You need product development leadership (PDL). While you probably already have some, let me explain the passion that I feel about what it takes to lead product development.

Schools and most training organizations turn out leaders in a single discipline: hardware engineers, software engineers, and engineers of all specialties. Other college departments turn out marketers, business leaders, scientists, researchers, analysts, accountants, and other business related degrees. Product Development Leadership (PDL) requires a broad perspective to succeed at selecting the best ideas, staffing, navigating company politics, "kicking off" a project, successfully leading the tradeoffs that make the project requires, delivering the product and assuring its success in your customers’ hands.

A product development leader must understand and orchestrate all of these tasks. While that leader will have come from one of many disciplines, to be successful at product development they must understand all of them. That understanding allows them to actively lead tradeoffs and insure team cooperation so that all of the disciplines’ points of view are reflected in the project and product. This is Product Development Leadership and the leader is the Product Champion.

In small companies the Champion is often the founder, CEO, chief technologist, or engineering leader. With few organizational boundaries in a small company, the Champion role is easy to clearly define. Since the formal organization leadership is well aligned with the Product Devolvement Leadership, there is little ambiguity.

These advantages are strengthened by a low communications overhead. With the effort required for clear communications increasing as the square for the number of people on the team, clear and complete communications are strong in a small company.

Larger companies have the advantage of greater access to diversity and depth of resources. Unfortunately one of those resources is leaders, and the ambiguity caused by not having a single leader for a product development project can be devastating. And it’s not only this ambiguity; it's unclear responsibility, politicking for power, career games, headcount ownership games, the power to not resolve differences, and more opportunities to sabotage a project than anyone can imagine.

Many big companies lament that they are incapable of developing products. Unless a large company builds leadership that has the clarity of mission, clarity of leadership, and the product-ownership that comes from a strong product development mission, they cannot compete with a small company.

Product development options for big companies are often reduced to: 1) build the new product within the big organization and risk having it delayed, compromised or never completed, or 2) build it in a "skunk works" that emulates a small company and risk it not being accepted by the company when it is completed. My experience says option two has a better chance of financial success.

First, as Robert Mager says "youreallygottawanta". Other prerequisites include loving products, critical listening skills, and a crucial desire to extend yourself beyond your initial education and training to get involved with and live the points of view of all of the disciplines that build the product.

You have a far better chance to learn and develop these skills in a small company. In my big-company career I was fortunate to have a mentor that instinctively understood this and gave clear charter to small teams to go off and build great products. Large-company infighting eventually destroyed that environment.