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

 

How to break into product management – be curious. Product managers are often hired for their domain expertise and their application of product management practices. It can be a challenge to break into product management, and the path I most frequently recommend is to get experience in your current role. Learn what a product manager does in your organization and find ways to help. Read this for more advice https://www.under10playbook.com/blog/how-to-break-into-product-management

Digital tools to save product managers time. See summaries of tools for collaboration, product roadmaps, task management, user feedback, and more at https://uxstudioteam.com/ux-blog/product-management-tools/

A brief view of product management vs product marketing. Many medium to large organizations have product marketers and product managers. While the responsibilities of each role can blur in specific organizations, there are recognized differences, which are explained here http://www.justfreelearn.com/2017/09/product-marketing-vs-product-management.html

What is agile product management? As you may know from my Product Mastery Roadmap, I’m a advocate of a systems approach to improving organizations. Striving to optimize one area can provide a localized improvement but understanding how all areas impact each other in an integrated system is how overall improvements are made. View this short video on how agile product management is used to improve the system https://vimeo.com/235157647

A quick look into a product management career journey. Everyone’s path is different, but there are common factors, such as a passion for creating customer value. Read this short article to learn about one journey and the role of courage and passion http://blog.33across.com/fridayfives_blairpecka

How product managers can work better with stakeholders. My simple definition of a stakeholder is anyone with a vested interest in the product. This can include customers, the product team, your sponsor, community groups, the environment, and more depending on the nature of the product. Successful product managers know how to manage stakeholders and their expectations. Read details at https://melissaperri.com/blog/stakeholders

Creating an evidence-based innovation pipeline. When organizations create programs to “be more innovative” they may actually be creating bureaucratic process that does just the opposite and stifles what little innovation they have. Steve Blank explains how this has happened in organizations and how to create a self-regulating innovation pipeline instead. Details at https://medium.com/@sgblank/how-companies-strangle-innovation-and-how-you-can-get-it-right-854e6d13c7f0

Why innovation centers/labs/incubators can fail. Many factors can limit the effectiveness of an innovation center. In an experience I had with one company a center was created to generate ideas but nothing was changed in the established enterprise, which continued to enforce barriers to the acceptance of ideas, regardless how well vetted they were. This and other issues are explored in this Forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/09/25/when-innovation-centers-dont-innovate