This chapter looked at the innovation component of the VIP. A VIP approach, as we discussed, takes the fuzziness out of the front end of portfolio development because it insists that innovation be rooted in a real, documented customer problem. As you manage the VIP, whether for a brand new company and product or as part of overseeing an ongoing product pipeline, you examine all your decisions in the context of real, validated customer data. Only with absolute clarity about the value customers place on the solutions to their problems can you make innovation decisions that keep the product portfolio and its management relevant.

As we describe in more detail in the next two chapters, portfolio management is really about strategic decision making. It's about not only the decisions you make today and how you're going to innovate, but also about what's going to happen in the future. The VIP approach to portfolio management is more about resource choreography (defined as the carefully planned or executed organization of resources across the organization, or the maneuvering of people or things) than resource allocation. We turn next to the process of creating the musical score that will guide that choreography: the creation and iteration of corporate strategy.