My last post briefly listed some broad responsibilities of product leaders which are distinct from the direct work of managing individual products.  That’s a big thought, expanded below, which also gives me a jumping-off point for follow-on posts. Defining my label carefully, a “product leader” is someone who manages

How can product teams leverage the product discovery process to create products that satisfy genuine user needs? This article explores every stage of the process and shares some of the best practices…

The magic of Working Backwards: a real-world case study

Once your startup has some traction, fundraising becomes more straightforward. Investors still care about your vision and your team, but much of their focus shifts toward analyzing and interpreting your numbers: how fast is revenue growing? How many users are logging in monthly? How about daily? What fraction of users are retained for at least 3 months? 12 months? Strong numbers reduce the perceived riskiness of your company even if other parts of your pitch are weak. After all, if your company is making $2m/year and growing 20% monthly, then you must be on to something, right?

Make your ideation hands-on and collaborative with affinity mapping. Here’s your guide to affinity maps: What they are and how to make them.

Creating personas helps you understand your users’ needs, experiences, behaviours and goals. Learn more about how they help you create great user experiences.

This ultimate guide will teach you everything you need to know to about creating effective sales collateral for each stage of the buyers' journey.

What is User Experience (UX) Design? User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. UX design involves the...

What consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down and psychologically complicated. But universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in existing markets or break into new markets. In the right combinations, the authors’ analysis shows, those elements will pay off in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a particular brand, and sustained revenue growth. Three decades of experience doing consumer research and observation for corporate clients led the authors—all with Bain & Company—to identify 30 “elements of value.” Their model traces its conceptual roots to Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” and extends his insights by focusing on people as consumers: describing their behavior around products and services. They arrange the elements in a pyramid according to four kinds of needs, with “functional” at the bottom, followed by “emotional,” “life changing,” and then “social impact” at the peak. The authors provide real-world examples to demonstrate how companies have used the elements to grow revenue, refine product design to better meet customers’ needs, identify where customers perceive strengths and weaknesses, and cross-sell services.

The ask-observe framework

To design products that are desirable, viable, and feasible, teams need to constantly refine their understanding of three key questions.

If you are a serial entrepreneur starting to look for an idea for your next startup, you are likely to want a way to stimulate your brain to come up with as many good ideas as possible. This blog p…