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

 

Yep, product management is hip and the world knows it! Those of us in product management know how vital the discipline is to business and that the role is even hip – one of the roles that has potential to have great influence in organizations. Now others are starting to figure this out too. Doesn’t it feel good to be hip!!! Here is another short article sharing the importance of the role: http://nextconf.eu/2016/06/product-management-suddenly-hip-happen/

Product managers – learn how to create high performing cross-functional teams and avoid dysfunction! You would be hard-pressed to find another role besides product management that relies as much on cross-functional teams. Building and managing such teams is a challenge and many end up being dysfunctional instead of productive. Learn what you need to do for better cross-functional teams at http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/09/taking-the-dysfunction-out-of-cross-functional-teams/

What product managers can learn from retail store design – 50 examples. I construct the discipline of product management to span idea creation through product launch and on to eventually discontinuing the product. Profit has no hope of occurring until the product grows in the market place. This means sales. Many products are sold in retail settings, other are B2B and a growing number are online. Regardless of the product type or where it is sold, retail design can teach us about creating the right customer experience. See the 50 examples of retail store design at http://retail-vision.co.uk/50-superb-examples-great-retail-store-design/

12 valuable videos on product management essentials. This is a useful list of videos from around the web that discusses what product management is about, essential practices, business knowledge needed, and more. Check out the list at https://userbrain.net/blog/12-killer-product-management-videos

3 steps for brainstorming product ideas.  (1) Get the basics right. (2) Establish the rules up front. (3) Identify your business challenge. Read about each at http://blog.batterii.com/the-first-3-steps-to-brainstorming-product-ideas

4 large companies that found ways to continue innovating. You’ve heard it said – as companies grow and become large, they get slow, become risk adverse, and stop innovating. It is true some of the time, but not all the time. This article shares four large companies who continue to innovate and how they do it: https://hbr.org/2016/06/stop-saying-big-companies-cant-innovate

Building great products begins by first framing the problem correctly. Remember Einstein’s quote for solving a problem in one hour? He said, “I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and then five minutes solving it.” That’s the importance of framing a problem. Read about framing and other steps needed for creating great products https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/building-products-91aa93bea4bb

The best US states for innovation. I found this list interesting. It might have some impact on changing places to live at some point in my future, however, I’m not leaving my home of Colorado (ranked #5) anytime soon. I was surprised Texas was only #20 on the list – thought Austin itself would push it to the top-10. View the list at http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilycanal/2016/06/07/the-20-best-states-for-innovation

How Cisco thinks about innovation. Contributors include a diverse workforce, interactions with experts in other industries, and forming partnerships. Read about each at https://hbr.org/2016/06/how-we-think-about-innovation-at-cisco