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09.15.2016 | SSP News & Releases

Webinar Preview: Building Your Next Great Product: Iterative Product Development for High-Risk Projects

September 15, 2016 – The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is presenting its second webinar of the fall, Building Your Next Great Product: Iterative Product Development for High-Risk Projects, on Tuesday, October 11, 2016, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. eastern time. Registration for the event is now open, with a discount available to SSP members.

This webinar is going to take an in-depth look at developing new products. New products can be high risk, able to exponentially grow a business or consume resources with no return. Luckily, methodologies have been developed to help organizations take on these kinds of high-risk projects through an iterative process that promotes small bets and market validation over large projects and group think. The webinar will give attendees an opportunity to learn about these new product development techniques, where they’re being used within the scholarly publishing industry, and how they can be applied to the next great idea.

Jeff Lang, Assistant Director for Platform Development in The American Chemical Society’s Digital Strategy department, will be moderating the event. Joining him on the panel will be:

  • Alex Humphreys, Associate Vice President, JSTOR and Director, JSTOR Labs at ITHAKA
  • Paul Guinnessy, Strategy Manager/Website Director of Physics Today, American Institute of Physics
  • Christopher George, Product Manager, figshare

We asked Lang to elaborate more about the webinar:

Who should attend the webinar?
Anyone who participates in new projects or new products that aren’t part of the normal operations of a publisher.

What can attendees expect from the webinar?
Innovation projects aren’t simply a journey from A to B.  They force teams to make and test assumptions experimentally.  Panelists are all Product Managers who help their organizations take on innovative challenges.  They will talk about how non-traditional project teams and growth metrics can help you build a growing product.

Why do you think this topic is important and timely?
Successful publishers have already learned how to execute on incremental projects like launching a new journal or upgrading an important piece of your infrastructure.  Innovation projects can’t be run the same way because they are an experiment right from the start.  There are product development frameworks that (even mature) organizations can use to act nimbly and use resources wisely.  Publishers need to master these tools in order to realize the potential of an innovation project.

What do you hope attendees will take away from the webinar?
Understanding the difference between incremental projects and innovative projects. Understanding that there are product development strategies to help you develop innovative projects, the fundamentals of those tools, and where to get more information about using them.

By Josh Lancette, Communications Committee

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