February 11

The Secret to Taking Down Large Competitors & Non-Technical Product Managers

How to build a product roadmap everyone understands. Product roadmaps are one more tool at your team’s disposal to communicate what your priorities are at any given time period. However, it’s questionable how best that they can be used. Are they granular lists of product releases by date? Or are they more high level overviews of the themes you’ll be tackling now, next and later?

Take on your competition with these lessons from Google Maps. It’s a common perception that a new product must be 10x better than the incumbent to be truly disruptive. But this doesn’t always pan out, with users oftentimes failing to see exactly why the product is better. Bret Taylor, during his time building Google Maps, discovered something — “you have to make your users a little uncomfortable to make “better” matter.”

Promotion
Step out of execution mode. Get inspired. Really think about your product. Here are three great reasons to come to Cleveland for two days in September for Industry 2016, the product conference. Speakers include Google Venture Partner Ken Norton, HubSpot VP of Product Brad Coffey and a host of other phenomenal product leaders.

Ode to a non-technical product manager. Many product managers and would-be product managers who do not have a strong technical background can’t help but feel a little insecure. Particularly if they happen to be working with a highly skilled, super smart team building a high-tech product. Should they have technical skills on par with the rest of the team? Hunter Walk argues no, that it’s more important for that person to be technically curious, but hold one superpower that separates her from the generalists.

Paul McAvinchey

About the author

For over 20 years, Paul has been building and collaborating on digital products with fast-growing startups and global brands, including AOL and WMS Gaming. Currently, he's a co-founder of Product Collective, a worldwide community of product people. Members collaborate on in the exclusive Member Hub, meet at INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, listen to Rocketship.fm, learn at Product Interviews and get a weekly newsletters that includes best practices in product management. In recent years he led business development at DXY, a leading product design firm in the Midwest, and product innovation at MedCity Media, a publishing startup acquired by Breaking Media in 2015.


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