Experiential Product Learning

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to beyond the Product talk with awh, a podcast for product people by product people. Join us as experts share their experiences and expertise to help you build great products.

Speaker B: Hi folks, it's Ryan Frederick from AWH with another episode of beyond the Roadmap, a podcast about building great software products. Today I've got, uh, uh, someone who's become a friend over time, uh, as we've crossed paths m many, many times in and around Columbus and around the innovation, entrepreneurial and product spaces. Paul Reeder from Ohio State. Paul, good to see your face, even though the other the folks listening won't be able to see your face. Um, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. And why don't you give folks a flavor of what you do at the Ohio State University and how that came to pass as we begin to sort of unpack getting young people exposed to some of this early product stuff.

Speaker C: So thanks so much for inviting me to participate in this, uh, provocative discussion. Uh, I'm here to represent our Ohio State University. I'm going to change that brand from now on instead of the. I want to be a more inclusive our Ohio State University where I'm the executive director of the center for Innovation Strategies housed at our Fisher College of Business. And I think today we're going to talk most about our On Ramp program, which is a student experiential learning, uh, project, uh, with our external partners.

Speaker B: Awesome. So let's start to uh, dig into that, um, and we are going to focus on Ramp, that's I think a key, um, initiative and a key program for what you're doing over there. Part of the, the center of Innovation, um, strategies, um, and it's clearly about, and I've gotten some exposure over to it, you know, to it over time. I've come and spoken to a couple groups and, and, and I know some of the companies and people at some of the companies that you've had engaged with on Ramp. So I've got a little bit of a taste of, of how it goes down. On Ramp is clearly about an experiential approach to getting students exposed to how do you begin to sort of think about tackling a problem or even maybe not even knowing what the problem is yet, but being sort of given a hypothesis and saying, okay, go discover whether there's a problem here or, and if there indeed is one, what flavor is it? What shape is it? Should we care about it? All those kinds of things, how important to you and then how important it is to the construct of the program that it is experiential and that's the primary purpose, um, of the program and the way that things go down.

Speaker C: Well, there's no question that the experiential learning component is probably the most important for our students because they recognize, they know that you go to college today. And too oftentimes they're just fitting the rubric. They, they're listening to a lecture, they're answering the grades the way, or answering the questions the way they want to get the grade. They don't have a lot of real opportunity to just dig in, um, and truly be able to experience a project and then to be able to have their voices heard. And I think that's where experience makes a big difference, that they get a chance to work with a sponsor who brings this real problem, and they're real people and their job depends on it. So the students see the importance that these projects represent to the sponsors themselves, and they know that they have to come out of this four or five year experience with something other than just this diploma of proficiency. Now, I think the curious part of your question is that this may not necessarily always be the motivation of the sponsor. I think there are sponsors who are very altruistic. You know, they're coming to the university that they, because they want to, want to create a pipeline for students that become talent that they're going to hire at some point. But some of them also just say, you know, we have this big hairy problem that nobody wants to touch internally that is fraught with all sorts of challenges. Maybe we can't even find that customer who we think would, would be curious about this question. And the students are willing to explore and jump into anything. So I think that creates such a neat vibe for the program because the students want to explore and the sponsors sometimes don't really know what they want to get out of it, but they're willing to go along for the ride.

Speaker B: And so give some context to people who are listening. What does a sponsor mean? What does that look like? Uh, and why do companies participate in and what are they often sort of bringing to the table?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I use the term sponsor because we like that term, um, as a way of identifying external partners. It doesn't have to be a company. It could be a company, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a government entity. Uh, we've worked with dozens of different types of entities, and they all bring different, unique challenges to the table. So traditionally in this program, I say traditionally because it's been around for so long, since 2018, and it changes almost every Semester that, that some organization will come and say we have this problem or we think that we want to try to approach this new product concept. But you know, we're just not getting information that we want internally. We recognize that some of our own associates are a little bit concerned about whether we can get the right answer, um, going through a traditional channel like a professional market research firm or their own internal customer experience group. Not that those aren't highly valuable organizations, but they're not going to ask the same questions that a student would ask. So they come to us, propose a concept egg that we call the egg coming into an incubator because it's a, it's a 10 week accelerator program where that egg comes in and generally says here's a hypothesis of a challenge question that we think the students can ask and then they go through a 10 week facilitated uh, process as any accelerator would. We frankly looked at about 25 different accelerator curriculum and then developed our own curriculum. And then over the last 16 semesters we've tweaked, modified and added and subtracted to create a program that um, right now works really well for those partners to try to uncover new business use cases, new customer bases or just even new insights that they just weren't aware that they had. So again the motivation is different for every one of the sponsors. Um, but that becomes our job, my job, um, and my staff's job professionally to say let's tease out what it is you think you want out of this program. And one, whether we have a high enough likelihood to be able to solve that problem for the money that you're going to pay us because it is a paid program. This is not ah, a class four credit that would take much too long a time at a place like Ohio State. Uh, and frankly it doesn't give us the flexibility to change the program. So we like to have a sponsor who comes in, they pay the money, they get to propose the concept and they keep the work product at the end. Um, and I think that's a really seamless way to have a university engage university and the students are able to walk away with with a really solid 10 week performance and uh, a process that they can repeat over and over again, hopefully throughout their professional life.

