Welcome to the Developer Creativity blog. This blog is about giving developers, who are technical almost by definition, a better understanding of what it takes to create successful products from a marketing perspective.

Why would we do that? Better question: Why would they care? Because product development is in trouble and developers are the best ones to save it. Literally. Product failure rates are higher than ever. Hundreds of billions are wasted each year. As companies struggle to adjust, there are fewer resources for product development but greater pressure than ever to get products to market faster. The load is falling on small developer teams.

Fortunately, some companies are already figuring out how to deal with all this, and even turning it into a competitive advantage. They are moving tools of innovation closer to the customer—on the frontlines where they belong. Part of the answer lies with new standardized processes that leverage the natural strengths of developers. And part of the answer lies with empowering developers with a few new tools that answer questions they had to wait for others to provide.

We won’t try to turn developers into something they’re not (it’d never work anyway), but instead show them the customer and business model leverage points most useful in shifting their position from a defensive one to one that is consistently innovating and creating profitable products people want.