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

 

28 tips for user-centered product management. This article asked 28 product managers to share a tip to help keep products focused on customers. See the details at http://whatusersdo.com/blog/user-centred-product-management/

14 guidelines to help product managers and innovators decide to continue a product or move on. (1) Leave room to innovate when planning, (2) Track return on investments, (3) Work to stay grounded, (4) Add, don’t divide. Read these and 10 more guidelines at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/04/07/to-innovate-or-to-stay-the-course-14-tips-to-guide-you

Interview with Andrew Grochal, Director of Product Management at CarGurus. This is a short interview. What interested me is that CarGurus is building a product management team and making product management a critical aspect of the business. Check it out at http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/blog/post/why-i-love-my-job-andrew-grochal-on-his-path-to-cargurus

A museum for innovation fails. The real innovation here is the creation of the museum – a place for infamous innovation flops. Remember coffee-flavored Coca-Cola or an electronic device (not a smartphone) for writing tweets? These and much more are on virtual display at http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/06/europe/museum-of-failure-sweden/

Innovation is not random, it is a process built around customer needs and potential solutions. The Jobs to be Done framework is a good starting point to think of innovation as a process. Innovation requires an understanding of customers’ needs, especially those that have not yet been met. Read about building predictability into your innovation process at https://customerthink.com/bring-predictability-to-innovation/

Recent UK survey shows little change in organizational innovation – 66% say innovation crucial yet few are innovating successfully. A few key points from the survey and summary: (1) More than three-fifths of senior executives feel that CEOs are not leading from the front and lack the vision and passion needed to make innovation happen. (2) Only a quarter of U.K. organizations say their boards put a priority on innovation. (3) Two-fifths of U.K. leaders reject disruptive ideas for fear of failure. More at https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogertrapp/2017/04/10/why-business-leaders-continue-to-struggle-with-innovation

Where most product projects fail. If product efforts are not intertwined with the needs of the business and the target market, you should expect failure. This HBR article reviews the results of a survey with executives of large organizations to identify where innovation is failing… https://hbr.org/2017/04/the-stage-where-most-innovation-projects-fail