Speaker B: You mentioned a couple things there that I want to dig into. One is the framework that you provide to the students. How rigid is that? How much uh, do you hold the students accountable to execute inside of the framework? How much do you encourage them to go outside of the framework at the sort of color outside the lines. Talk about that if you would a little bit. And one, the value of having the framework, but then two, the value for students once they sort of get the framework to then say, okay, uh, I know what this is trying to accomplish, but I'm going to apply my own personal individual spin on it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because when you just said uh, you had this rigid framework, my initial reaction was sort of like oh, oh no, we're not rigid. But the reality is that the sponsor pays us money as they would to any type of consulting firm, although we're not a consulting firm obviously. Um, and so we make sure that we're going to deliver product at the end of that, end of that 10 weeks. And in order to get to that product in that 10 weeks, we have to have a framework that says week by week this is generally what we're going to try to accomplish. But the reality is that a good innovation process like, ah, the one I think we have built built is adaptive. So if we are moving through the first two weeks of doing secondary research and we're just finding a different vibe in, in the industry than the way it was presented to us, we're going to spend more time, uh, or if we are having difficulty finding that customer base that they're looking for, we're going to look at that and say is this the right customer base or should we be looking for someone else? Um, so we are absolutely going to be adaptive through the process but we also want to make sure that we are, that we are constantly course correcting because I don't ever, ever extend the length of the project. One is that the students come into finals week and that's that we're going to lose them. Right, right. Um, but also I'm a really strong believer having spent 25 years in the consulting business that I don't go over project deadlines. Right. So we stick with our project deadline and then we're flexible within that, depending upon what the market's telling us, whether we can interview enough people, whether we're feeling like we're getting um, quality of insights and, and most importantly whether we think we're getting to a solution state that's going to keep the project alive within that sponsors halls. You know, like I know that almost every um, cohort that we run at week eight and a half, I freak out, the ideas aren't there, we haven't developed enough, these aren't far enough along. Are they going to be interesting enough to our sponsor? Uh, and then the students Just pull through and we kill it in the last week and a half. But I think that that level of urgency, um, sounds like.

Speaker B: Sounds like every. Every product deliverable and launch in the history, man and womankind.

Speaker C: Right? So maybe that is preparing them for. Preparing them for a professional life that, uh, you know, you have a looming launch deadline and that you ought to really be scrambling and in that last few weeks to just make sure you're bringing it across. Because I absolutely do not want to deliver a meh solution. You know, I want a solution that is, that is pushing that. That sponsor to scratch their head a little bit and go, man, we never would have come up with that. That's a repeat customer for us, is when someone says, I never expected that and we're going to come back because of that honesty and we saw things that would not come out of our own shop.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. So do students know when they're considering on ramp and they're making the decision to participate in on ramp? Do they know that they are getting indoctrinated to product management and customer discovery and research and. Or what do they think they're getting into when they apply and sign up? Ryan?

Speaker C: Uh, universities do not indoctrinate anyone. So the question is whether we, Whether a student who's interested in onramp knows what they're getting into. And I would say most of the time, they absolutely do not. We have a really high rate of just referrals. Student says my roommate, somebody in my student org, you know, my high school friend, they did on rep and they said it was fun. Like, I'm totally fine with that. Um, that recommendation is fully acceptable by me because the student today has got so much pressure on them. Nothing's fun. You know, going to class isn't fun. Doing online classes isn't fun. Taking tests isn't fun. Feeling the pressure of, oh, my gosh, I have to get out in four years because my parents have this incredible debt. None of that's fun. So if I have a student who's come through on ramp and they tell the friends it's fun, and their friends then fill out an application because it's fun. I'm good with that. We'll get them on track when they start. In fact, normally these first two weeks, it's very confusing for them because we go really fast. Um, again, like, hopefully, like, any professional product management project is going to go. We go super fast up front because we want to get them a little off their feet. Um, because if we can get them Thinking quicker from the beginning, then they get used to at a really quick pace and they don't dwell because dwelling is not going to give us new ideas. Dwelling is going to only have them continue to loop back and analyze what they did or didn't do, right or wrong. And I don't want to do that. We want to keep moving forward.

Speaker B: So, so called, um, product professionals, I mean we all have biases and when we're close to a problem, when we're close to a company, when we're close to the desired, you know, solutions and outcomes that, that can, that can taint our perspective. So our students, because they're at least an arm's length removed in fact before on Ramp, they may never have heard of the company before that's sponsoring it. They certainly may have never engaged with any of their products. Right. Et cetera. So do students come into it with um, a better chance at doing better discovery and a deeper understanding of the problem because they come into it less biased and more open minded?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. We call that a beginner's mindset. And I think you really hit on something that think about when you were, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old. You were not overly aware. Now you probably were because you know, you were on it. But uh, the average student isn't fully aware of all the companies that are out there that they might be able to work for, you know, they, or that they can, that fit within the realm of the world that they're interested in. And so it is oftentimes that the student will come in and they've never even heard of the sponsor before. And that's actually really good for us. We have some students who have in the past applied saying, oh, you're going to be working with Company X. I always want to work there. That's great. This will be a perfect project for me. We immediately reject them because we don't want. I'm going to say this delicately. It's not that we're in a higher, higher education institution that wants to get them a job that's, that's important. But what on ramp is not hr, uh, program. We're not in there to promote that sponsor because it puts a very awkward spin. If you have a student who wants to work for Nationwide and Nationwide is there and then it becomes very awkward. We'd rather have a student who generally doesn't know what Nationwide does. Maybe they know their insurance company and they get to have that beginning beginner mindset and they start to ask questions and the questions they ask the sponsors, like, how could you not know the answer to that? They're like, because frankly, I've never thought about that before ever in my life. Right.

