Lessons Learned About Product Innovation During an Evening with ProductTank Chicago

by Tim Martin, Chief Global Solutions Officer, TransUnion

Last week, TransUnion® was fortunate to host ProductTank Chicago — and with it, 100 of the city’s top product development leaders. Joined by sponsors Mind the Product, Women in Product and Black Product Managers, it featured an exciting discussion about inspiring and driving innovation in product development. As a company with innovation at our core, it was a great opportunity to connect with local product leaders who share this same mindset.

The night’s keynote speaker was Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, who has helped clients like Microsoft, Starbucks and Squarespace develop and shape products that are interwoven into many of our daily lives. He was also instrumental in building successful companies, CareerBuilder and Merrill Corporation. The key to his success? Pretty simple… a desire to solve a problem — with a focus on the people he was solving it for. Or, as we like to say at TransUnion, “Think like a customer.”

It was impossible not to draw parallels between the core values Christian shared and our own TransUnion values.  Three of them particularly resonated with me.

Product development is a team sport

Which are the world’s most innovative companies? Giants like Amazon, Netflix and Uber all come to mind. You have to wonder, is there something they all share? They are led by different CEOs, develop completely different products, and are in entirely different industries. So, what’s the common thread? They all successfully leverage their teams — not just as individual players but as a collective.

Most importantly, teams that consistently deliver excellence have a shared vision — a functional goal. It’s not a design-specific goal. Rather, it’s a team goal with everyone understanding the vision and contributing their specific skill sets to reach a shared outcome.

The best products are born of problems

Christian made me, and I suspect others, pause and think when he boldly stated, “Making customers happy is not hard.” On many days, I would question a statement like this, but that day, I fully bought into the ideology.

His argument was simple: To make your customers happy, you have to solve their problems. Even if they’re ones they don’t know they have (a common occurrence in tech-forward industries).

He asked us to recall the invention of autocorrect, in which an engineer was simply in the room while Microsoft was focus testing in Word. The engineer noticed the typer kept going back to fix their spelling mistakes after Word alerted them one existed. So, if Word had the capability to notice the mistake was there, couldn’t there also be the capability to automatically correct it? Simple, but effective. The customer’s problem was solved before they knew they even had one. What makes a customer happier than that? At TransUnion, we’re constantly developing technologies we believe will do the same for our customers — from fraud prevention to marketing solutions and everything in between.

Great teams are born in great environments

Studies show one of the most important thing to employees in high-performing companies is psychological safety. Meaning, people are comfortable speaking up, confident moving from conflict to commitment, and know they can depend on their teams to make an impact.

You can hire all the best people. But if they’re afraid to speak up and share their ideas, or don’t feel valued and believe their work matters, you’re not going to get the best out of them.

At TransUnion, we call this “integrity,” but it all ladders up to the same thing. We act with honesty, trust and respect in everything we do. And that commitment moves our teams and the business forward.

As the night was wrapping up, some final words of wisdom were shared in the form of a Steve Jobs quote. “It doesn’t make sense to hire a bunch of smart, talented people, to tell them what to do. We hire them to tell us what’s possible.”

At TransUnion, I’m lucky enough to be surrounded daily by some of the smartest, most talented people I know. And as I look forward, I’m energized by the prospect of standing side by side with each of them and discovering what’s possible.

To learn more about TransUnion’s innovative solutions, please visit Solutions | TransUnion.