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

Product management as a company scales – important lessons. Product management, like everything else, changes as a company grows. A 10 person organization operates differently than a 100 person organization can, and a company of 1000 people is a whole different beast. How does product management change as the scale changes? This is a useful interview with two product managers in a 30 person company that is now 300 people. The magnitude jump is important – it is such jumps that redefine organizations. BTW, I think they missed a lesson according to the summary of five key takeaways – email me if you know wish one. Learn from their experience at https://blog.intercom.com/lessons-in-product-management-with-intercoms-colin-bentley-and-brian-donohue/

4 common product management mistakes – watch out for #4. These are written from a start-up perspective but helpful to consider in other contexts. To end the suspense, mistake #4 is “don’t set internal communication structures.” This one has gotten me before when I once was not aware of a dependency a product had. Read more at http://www.business2community.com/product-management/watch-4-common-product-management-mistakes-01798989

Principles for product managers from TED talks. Nine principles or tips are presented from TED speakers, including (1) Be a team leader, (2) Lead through inspiration, (5) Determine how your target market makes choices, and a personal favorite, (7) Be a purple cow. Read all nine at http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/03/9-tips-ted-speakers-successful-product-management/

How to land your dream job in product management-how it happened at Slack. In this article, a product manager for Slack shares why and how he got into product management and then landed his dream job at Slack. Read his story at https://www.fastcompany.com/3069088/how-i-landed-my-dream-job-at-slack

Product manager vs product owner. This is a short and helpful perspective on these two important roles and why it is a challenge for one person to do both https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/27968/Product-Owner-or-Product-Manager-

A perspective – how technical do product managers have to be? This is a question that is asked a lot, especially by non-technical people who want to become product managers. My answer – technical enough to work with those that are technical. Product managers need to be experts on the customer, not the technical implementations of solutions. Enough of my perspective – read what the author of the article shared at https://blog.intercom.com/qa-can-non-technical-product-managers-be-successful/

IDEO studied innovation in 100+ companies and shared what they found. If there is a code to product development, management, and innovation, IDEO may just be the ones to break it. IDEO has helped numerous companies create innovative products. They also brought Design Thinking to us. Now, they have identified six “vectors” that companies need for innovation: (1) purpose, (2) experimentation, (3) collaboration, (4) empowerment, (5) looking out, and (6) refinement. Read about each at https://www.fastcodesign.com/3069069/ideo-studied-innovation-in-100-companies-heres-what-it-found

Highlights from the Innovation Festival Fast Company hosted. Innovators, creative leaders, and business designers met to share challenges and solutions. Watch this 2-minute highlight video https://www.fastcompany.com/3069135/highlights-from-the-2016-fast-company-innovation-festival

Startups are disruptors – here are 4 ways for startups to keep the focus on innovation. (1) Build diverse teams, (2) Get comfortable with uncertainties and unknowns, (3) Restrict resources, and (4) Make compliance efficient. Read more at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290674

Co-developing with users is the path to innovation for many companies. You’ve heard “customers don’t know what they want.” Do you agree with this? The context is important and many companies are finding customers/users to be a vital source of innovation, especially with crowdsourcing. Read insights at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-companies-are-placing-users-at-the-core-of-their-innovation-strategies