Speaker B: Uh, well, yeah, I think that's one of the values of the program and the value of the beginner's mindset around customer discovery and problem understanding and all those things that are the very outset of a product solution journey, right. Is go into it saying, I don't have an end in mind and I don't have an ax to grind. I eat. I'm not trying to, I'm not, I'm not apply. I'm not. I'm auditioning to be hired by this company. I'm here to learn about the process of, of discovery and innovation. Right. And those kinds of things. And that becomes, you know, the, the, the driver versus, you know, some other driver that, that, you know, might make, might make the, uh, the path forward less meaningful and less valuable.

Speaker C: No, I think that's exactly right. And, and, and I've also believe that that's very true of a professional life. Right. Um, that I think it's very rare and it's, and it's very dangerous. If we would approach a project saying, oh, for the next 10 weeks, I'm going to just go through a bunch of activities, but I already know the answer. You know, that's horrible. You should quit your job and go, you know, work at Wendy's at that, you know, um, no disparagement towards Wendy's, but I'm just saying, like, you know, you are not going to be in a, in a good product management job if you know the answer already. So that's, that's already off the table with a student. Um, and really we don't expose them too much to. Here's what the whole, you know, here's what the whole thing looks like. Here's what all 10 weeks look like. We show them where they're going, but we don't emphasize that. We want them to think one week at a time and not get ahead of themselves. Um, in fact, we don't even encourage them to have any discussion about solutions until we're really into like week five or six. Um, and then we work our way into it. And that's what I like about this is that we also try to put, um, a veteran on ramper with new on rampers, because one is. Then the veteran on ramper can say, don't worry so much that we're going so quickly. Here's what some of this terminology means. And do not talk to me about solutions, we're not there yet. Because even the veteran on Rampers who you might think are more predisposed to say, yeah, I know how to do this, I know how to do this. I'm jumping into the exciting part, the, you know, the dessert of being able to create solutions, that's not at all the case. Our veteran owner Rampers, I actually think that they sort of like to hunt better. They like to have a conversation with, you know, a potential customer, really dig into what the challenge might be. They want to uncover that aha moment that the sponsor comes to them and says, oh my goodness, that, that never even occurred to us. Right. So this, this, we call that the S card. Also that a student card when a student goes to interview. And, and we prefer interviews. Absolutely. Over surveys. We. Not that we haven't done some surveys, but that's only if we can't find enough people to interview or that our time's getting tight. We like them to do personal interviews and so many people will. Don't discount Gen Z. You know, they haven't met them. Um, they think that there might be shallow. I don't even know what the stereotypes are because I don't buy into them. Gen Z is awesome. If once they start interviewing you, you know, strap your boots on because they're going to ask you questions that you. That never occurred to you. They're going to ask you questions that no professional market research firm is probably going to ask you because they want to find out what you're thinking about, not just how you feel about that product space. And I like that. Because they are willing to explore all around an idea because they don't know what they're looking for. Um, we get a lot of questions about, well, why don't you use only business students because this is a business function. Or why don't you use MBA students? Because they're clearly more advanced. Well, I think that's a little bit of a disservice to every fantastic history major out there and every neuroscience student who's just super smart and can apply their mindset to any problem to be solved. Like I love that. Because they become the ones who don't know what questions they're supposed to ask. And even though we give them a framework, we help them to craft open ended questions, when you start getting them into conversation, then you're going to get the insights like, like we, you and I would be in too big of a hurry sometimes to move ahead. Like great, great, I understand what you're saying. I'LL fill in the rest of the blank.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard that before. Doesn't, you know that doesn't sound very new. Right? Give me some, give me something juicy. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah. And so what happens is that, that with an S card that when they go to interview, uh, you know, a potential customer, the customer doesn't know how to respond. Because if the customer has a market research firm call them and offer them $30 to answer their questions, man, they want to answer that to the best of their ability. I love that crappy cereal, uh, I eat it every day, you know, oh, what a load of crap. You know, you're getting paid to say that when a student asks you a question, you start saying, wait a second, I don't want to lie to a student. That really seems like a bad, that's bad karma. I don't want to lie to a student. And I should really have a good conversation with them because this is kind of fascinating. I've never talked to a 20 year old recently. So they uncover stuff that we would never uncover because they're just willing to ask them these naive questions and they don't care about it feeling naive. They just want to see where it's going to go and see where the answer is. So some of the data that we collect, you got to read through some of this, these, some of these answers are crazy. And then they get them from multiple people and so it becomes, start to become an insight and that I love. And that's what the sponsors who come back over and over again are the ones who have acknowledged that their own teams can't, can't dig in sometimes at that level with customers because the customers just aren't willing to be that honest.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, you get lots of bias on the side of customers as well. Right. If they know that they're talking to a representative of the company, that can affect their view. Right. In some cases it's positive, in some cases It's a negative, etc. That's why net promoter scores I think, have uh, become mostly ineffectual. Because if you are, uh, uh, a customer that is happy with that brand and that experience, etcetera, Then yes, you, you might give a positive score. I think in most cases you're not going to hear from the, you're going to hear from the people on the edges, right. You're going to hear from the people that had an amazing experience or terrible experience, but the people in the middle are either just going to abstain. Right. Or they're going To. They're going to, they're going to go, oh, I'll give you an eight. But, you know, really it's more like a five. And so I just think it becomes something that is. I'm not sure it's that reliable anymore. Maybe it was early on, but now everybody's received those as part of purchases and transactions and experiences. And so now I think people are just like, oh, I know how to play this game. If I make, if I give him a 10, then maybe I'll get, you know, uh, another thing added to my rewards account or something like that, right? And if I give him a one, I know I'm going to get a call from somebody, right? So I definitely don't want to do that. Even though I had a really bad experience.

