is first any way you look at it. Market share rarely goes to the company who launches a perfect product a year after the product trend they were aiming for has already launched.