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

The reasons Agile adoption is failing in large organizations. “Analyzing my past projects, I identified the following cross-organizational patterns that are making Agile transitions to much more harder, less effective and significantly more expensive…” Read more at B2C http://www.business2community.com/product-management/agile-fails-organizations-01354919

A review of Christensen’s theory of Disruptive Innovation. “Disruption is real, whether or not it plays out exactly according to the classic pattern described by Christensen. Christensen has performed a great service by pointing out how powerful and pervasive the phenomenon of disruption can be.” Read more at Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/10/15/how-useful-is-christensens-theory-of-disruptive-innovation/

How to make better products – do less more often. “… it means making smaller bets more often when it comes to investing in creating a product. He has observed that organisations are inclined to make big bets once or twice a year usually with large dollar sums attached to them. This is extremely risky.” Read more at Life Hacker http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/10/how-to-make-better-products-advice-for-product-managers/

5 business innovation nightmares and how to avoid them. “Postmortems on companies like Blockbuster Video and Borders Books have pointed to issues with organizational structure, capabilities, and technology. But at the center of those corporate demises is the failure to innovate. Through more than a decade of innovation training with the world’s top organizations, I’ve isolated five innovation nightmares that, if course-corrected early enough, don’t have to result in imminent doom.” Read more at Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2015/10/16/5-business-innovation-nightmares-and-how-to-avoid-them/

Overcoming the challenges of platform product management. “On a group bike ride yesterday, a fellow rider shared an interesting perspective. He has spent the last several years at a well-known technology company and was recently promoted to VP of Product Management for Mobile Platforms. He shared with me how difficult the transition has been adjusting to life as a platform PM. After hearing his story, I realized this may be one of the most challenging roles in product management.” Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-de-haaff/the-curse-of-the-platform_b_8315204.html

Product marketer interview questions. “So let’s talk about what a product marketer actually is. This person is a high-level strategist who thrives on connecting dots. He or she will have knowledge in multiple subject areas, with a healthy mix of quantitative, analytical, and creative skills. Your future product marketer likely holds a totally different job title and may not be looking for a new gig. The result? This person is incredibly hard to find.” Read more at B2C http://www.business2community.com/product-management/so-you-want-to-hire-a-product-marketer-here-are-your-interview-questions-01353870

Product manager interview questions. “Product Manager roles vary quite a bit across product organizations based on what products the PM is expected to work on, what product teams look like and what the culture in which product teams operate is like.” Read more at Product Labs https://medium.com/product-labs/3-steps-to-landing-any-product-manager-interview-a60c3f54f7b7#.bav146l4f

Tips from the Lean Product Playbook. “You can’t prove what will work or won’t. It’s an art, not a science. But you can apply a process to it, trying to validate your thinking. Still, you have to be comfortable with fuzzy.” Read more from The Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/how-to-meet-customer-needs-at-the-top-of-the-benefit-ladder/article26849739/

The 3 characteristics of innovation that must be understood to create an innovation strategy. “Time-based, positive deviance, and happens horizontally.” Read more from Jeff Degraff at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-degraff/innovating-innovation-str_b_8331260.html

Guidance for successfully using Crowdfunding to launch a product. “I’ve run three very successful campaigns and gathered several insights into the journey. Here are a few that crowdfunding hopefuls should be aware of and prepared for.” Read more at Read Write http://readwrite.com/2015/10/19/crowdfunding-insights

How large companies can harness entrepreneurs for innovation. “Additionally, our research found that although nearly three-fourths of large companies (71 percent) reported successful collaboration with entrepreneurs, unfortunately little more than half of entrepreneurs (57 percent) agreed. This gap must be closed.” Read more at Customer Think http://customerthink.com/harnessing-the-power-of-entrepreneurs-to-open-innovation/