Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers and innovators be heroes.

6 prompts for making products better. (1) Simplify your product or service, (2) Add complexity/make it more advanced/aim it exclusively at professionals, (3) Make it more masculine, in an industry that’s typically associated with a feminine outlook, (4) Make it more feminine, when you’re in a market that traditionally ignores female customers, (5) Offer the complete line, and (6) Limit/cherry pick what you offer. Get the details of each at https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2017/03/11/six-bonus-ways-to-stimulate-innovation-and-never-get-stuck-for-ideas-again

5 core attributes of a superior product owner. (1) Advocate for the business, (2) motivates the agile team and the business, (3) has a strong vision, (4) has a handle on what is where, and (5) makes the business better. Read about each at https://dzone.com/articles/the-secret-to-a-superior-product-owner

Don’t blame the user when they don’t know what they want. It’s easy for product managers and product teams to blame users. They don’t know what they want, the provide misleading information, and they can act ungrateful. Yet, blaming users is not a productive response. Read how to stop and what to do instead at http://www.pmpaul.com/playing-the-blame-game-with-your-users/

Moving into product management – how to talk about your side projects in the interview. Start with the problem, discuss how you approached it, share the challenges you encountered and what you learned, and end by identifying what you would do differently. This flow will help you nail your interview by highlighting your side project work. Read more at https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-talk-about-your-side-projects-18b96f192817

New research points to 6 key characteristics of innovation. (1) The timing of an innovative idea; (2) The environment in which the idea is formulated and developed; (3) The time to develop an idea or inspiration; (4) The time and organizational environment that allows for idea cross-fertilization; (5) Learning from errors; and (6) The development of an idea in one field that can be adapted in another. While perhaps not surprising, it is an important research area. Read more about the study at https://phys.org/news/2017-03-awaken-dormant-traits-cultivate.html

Create a clear mission for a team, not unhelpful role descriptions. This article contains an example of a marketing team’s mission for a startup that is scaling. It creates focus and clarity so everyone knows what they are working towards. Every team should have such a clear mission statement. Check it out at https://steveblank.com/2017/03/15/why-some-startups-win/