Speaker C: I think that. I think I'd even go maybe one level up. Um, a meta. A meta view on that is that. And I use this as a, this sort of as a joke, um, where if I said, hey, Ryan, what did you have for breakfast this morning? Then I put you on the spot to say, oh, I'm judging your lifestyle. And you're going to. If I'm a professional market research researcher, perhaps you're going to say, oh, well, I had an egg white omelette, uh, and I had fresh kale and organically squeezed guava juice, you know, and a student says, like, hey, what'd you have for breakfast? Morning, you know, well, I had leftover pizza and, uh, and some chocolate chips that I found in the bottom of the bowl. Right? I mean, you start to become honest because you're not worried about the way that the student's going to judge you on your lifestyle. Right? And that's, that's exciting because then they really start, they start to get people to answer questions that, you know, that they're going to answer at a root level, not have all this context of am I going to get a better discount card and am I going to do that? Now, keep in mind, also, when our students do their interviews, they don't say the company name. So at first we started to do it that way because we felt that, uh, we were worried about confidentiality, right? We didn't want to say, oh, you know, the project was started. This whole on ramp was started with Honda. And we knew that if we said, hi, I'm a student at Ohio State and I want to, um, ask you questions about Honda, then you get to spend the next 20 minutes talking about their 97 accord that had an oil leak, right? And so we thought okay, we, I'm not saying that 97 accords have oil leaks. I think it's more like the 95s, but that's the other point. Um, the reality was that, that what we decided is by leaving the company name out, then the, the, the, the interviewee absolutely had no context. They wouldn't know if you could say, tell me about your relationship with um, driving.

Speaker B: Transport. Transportation, right.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. They just start like, well, let me tell you about this. I love to, you know, I love long rides or whatever. Right. So they don't. Having, keeping that additional level of bias out of the conversation, um, just makes it more real. And again that sets everything up. If you can have, if I can get those students to be comfortable asking a real question, then they get real data, they collect real insights. They truly are looking at unmet customer needs and not just in the term of, you know, well, once we identify our and met customer needs, we can la la la la. Right. I want them to truly say what they need is this like they don't need what you think they need. They actually need you to just be more clear about your instructions. And so that's really cool because then that sets us up to create solutions that truly do have a walking path back to where the original problem or opportunity is. And that's maybe also the most important thing that we're trying to get across to our students is that solutions just don't pop up. Right? Solutions just aren't something that you say. I was thinking one day and I came up with a solution like, well, great, then that's never a good solution because it was just, um, you know, it was a, based on audience participation of one that's you. I would much rather have them be able to say, I can go back and defend any solution because I know where the original insight came from. And I talked to that person and this is what they thought. And that is incredibly powerful. Um, particularly when you have a student in our final pitch out, right? And here's a CEO of a large organization who says, wait a second, you came to this solution because you did this and this and this. And the student says, no, no, no, I talked to these three people and those three people said this and that's the path that I led on. I mean it's incredible to see a 20 year old stand up to a, uh, CEO in an organization who's been there, not all their life and defend the fact that they did the research, right. And not back off on that, but say, no, no, no, your customers or Your potential customers or your aspiring customers said this. That's incredibly powerful because don't you want, if you're going to run a product company, don't you want to have a researcher that's going to stand by their research, you know, and not defend it? Like, oh, you can't do that because the research doesn't say that. But to be able to say this is, this is where my information is based on. And it was a real conversation with a real customer.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that because I think most, even though those of us who've been, you know, at this for a while and so called professionals, we look at it more through the lens of solutions are created, but I think it, it's more a case of solutions are discovered. Yeah, right. Because if you think about the, the fact that most problem validation, most problem understanding, most new product discovery, validation, etc is really about discovering and figuring out where to go more through a scientific process of, you know, we either have a hypothesis or we're at least trying to discover, right. Whether something, whether a problem exists or it doesn't exist. And then figuring out, okay, what, why does this problem exist? What do people, what are the negatives associated to the problem, what are the experiences associated to it, etc, where when we think about creating solutions versus discovering solutions, it becomes a more of an, an artsy endeavor. Right? Of uh, oh, well, we're smart people and we're creatives so we should be able to come up with a solution for this. And then you often are creating solution for a problem you don't understand that well, or a problem that isn't worth solving because you didn't just, you didn't just, you didn't go into discovering the problem. You decided that you're going to create a solution, right. Um, instead of, instead of going through that discovery process. And I think even though it's a simple and maybe it's a little bit playing, um, with words, right? And it's, it's wordsmithing of, of creating solutions versus discovering solutions. I actually think there's a pretty, there's a pretty wide chasm between the two.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, absolutely. You know, and the part of, the reason I love right this, this part of this conversation is that we are, we're talking about the tenets of innovation. Right? To me I'm very concerned about chief innovation officers that talk about creating solutions and they, and they talk about um, you know, we have this brilliant team that goes through magic. What magic? No, no, no, no, no. We like innovation development. New product development can be A very rigorous process, like, let's really understand who the customer is. That's really it for the product problem. Let's find out whether the problem is big enough that's worth solving. Let's, let's go through the process in a very rigorous manner that allows us to test assumptions. So to me, even a discovered solution is really just a slightly more mature assumption that still needs to be tested.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker C: Because until that product, until whatever that product is, is out and is in front of that, that market and in front of that customer, that's when true validation happens. Because I, I worry sometimes too that we can say, well, it's been fully, it's been fully vetted. Well, no, it hadn't been fully vetted until somebody puts money down and, and takes it home with them. You know, then you're saying, wow, okay, we have a customer, we have a customer base who's building on that. Um, other than that, it's still a little bit of hyperbola on people's. People think they want it, people think they want to, they want, would be willing to spend their money to get there. It's just one more assumption, one more high level prototype or high resolution prototype, rather. So that's why I like this conversation because we're changing, we're changing the vocabulary and I am very much about wordsmithing right now. I'd even contend. I had a conversation on Friday that said maybe innovation is the wrong word. Maybe innovation has already jumped the shark. Maybe it's already past the point of really having any meeting. When you see a Porta John on the street that says innovation Solutions, you know, I think maybe we've gotten a problem there. Um, but I also, it's like, I hate the word fail. You know, to me, fail is something everybody wants to use. While it's such a common language, people know what it means. Well, yeah, but it's got such incredible baggage with it that it says to a student, oh, fail is something very significant. Fail means you start over again. And instead of no, we learned that maybe that hypothesis was the wrong hypothesis and we're going to change it and we're going to test a new hypothesis and we've learned that process. Is that wordsmithing? Sure. But you know what? That is a really meaningful direction for a student, that we're not failing the idea, we're not failing them, we're actually allowing them to, to recognize that if the hypothesis did not prove itself out, all that means is that they can now modify, that they can pivot to something new. And they can try something new and that they've learned from that, you know, so those words mean something to them.

