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

What you need to do, know, and avoid in your first 30, 60, and 90 days as a product manager. If you are in a new product management role, this is a helpful article to read. Your first 30 days are easy to figure out – non-stop conversations — but hard to do as there will be pressure on you to spend your time differently. Create your action plan for the first 90 days reading  this… https://community.uservoice.com/blog/how-to-approach-your-first-30-60-90-days-as-a-product-manager/

Products are benefit delivery vehicles – how to build them. What existing products do customers love? How can you develop more compelling features? What is the ideal and complete customer experience? These and other questions can be the catalyst to products that delivery benefits customers love…http://www.innovationinpractice.com/innovation_in_practice/2016/08/creating_new_benefit_delivery_vehicles.html

4 signs your product work is lacking a clear product roadmap. (1) Lack of organizational consensus and support for where the product is headed . (2) Difficulty determining what level of development investment is needed to deliver proposed features and functionality. (3)No framework for the entire organization to plan for the future of the product. (4) Trouble capturing customer and market feedback on where the product is headed. Read about each at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-de-haaff/4-signs-you-need-a-produc_b_11263296.html

Client-side product managers smooth project work and increase success. If you work on client projects, you may find as Clearleft did, that when the client has a product manager involved the project work is not only better, but the client will end up being happier. Read about their experiences http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2016/07/great-product-managers-amplifying-effect/

Empathy is not just for Design Thinking – product managers need this tool too. Empathy maps, walking in your customer’s shoes, and other approaches to truly understand your customer’s problem can lead to successful product concepts. This article shares helpful tips for developing your empathy skills: http://www.sachinrekhi.com/developing-user-empathy

An explanation of “innovation” using the Lean Canvas. Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean as well as Scaling Leann, recently has labeled the work he does as innovation management. In this post he makes a good case for what innovation is and how it differs from invention. Innovation needs a successful business model. Read the details at  https://leanstack.com/innovation-management/

What is innovation management. This is another view of what is and is not innovation management. It is a useful comparison and contrast to the previous article from Ash… http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/innovation-management

The top most innovative companies – with Google at #1. Based on a survey of 4000 consumers this slideshow reveals the top-20 leaders in technology innovation. See them all at http://www.industryweek.com/innovation/20-most-innovative-technology-brands#slide-0-field_images-322971