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

We need more product people, not product managers.

The job announcements for product managers are trending towards the unreasonable and absurd. They describe a single role that includes bits of product management, UX, marketing, development, sales, customer experience, strategy, and more.  While product managers often have skills in these diverse areas, it takes a team to create products, not a single manager. A product manager’s role is most effective when focused on building the right product. Read the perspective at https://hackernoon.com/we-need-fewer-product-managers-50e47dfd95a0

How product marketers and growth managers make the move to product management.

I’ve talked with aproduct marketing managers who wanted to transition to product management. They viewed a chasm between their current skills and experience and where they wanted to go. I didn’t. They had the right experience and just needed to frame it differently. Here is how one person made the shift… https://hackernoon.com/from-marketing-to-product-management-3de21282c7ce

The transition from product manager to product leader is about answering five questions.

(1) Who sets our vision? (2) Is our vision right? (3) Does everyone understand our vision? (4) Are we building and retaining a great team through career growth? (5) Do we have peak performance? Learn how to use these questions at the different stages of company growth from Ellen Chisa at https://blog.ellenchisa.com/this-is-fine-how-to-balance-vision-management-8087d76731f6

The 4 horizons of innovation that makes organizations more innovative.

(1) Continuous improvement – the Optimizer. (2) Incremental innovation – the Energizer. (3) Commercial innovation – the Explorer. (4) Disruptive innovation – the Disruptor. Get the details at http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2018/01/30/how-to-drive-more-innovation-in-your-workforce/

Chick-fil-A has a new innovation center.

While many organizations have experimented with innovation labs, incubators, and centers, only a few are finding meaningful success with them. I’ve had interviews about two – GE Appliances FirstBuild and Chick-fil-A. Also, read about the new innovation center at http://nique.net/news/2018/01/26/chick-fil-a-opens-new-innovation-center/