Speaker B: Well, and ultimately, if, if you're going to create a product or you're going to create, and then you're going to create a company, uh, around it on top of a product to bring a product. Product to market. The, uh, the idea of this constant reinvention and redirection, right, that we often label as, as pivoting is par for the course. I mean, there is, there isn't a, there isn't a product or company since the beginning of time that hasn't redirected to some degree right from where they originally thought they were gonna. They. What they were going to offer and, and how they were going to deliver it and how customers were going to buy it, you know, etc. And so we have to get beyond this. Oh, you know, we, we were, we were wrong. It's not working. It's like, okay, well, now you know what isn't going to work, right? But now you can turn it, you know, 13 degrees to the right and maybe that'll work. And then maybe eight, eight more degrees to the right, maybe that'll work. Um, because people that, that start companies and start building products. Products, it's a very mercurial journey. And I'm glad you're exposing these young people to it because what it at least begins to ingrain in you is a little bit of resilience and a little bit of neutral perspective to say, right, that we're never as good as our bad moments or we're never as bad as our worst moments. And we're also never as good as our best moments. And sometimes we can get lost inside of that. For, if you haven't seen it yet, anybody's listening to this, um, Giannis from the Milwaukee Bucks did a press conference after they lost.

Speaker C: It was awesome.

Speaker B: One of the reporters asked him about, well, do you consider this a failure? And people should go listen to that if they haven't. Because I think it's spot on about how you should be, you should be looking at failure and the fact that you're giving students some exposure to this. Not in a, A grade sort of scale of, you know, I got, you know, uh, an A or B or I got 100 or I got a 70. Right. In a particular class or a particular test. But failure in when you're trying to create things and you're trying to, to solve for things is a much m. More mercurial journey than, hey, it's going To. It's going to. It's going to work all the time, every day. There's going to be a lot more falling down and getting up than anybody sort of wants to ad.

Speaker C: Well, what I liked about his. This professional athlete who has that opinion, I mean, okay, he has all these physical attributes. He has this. This, uh, you know, gifted height and the speed and all these things, but he clearly thinks differently, too. And maybe that had a huge component in his success because he saw that, as did I fail, because I didn't reach one objective. Like, there might have been one key objective that I. That people, uh, believe was going to be success for his season. And if I didn't meet that one, it was a failure. I mean, I love that approach because it says to the students also there. That there should never be just one solution. I'm going to come back to the what you just said, where it said, why is there ever really a product that. That's been launched that, um, hadn't gone through pivots? I think there's thousands and thousands and thousands of products that are launched that never went through a pivot, but they fail, and we never hear about them.

Speaker B: That's fair.

Speaker C: I might go back and say segue, in my viewpoint, might have been one of them. A singular vision of a device that would change the world, that generally didn't seem to talk to a single person and didn't take in any consideration other than the technical direction of one person. And so that's where I. That's where I like the delineation that you. It's very democratizing that if you can go through a process and you're willing to remove your agenda, willing to remove your arrogance, you can actually be much better at product than somebody who's just like, I know what I'm doing. I'm bowling ahead. Like, there's no. There's no Plan B. What a ridiculous statement. No plan B. When I hear people say that in entrepreneurship, I just want to, you know, I want to laugh. Because you're thinking like, that is a ridiculous statement to make, right?

