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

This week my list of insights is a little different. It focuses on the sessions I’m facilitating at the annual PDMA conference, which is Nov 12-15 in Chicago: http://www.pim.pdma.org/p/cm/ld/fid=2247. If you are among the hundreds of people attending, please introduce yourself. I would love to talk with you.

Praxair accelerates their product capability and fosters a culture of innovation – Tuesday, Nov 14 @ 10am.. We’ve facilitated directed learning sessions, what we call the Integrated Study Group, for Praxair for several years. They have seen many benefits from these annual study groups for their product managers, significantly increasing the knowledge of product managers in ways that results in real change in behavior. Praxair is innovating in new ways, providing more value to customers and creating more value for the organization. This is the best tool for making substantial improvements in product management and one any company wanting more innovation needs to use. Read a brief version of their case study at https://productmasterynow.com/company-training/

Use the lean canvas as a minimum viable business case – Tuesday, Nov 14 @ 10:45am . Once you become familiar with the lean canvas tool, you can complete a one-page analysis of a product concept in around 20 minutes. It is also a very good tool to complete with a team, exploring the customer-problem-solution-business-fit of a product concept. Use it to create a one-page business case to communicate the idea to others. You’ll find an interview with the creator of the lean canvas and resources for using it at  https://productmasterynow.com/blog/tei-010-titleusing-lean-to-run-experiments-and-deliver-customer-value-with-ash-maurya/

Lunch table talk: the many approaches to generating ideas – Tuesday, Nov 14 @ 11:45am. Wrapping up the sessions I’m facilitating is a discussion over lunch on the topic of ideation. The quality of ideas for new products and product improvements influence the quality of the products we create.  We’ll be discussing several ideation tools and approaches.