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

Book list for product managers. Vinay Ramani, product manager and head of international growth for Uber, created a useful book list for product managers. Some of my favorites include: Where good ideas come from, 5 Dysfunctions of a team, Start with why, To sell is human, and Creativity Inc. One I would add to his list is Running Lean – essential reading for modern product managers. See the list at https://medium.com/@VinayRamani/product-manager-s-library-e5137a8c249c#.p4b848j20

Evernote’s product management woes and the 5% problem. This is an important article that discusses, using Evernote as an example, the problems with bloated products that don’t have a clear identity. Most people use 5% of Evernote’s features, but the problem is they are not the same 5%. A product that tries to be all things to all people ends up serving no one well. Read this analysis to learn from Evernote’s product management problem http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/05/evernotes-5-problem-offers-a-cautionary-lesson-to-tech-companies/

The Innovation Excellence “Top 100 innovation articles of 2015.”  This is a great list of articles dealing with innovation topics from 2015. I was blown away to see that I authored three that made the top-10 articles in the list of 100. They are: How Design Thinking Uses Story and Prototyping, Creating a Corporate Culture for Design Thinking, and Apply the 5 Steps of Design Thinking to Solve Customer Problems. Clearly, design thinking was a popular topic in 2015. Check out the list of most popular innovation articles at: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/01/04/top-100-innovation-articles-of-2015/

Discussion of what is and what is not disruptive innovation. Zipcar is disruptive but not Uber. Apple is disruptive, but not for the reasons you may think. Disruptive innovations per Clayton Christensen originate in low-end or new-markets and requires a smaller company with limited resources to challenge established businesses. Read the discussion at https://hbr.org/2016/01/we-need-to-expand-the-definition-of-disruptive-innovation

Successful product managers need to embrace resistance, not fight it. If product managers are not encountering resistance then they are not innovating. The nature of innovation creates resistance. This article discusses three areas where resistance is found: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/innovation_in_practice/2016/01/great-innovators-embrace-resistance-not-fight-it.html