Speaker B: Well, yes. And. Because not only is there a plan B, there. There's a plan Z and there's a. There's a Plan Z squared. Because you don't even. You don't even know how far you're gonna have to, you know, to. To go. Right. Um, to it. So I agree.

Speaker C: That's exactly right.

Speaker B: So what are the. What are the students? What's the biggest challenge for them as part of this whole process? And. And this, um, exposure to, to, to

Speaker C: unlearn what they've learned, I think, because. Well, think about this. You go through grade school, you know, grade k through grade 12, you know, so rigid. You have to meet these levels of proficiency to move to the next one. There's a ton of variability in the students that are in your class. You sometimes work on group projects where one of them don't want to do the work. You come to a university, you get evaluated on an individual basis, and you get one of five grade levels to determine whether you're going to be able to use your financial aid to get to this holy land of a, a, uh, piece of paper that says you become proficient at understanding the principles of accounting. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: That, that rigidity that, that singular push forward that gets evaluated by people who may or may not know anything about you or what you're doing doing is, has to be unlearned. We have to open them up to listen, be curious if you find something, run down that path. Because running down that path may lead you to something that you never expected. And the people who you thought were judging you certainly never planned for that. And so, you know, that might sound a little bit too, too crazy, but I would much rather have high expectations of. Let's, let's let them have the freedom to explore because we know that this is the best time for them to explore. Right. Yes. The sponsors spend money to pay them as externs to work on the project, but we also know that their jobs, let's call it their lifestyle, their house payment is not dependent on us. So if we can let them learn in a very safe environment. Environment and learn that they should have this expectation of psychological safety to throw out like just crazy ideas. Fantastic. Right? They have to be very comfortable with the group. Like, I've never really been someone who's bought into this. Uh, you know, I want to get you out of your comfort zone. I want you to get you out of the box. That sort of verbiage. Right? No, I want you to be so comfortable that you're willing to explore anything and you're willing to have a conversation about anything. And if we can teach them through this process with sponsors who feel that way. I tell you what, I have seen transformation in our sponsors in that 10 weeks that's been absolutely remarkable. And I, and I love that, I mean, those are sponsors that I will continue to come back and ask to participate again because they're the ones who, they feel a ton of pressure. This is like they've stuck their neck out for some money to have students work on a project and you know, they want to be able to return a positive, uh, outcome to some objective to their boss. Uh, and along the way they start opening up and they start saying, wow, that's a pretty interesting idea. Where do you think we should go with that? Right? And once they start saying things like, where could we go now? You're like, nah, ha ha. Now the students become part of the team team and the sponsor starts to think differently. And I think this is one of the other learnings that students like have to come around during that time is that professionals are under an incredible amount of scrutiny and they don't sometimes understand why the company isn't going to pursue this great idea that they've had this great solution. You're like, yeah, that's, hey man, there's like a thousand other things pulling at that idea, you know, and so they have to manage that, they have to manage their expectations of where this goes. But during that 10 weeks of that on ramp, they really are allowed that freedom to think, the freedom to operate the adaptive nature of innovation. But again, coming back to our earlier conversation within a structure that allows them to achieve a goal at the end of 10 weeks and if they do it right, and this is the, this is the best thing about having experienced on rampers. Once they start seeing how the blocks fall into place, then they just want to do it over and over again. We have on rampers that have done it four or five or six times. And can you imagine if you are working at some organization where you want to have free thinkers come in, in product management roles and you talk to a young person who's 22, just graduated with their finance degree, and they say, I've been through a business accelerator five times with four different, different customers. That's a hireable person. What's the value of that person walking in the door who has that mindset?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So do you set success criteria for the students in the program? Uh, is there something that, that you're establishing as, hey, we want you to get these three things out of being in the program? And they're sort of, they're, they're striving for those, you're, you're directing them in that direction or, or do you leave it more open ended to say if they come out of it, uh, with a better mindset and perspective and curiosity on how to think about problems and, and how to resist solutioning too early, is that success?

Speaker C: Yes, it is. But I'll tell you what also um, and this is going to seem unlikely, um, being that this is a university based program. By the luxury of having a dean that lets us run this program the way that we want to run this program. He isn't putting restrictions on me that say, oh, you have to put this many students through the program, you have to have this many sponsors. You have to, you have to, you have to. And they need to meet this criteria. Right? The criteria at the university is let's make sure that we're keeping our partners happy and that they're recognizing the value of our, of our students and that they're willing to engage the university at a variety of levels. Maybe sometimes outside of this on ramp, I mean that's maybe the goal that I have or that that's put on me, but it's never put in, in a rigorous, rigorous position where my uh, my role, my position is dependent upon that. At least I don't feel that way. I don't feel that pressure. But for the students, this is going to seem strange and very hard to define. And it's partly because maybe I like the flexibility and adaptability that we've built into the program is that um, if there was a single thread of criteria that we were trying to get them to do is to develop their mindset. And I think that that sounds very weird, but like, when I see them coming into that week seven, week eight, and I see them like tightening up and starting to really define something that sounds like a product concept that they're doing today, I'm, um, like stop, stop, stop. Like there has got to be more here. Like, I want to push you further. I want to push you into a realm of the future. Think of something that they haven't done. Don't think of something that you say, oh, I think this would fit perfectly today. Well, that's great. You should have thought about that five years ago when that product was being conceived. So can you start thinking ahead? So if there was any one criteria that I'm pushing is that to be able to demonstrate that you're willing to just explore and that you're willing to use that great research that you did to create pathways towards solutions that are going to be unique and that are going to be sophisticated in a way that, that we present them, you know. Yeah, it's just weird to say, like, hey, can a student be sophisticated? Oh man, you should see, you should hear some of these ideas, you know, that, that we present in front of a group of professionals and they sort of sit going like, wait a second, I have to unwind that. What did they just say? Right. Sophisticated solutions. And I love that part of it. I like it when, when our sponsors really get taken to task about. Let's think about how that fits in our system, you know.

