Since 2011 Karin heads Product Planning globally for the „Food Preparation“ Product Line of the Electrolux Group. This involves an integrated, x-functional 5-year planning of products, platforms, investments and resources - and more critical: innovation and technologies. Before that Karin was Director in the Groups Consumer Innovation Program, the team in charge of driving the company’s consumer innovation agenda and related processes and ways-of-working. Previous positions included Change Management/Business Re-engineering, after 10 years of operational and strategic Product and Marketing Management experience. Karin studied business adminstration in Germany and France. Her passion is to help ‘landing’ great technologies and innovation in market launches to deliver a distinct consumer experience.
During the past five years Electrolux has honed its integrated product planning approach to increase the rate of success of innovations and their fit from a product portfolio perspective. The initiative emerged from a sense that many past innovative concepts were developed without being commercialized or succeeding in the marketplace. To counter this, Electrolux developed an integrated product and innovation portfolio approach that starts with a sense both of the market, the overall product offering, and existing projects; takes a structured approach to moving from idea to prioritized innovation concept; and balances the need for both incremental innovation and really new/advanced innovations. Karin Schumacher will detail the why and the how of this integrated approach, including the need for coordination between distinctive functional areas in order to drive strategies and create a shared product roadmap. Insights and lessons learned from experience will include:
- The rationale for taking a structured and integrative approach to innovation portfolio management and product planning
- Using market analysis as a starting point for understanding consumer needs and as one of the tools for evaluating innovative ideas
- Creating an integrated product planning process that serves to address market opportunities and exploit synergies between new ideas and existing business architectures – involving multiple functions to funnel innovative ideas, prioritize innovation concepts, and drive the development of new products from the drawing board to market launch
- Illustrative case stories of how the integrated approach has played out in practice and made a positive difference
- Design Thinking, Front End and Foresighting
- Track Talk