Oregon PDMA/PMF Conference Part 2: You Think You Have Customers?

In the morning, I attended a break-out session on Collaboration in Innovation by Bryan Jobes of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes Division. He was a senior manager for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Here's the thing that struck me: commercial aircraft designers have to balance trade-offs for a range of customers and end users from passengers, pilots, flight attendants, ground crew, airport infrastructure managers, passenger experience managers (or whatever they call those people who decide that those in Coach don't need much legroom), capacity managers, bean counters, etc. plus a worldwide network of regulatory agencies. That they can do this and deliver an innovative aircraft in a reasonable (for the industry) timeframe seems like quite an accomplishment.

Collaboration is a given in this environment, and he provided a nice example of how Marketing, Product and Technology roadmaps work together to provide direction for a team making literally thousands of trade-off decisions.