Speaker B: Well, I love your mindset, uh, around the success criteria being their mindset and their perspective. Yeah. Um, rather than, than something. Because uh, that is incredibly valuable and rather than some, something that seems a little bit more tangible. Right. Some output of the program, their mindset and their perspective being informed and shaped for future, um, open mindedness and willingness to sort of be curious, et cetera. That's way more important than any particular output that they might, that they might come up with as part of the execution of the program.

Speaker C: But isn't that and shouldn't that be what higher ed's about? They will have all the time in the world to get beaten up by every KPI. Right. Some KPI that someone who had never been through the product before put on a chart and put on an Excel spreadsheet. Excel says spreadsheets are the absolute bane of innovation. Right. Anybody could put a number to something and believe that that's going to be leading towards some product success. That's a fundamental problem. And so that is really, and I hate to make it sound that, um, you know, pie in the sky, but I, but I like that. Like, why shouldn't we be trying to develop mindset and an open mindset towards exploration and discovery. That's what university is about. Now the cool thing is if we can get them to start translating that. Because if you are, you know, you're out there as a company saying, I want to develop a completely new model for the type of product, uh, the type of service, whatever it is that we do. I don't want somebody who's just going to keep giving me what I think I should get. I want somebody who's like, now this would be curious. Like, this could really take us into something that we've never done before. I want that person on my team, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. How much, if any. I know the students are busy, so they're doing on ramp on top of being a student and maybe on top of being a student athlete, as I know many in onramp have been. Um, so how much do you encourage them to seek out other content and other understanding around product management and innovation, etc. Or do you put no pressure on them to go seek other counsel and other content because you know that if you do that, you're now instead of on ramp Being something that's enjoyable and it's fun and in this, creating this, this mindset that you want, ah, as part of the, the outcome of it, that having them, you know, get exposed to other things would make it a little too, more, a little too, uh, onerous.

Speaker C: I don't have to do that, you know, I mean, they just do that on their own.

Speaker B: Do they?

Speaker C: That's the coolest thing about this is that, I mean, I remember going back to maybe the, probably the second or third on ramp and um, and, and we had this fantastic uh, student who's now a fantastic entrepreneur in residence at P and G. Enrique. He came to us and he said, you know, I'm a, he was a logistics major or something, I don't even remember. He just said, yeah, I want to do innovation as a career. Like, I don't even know what that means. I don't even know where to look. But this is what I want to do. Like, this is what I think I've been doing all my life.

Speaker B: Life.

Speaker C: And you've now finally started to put a name to it. I'm fascinated. What should I do? Where should I go? I already have this job at png, so um, like I'm going to quit. And Christian Lampasso, who was the originator of the program, he said like, stop, stop, stop, wait. Like, look, we don't want you to give up on this great job you have, you have student debt to pay back. This is a fantastic company. Let's work with them and let's try to find that innovation team, the home for you there. Take the job that they've given you and then let's work to that. And he was able to do that. So to me that's the great thing. In fact, it's funny, when we talked about product management, I could say the word product management to 50 on rampers and like four of them would even know what that means. Right? They don't define what they want to do in terms of a title. You know, they define what they want to do in terms of am I going to be able to have, um, you know, sort of intellectual freedom? Am I going to be able to work remote, Am I going to be able to travel? Am I going to be able to learn about other parts of the company. Now if anything, the one is the most exciting things about Gen Z. And I think at some strange level, maybe my early few, um, employers before I realized, they realized that I don't like authority and I was generally unemployable and should start My own business. Um, I had that sort of current Gen Z thinking in the 80s, you know, like, why do I only have to think about this one area of the product? Why can't I think about the whole thing? Why can't I think about how it's manufactured and who are the people that are working in the manufacturing organization and they like the way they're putting the product together. You know, we were talking about physical products. I worked for Hewlett Packard. I had that mentality and it always struck me like, why should I be limited in just the desk that I'm sitting in in the department that I'm built within? And I love the fact that I believe that Gen Z audience that now is, is a lot of representatives in our own ramp think that way. Like they just want to, they want to put their fingers in everything, you know. But now we know that's not realistic. But I'd rather have us, I'd rather have a young employee who thinks about the entire organization then thinks about doing their little job in their little box.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I think it's back to the mindset objective that you want for students going through the program is for them to be thinking holistically, for them to be, to be not siloed in their work and the way they approach things and the way they sort of see the company. And I think in the end companies will be better off. I think we, we are, we are going through a little bit of, of a growing pain cycle where, you know, people that, that have, that are leading organizations who have typically been managing people in very specific functions, in very siloed work, in very uh, process dependent work. Right. It go, it, it goes through this first and then it goes over here and then it goes over here, et cetera.

