Power Pal

Another book I found on a product marketing suggested reading list was Product Marketing Debunked by Yasmeen Turayhi.  The book covers provides a framework for commercializing products, with an emphasis on product marketing's role in creating effective go-to-market (GTM) plans for new or early-stage ideas.  It's a short read and split between outlining what roles product marketers typically play, including when they should be hired, and outlining a GTM framework for new products, including templates for typical deliverables and artifacts. Why You Need a Product Marketer & What They Do The goal of a product marketing manager is summarized as follows: deliver the right product to the target customer at the right time to ensure customer adoption Product marketers are responsible for customer research and validation from alpha to launch, the GTM plan, building the value proposition, competitive intel, and the marketing programs necessary to launch.  In the early days of ...

I recently finished reading the book  Obviously Awesome by April Dunford.  I was interested in learning more about product marketing and this came up on a must-read list. After reading it I think it applies broadly across disciplines as product and company positioning aren't an after-thought but rather core to strategy.  The book provides the clearest explanation of how to develop your positioning strategy I've seen.  In my previous post on 7 Powers , you'll see that the first powers that all startups pursue are "counter-positioning" and/or having a "cornered resource".  So positioning is essential to company strategy. 1. What is positioning? Positioning as Context You can think about positioning as context as it enables people to figure out what's important (and what's not).  There are some common traps in setting the context for your product or company, including: Product changed: You're stuck on the idea of what you intended to build and ...

I recently finished reading 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Helmer .  Definitely one of those reads where the ideas seems obvious only after you've read them.  Helmer's intention was to create a framework simple enough that any front-line leader could easily remember and draw from it. Quick summary is that it covers seven sources of strategic business advantage and the order in which you should pursue those depending on company stage.  To win in the long-run, operational excellence and execution aren't enough; you also need strategic advantage.  The 7 powers of strategic advantage each confer a benefit to the company and introduce barriers preventing competitors from copying or neutralizing that advantage.  As your business progresses, different sources of power become available. Here are the company stages, powers that are unlocked at each stage, and a short description of each: Early Stage (Start-up) : counter positioning (position ...

I found this opinion piece ( Democrats aren't innocent bystanders ) interesting on how both Democrats and Republicans share responsibility for polarizing the electorate and undermining some of its faith in democracy. It references two other posts that were pretty good as well: The Disease of Delegitimization The Weimarization of the American Republic The second article is really long and heavy on history.  But given all of the comparisons people make between the current times and those of post-WWI Germany, I found it interesting to dive in to understand where the comparisons are coming from and how close we really are.  The short answer is that we aren't that close (phew). Seems like post-WWI Germany was incredibly fragile.  This was a good excerpt that summarized it: So, unlike the 60s, you have a dynamic in which both sides are behaving like radicals, in which the establishment isn’t yelling “stop,” and in which oikophobia is more evenly distributed, relative to its Boo...

I read the book The Four Steps to the Epiphany about two and half years ago and was convinced that I would revisit the book in the coming years (see my earlier post  where I summarized my initial thoughts on it).  Based on some current thinking I'm doing about new market entry, it seemed like the right time to do that.  As I'm re-reading the book, I'm taking some more detailed notes and thought I'd post them here for reference.  Apologies for them being a bit terse. So, to start, why the customer development model instead of the traditional product development model ? Primary risks in entering any market: do you understand the customers’ needs? do you understand the basis for competition in this market? will those customers purchase and adopt? Traditional approaches are terribly inefficient and often lead to disaster traditional product development model concept/seed vision what’s the product? (features, feasibility) who are the customers? (mark...

I think Duke can have one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the world. Are we there yet? Well, not yet. But there's a tremendous amount of momentum that I saw build in just the past two years while I was getting my MBA at Duke. While leading Duke's 10th annual business plan competition, the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC) , last year, I witnessed a near doubling of participation on campus in just a single year. The interest on the ground was clearly there and building rapidly. But now that I'm an alum, I'm looking back and wondering ... how do we rev-up the Duke entrepreneurial community even more? I read a great article by Daniel Isenberg, a professor of management at Babson, called " How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution " in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review. Isenberg outlines nine prescriptions for governments that want to create entrepreneurship ecosystems in their countries. Although he was focused on governments an...

I just finished a great book on product design called The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper . Computers have really reached into every aspect of our daily lives. Whether in the bedroom, kitchen, automobile, office, or on the go in our cell phones, a computer is present behind the scenes. The problem, Cooper argues, is how horrible the interactions are with the vast majority of those devices and software programs. Not just the interfaces, but the entire interaction. And it's these horrible interactions that are generating a digital divide across the world between those that put the time in to accommodate and learn the poor design ( apologists ) and those that just suffer silently ( survivors ). I'm certainly not a stranger to some of the concepts around design. I studied human computer interaction while I was at Berkeley, tasking several classes in user-centered design, UI design, and usability and even did a research project on an alternative handwriting reco...