Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

The first truth is that at least half of our ideas are just not going to work. There are many reasons for an idea to not work out. The most common is that customers just aren't as excited about this idea as we are.

Keep the focus on minimal product. More on this later, but your job as product manager is not to define the ultimate product, it’s to define the smallest possible product that will meet your goals

Winning products come from the deep understanding of the user’s needs combined with an equally deep understanding of what’s just now possible.

If that's not bad enough, the second inconvenient truth is that even with the ideas that do prove to have potential, it typically takes several iterations to get the implementation of this idea to the point where it delivers the necessary business value. We call that time to money

Product management is about insights and judgment, both of which require a sharp mind. Hard work is also necessary, but for this job, it is not sufficient.

Software projects can be thought of as having two distinct stages: figuring out what to build (build the right product), and building it (building the product right). The first stage is dominated by product discovery, and the second stage is all about execution

The little secret in product is that engineers are typically the best single source of innovation; yet, they are not even invited to the party in this process

The difference between Amazon, Netflix, Google, Facebook, and the legions of large but slowly dying companies is usually exactly that: product leadership.

Realize that any product vision is a leap of faith. If you could truly validate a vision, then your vision probably isn't ambitious enough. It will take several years to know. So, make sure what you're working on is meaningful, and recruit people to the product teams who also feel passionate about this problem and then be willing to work for severa... See more