Speaker C: Well, think about that, Ryan. So not even, it just goes over here. It gets thrown over the transom and maybe there isn't even a good discussion of intent. It is, here's the document. You, you work on that document for some period of pre prescribed time. Because we've said, we've determined that our, you know, operational excellence says you can only go this far. And then when you're done and you're at this point, you have to throw over the transom next, right? Yeah, that's an antiquated, well, development mentality in my.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Well and some of that, some of that is, is, you know, hierarchy of responsibility and reporting structures. Some of it is, some of it is budgetary. Right. It's got to get thrown over the Transom. Because there isn't, there isn't any time in the budget, there isn't any, any time in the process for contextual awareness, for manufacturing people to actually be part of the design process. Because if we did that, uh, that budgets would have to get intermingled, right? And blah, blah, blah. And so I think we're finally maybe getting to the point of realizing that more open, collaborative organizations actually do work better. Yeah, they're just, they're, I would say they're harder to manage. But I think the derivative of that, that we're also discover, discovering that's possible, that's positive, is we, we've been over managing, right? We've been over managing to a micromanagement, command and control perspective for too long. And we've got to empower really smart, capable people to say, you know what, figure out how to communicate and collaborate in the best interest of the product, in the best interest of customers and the best interest of the company.

Speaker C: I very much believe in complexity theory. You know, that people have the ability to balance a lot of different plates and let's let them look at a chaotic new product model and begin to see what works itself out, what the customer says, what our capability is, what our manufacturing, uh, criteria are going to be. And then let's begin to amplify the good things and dampen the bad things. And we have this ability to live in a complex thinking world from a product development standpoint. I also think that given that position, that the student of the future and I have no influence at the university to be able to push this concept. We got to get rid of. This person is a business major, this person is an engineering major, this person is a neuroscience major. Because frankly, I don't care about that. When we apply, we have students apply for on ramp. The only reason that we even track what their major is, so we can just report back to somebody that says, oh, by the way, we've had 12 different colleges get involved because once they're in the program and once we put them on a diverse team, they do not act like, oh, I'm the business person, I'm the engineer, I'm the neuroscience major. They are, they are partners through the process. And that is beautiful. And I, and I, that's very intentional on our part, right? We don't want them to be saying, here's your defined role because, goodness, you've been a business major for all of two years, so that should define your path for the rest of your life.

Speaker B: Right? You're, you're, you're now, you're, you're now an expert. Right. You, you are now on the cusp of being an official business person. Right. Which, you know, nobody knows what that, you know what that means anyway, so.

Speaker C: Right. And so this is why I love, this is actually while I really liked when I started to hear more companies that were, that were truly developing a product manager, because to me, product manager and the project manager process was very much a, uh, continuation of intent. Right. That was one person who has some oversight into those different silos. And it becomes their job to make sure that the initial design intent, design of the function, design of the product, design of the customer experience, whatever is managed throughout. And I like that. As opposed to it being very, very discreet. And I feel that onramp is building without putting a title on it. Building product managers who have that ability to write a, uh, hypothesis, do secondary research, go interview people, see insights, do needs, create product solutions, monetize that solution. Now the only thing they're really not doing is executing. Because that's just not part of. You can't do that in 10 weeks. That's not part of the project.

Speaker B: Yeah. You just don't have enough time and scope for that.

Speaker C: And nor do I. I mean, I think that there's value to that, obviously, because that's the other side of innovation. You can talk about innovation all day long. If you can't execute it, then you're, you're losing. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Then innovation just becomes ideation at that point.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Um, and so what I do hope is that that student experience starts with a student who is curious and open minded and then they continue to be encouraged and they start looking for a profession that allows them that same flexibility and curiosity within an organization that promotes that. Right.

Speaker B: Well, and that sounds like a good jumping off point because I do think that one of the reasons I want to have this conversation is because I think you are preparing students from different educational pursuits to get exposure to essentially what product is about, what product managers do. If some of them become product managers, awesome. But if not, even if they stay more in line with a very discreet profession in cross craft, at least they will have now gotten some exposure to attributes of product management and the process of evaluation of. Okay, is this worth pursuing? Do we understand it? What would it take to understand it? All those things that new product, you know, new product creation and validation requires.

Speaker C: That's right. That's right. And if they can, if they can practice that very much during their, you know, kind of formative higher ed years. How fantastic is that? You know, but that to me is where education really makes a difference. Experiential learning, getting your hands in there and going through it and, you know, pivoting and, and challenging questions and meeting people who have a different mindset than you all are fantastic breeding ground to make somebody, uh, I mean, happier for the rest of their life because they have that ability to modify, change, control, and ask why. Right? All good things.

Speaker B: All good things. Absolutely. Paul Reeder, thanks for jumping on and having the conversation. I appreciate it. Good to see you, my friend.

Speaker C: Absolutely. We'll do it again.

Speaker A: Need some help with product AWH is a digital product consulting, user experience and software development firm here to help you create great digital products. Check out www.awh.net or follow us on Twitter whhnet to learn.