Smart Products

Smart products are all around us, and it is hard to imagine how our lives would be without them. From smartphones to smart toasters, refrigerators, and earbuds, smart products give us a lot of help and make our lives better in so many ways. They perform actions on our behalf and inform our decision-making. Smart products gain their effectiveness through a combination of core components, intelligence, connectivity, and automation. In today's episode, I talk about smart products and the challenges that manufacturers and developers face. I explore smart products' complex nature and the issues surrounding development and security vulnerabilities within the internal and external ecosystem. I discuss the role of building trust, coordination, and alignment across engineering groups. I also discuss the importance of strong decision making, cross-organizational agreements, and prioritizing in-market and new products against strategic goals, growth targets, and sustainability commitments.

“The most important thing is the alignment of the various engineering groups both inside your company and the ecosystem that you’re working with.” - Paul Heller

• The complexity and sophistication of smart products and why they are hard to create
• The essential role of apps and connected home platforms and how savvy technical consumers are hooking their smart devices together themselves
• Support centers, diagnostics, and how performance, hardware problems, and software issues may be managed
• How connected smart devices are a target of cybercriminals and pose a security risk
• Why alignment, innovation, and product testing are vital
• The challenges of software development and the global shortage of semiconductors and computer chips
• How the vulnerabilities in third-party components and software become built into a company's ecosystem
• Aligning all engineering groups inside your company and the ecosystem that you are working with to make development easier
• Building trust and developing a positive internal and external culture
• Why it is vital to establish strong decision making in product and portfolio management
• Creating a good governance model, aligning engineering teams, and resisting the urge to dictate how they do their work
• Why you should focus on comprehensive product line planning to reflect and predict the needs and features of different market segments and geographical regions
• Gaining cross-organizational agreement on your product investment, launch timelines, and revenue expectations
• Coordinating the hardware and software departments, product engineering, manufacturing, and third-party suppliers
• Prioritizing candidate new and in-market products against growth targets and strategic goals and commitments

• IFTTT (If This Then That)

This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon

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