Handoffs from innovation to product development teams are risky. To ensure the original vision and user insights were maintained, Pella had key innovation team members stay with the project in a consulting capacity through the commercialization and marketing phases.

To break through industry blindness, Pella created a two-person research team with opposing perspectives: a long-tenured internal engineer and an industrial designer with experience from other top companies. This "oil and water" dynamic was key to their success.

When introducing a disruptive model, potential partners are hesitant to be the first adopter due to perceived risk. The strategy is to start with small, persistent efforts, normalizing the behavior until the advantages become undeniable. Innovation requires a patient strategy to overcome initial industry inertia.

Users often develop multi-product workarounds for issues they don't even recognize as solvable problems. Identifying these subconscious behaviors reveals significant innovation opportunities that users themselves cannot articulate.

Pella Corporation found a massive innovation opportunity by addressing the pain points of window installers, a critical user group who doesn't purchase the product but heavily influences its perceived quality and customer satisfaction.

Beyond the major process change, Pella's new system incorporated small design features to improve the installer experience. Audible clicks on brackets and clear "Do Not Tape" imprints provided confidence and eliminated common, costly installation errors.

Historically, Pella addressed installation issues by trying to "fix the installer" with more training. Their successful innovation stemmed from a crucial mindset shift: the problem wasn't the user's process, but a product that was fundamentally designed incorrectly for their real-world needs.

Instead of charging more for their new, superior installation system, Pella included it as a standard feature. In a depressed housing market, this strategy focused on gaining market share through differentiation and value, rather than maximizing per-unit margin.

Public company constraints don't kill innovation; they change its nature. Instead of building solutions from scratch, PMs must prioritize reusing existing internal capabilities and tech stacks from other products within the company. This "plugin" approach maintains velocity while managing resources under public scrutiny.